A bot which locates the closest volunteers to check-in on & run errands for vulnerable members of the community.
Made by Astoria Tech volunteers, for use by the Astoria Mutual Aid Network.
Astoria Mutual Aid Network’s volunteer dispatch works as follows:
- People fill out a form to request help (https://astoriamutualaid.com/help) which feeds into Airtable
- The bot (a node.js container) watches the Airtable sheet for new entries (every 15 seconds)
- When a new entry is found, the request address is cross-referenced against the volunteer list to find the 10 closest volunteers who can fulfill the need, and posts them to a private dispatch channel on Slack (where we have trained dispatch volunteers coordinating with the field volunteers).
- Make
- Docker & Docker Compose
Get the integration points setup:
- an Airtable account - sign up for a free account, then fill out this form to get a year free as a relief group: https://airtable.com/shr2yzaeJmeuhbyrD
- a free MapQuest dev account - https://developer.mapquest.com/plan_purchase/steps/business_edition/business_edition_free/register
- a dedicated private Slack channel for the bot to post to
And grab the API keys from each (and channel ID for Slack), and put them into the following environment variables:
AIRTABLE_API_KEY
AIRTABLE_BASE_ID
- go to the Airtable API page, click your Volunteer Dispatch base, and the ID is thereAIRTABLE_REQUESTS_VIEW_URL
- go to the Grid View of the Requests table in your Volunteer Dispatch base, and copy the URL (e.g.https://airtable.com/tblMSgCqcFR404rTo/viwgqR1sKrOdmB0dn
)AIRTABLE_VOLUNTEERS_VIEW_URL
- go to the Grid View of the Volunteers table in your Volunteer Dispatch base, and copy the URL (e.g.https://airtable.com/tbl9xI8U5heH4EoGX/viwp51zSgXEicB3wB
)MAPQUEST_KEY
SLACK_XOXB
- Slack bot token. To setup: create an app, add the OAuthchat:write
bot scope, install the app to a channel, and grab the bot tokenSLACK_SECRET
- Slack app signing secret. Found in the 'Basic Information' section of your app on api.slack.com/appsSLACK_CHANNEL_ID
- Slack channel ID (e.g.C0107MVRF08
)
- Clone this repo and navigate to the project root in your terminal.
- Set the environment variables documented above.
- Run
make develop
and the bot will start running, processing records every 15 seconds.
We store our data on Airtable. You can see the data and make your own copy with a single click here: https://airtable.com/universe/expOp8DfPcmAPTSOz/volunteer-dispatch
We use a tool called Shipyard to deploy the bot. In short, it compiles the Docker Compose file to Kubernetes manifests and deploys to a managed cluster.
Shipyard will host the bot for free for any mutual aid or relief organizations. Send a message to covid@shipyard.build and they'll set you up with an account.