Ping Slack teams via text message using voip.ms
Do you organize an event-based community (e.g. meetup), and wish for any easy way to let confused people get access to the venue? This will help you with that!
We use this script as a doorbell for meetups, so that all organizers can easily take responsibility for answering and dealing with issues.
No more sharing personal phone numbers on the internet or public signage!
No more coordinating whose number to use!
No more having responsibility fall only on one person!
This chatbot script works through voip.ms, a platform that offers super-cheap internet numbers (~$0.85/month) that include SMS messages. You'll set up it up to notify your Slack team whenever
It drops the message into a public channel, and the phone number itself into a private channel, to protect privacy of texters.
Optionally, if Voip.ms API access is configured, then reaction emoji will be relayed back to the texter to give them assurance they've been noticed.
See src/sms-doorbell.coffee for technical documentation.
For setup documentation (including voip.ms), see the SMS Doorbell wiki page
In hubot project repo, run:
npm install civictechto/hubot-sms-doorbell#master --save
Then add hubot-sms-doorbell to your external-scripts.json:
[
"hubot-sms-doorbell"
]- Someone texts "help! I'm locked out" to Voip.ms doorbell number from 555-555-5555
- Bot drops messages in Slack channels:
- Relays "help! I'm locked out" in
#organizing-open - Relays phone number 555-555-55555 in
#organizing-priv(optional)
- Relays "help! I'm locked out" in
- Slack users are encouraged to add reaction to message in
#organizing-open- For sake of example, a user named "dilini" reacts
- Both the texter at 555-555-5555 and the Slack thread receive a confirmation that "dilini has acknowledged your message with a 🚀 emoji"
chatbot>> Someone rang the doorbell! "help! I'm locked out" (pls react and we'll fwd to texter)
dilini>> *reacts with :rocket:*
chatbot>> *in thread* We've sent this to the texter: "dilini has acknowledged your message with a :rocket: emoj"
https://www.npmjs.com/package/hubot-sms-doorbell (doesn't yet exist)