Find SSI Friends
Use
- Type
/find-ssi-friendsinto any Slack channel (nothing gets posted publicly to the channel). - Navigate to the people tab of the canvas class you want to find friends for
- Copy the entire page, navigate to the slack modal, and paste it into the box. It will likely be very messy, and that is fine
- You'll receive a DM with the members that are in the SSI slack channel
- Search for the slack channel for the class (the convention is #ssi-takes-[class-code]) and join it or create it if it doesn't exist already
- Paste the names of others to add them to the channel. In SSI adding others to channels is common and encouraged, people can leave at any time without notifying others that they left.
Software
Find the GitHub repo here. The software is written in JavaScript using Slack's Bolt SDK. It's hosted on Heroku. The string of names is cleaned and each space delimiter is treated as a separate name. If anyone matches two names, it is considered successful. For example, "Alan" "Shepard" matches Slack's "Alan Shepard". "Alan" "Shepard" "he/him" also matches "Alan Shepard". Obviously, it's not a perfect system, but captures the vast majority of cases. The slack roster is saved as a CSV file, and must be updated for new members to be included.
History
Find SSI Friends was written over an evening of homework procrastination when Lawton wanted others to work with on his ME 30 pset. He wrote a python script that would take people from other classes, slack channels, and dorm chats. Proving useful, he made it into a slack bot the following weekend for others to use. Tracking suggests it gets used ~20 times per quarter.
Example submission
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Dashboard
Lawton Michael Skaling
Account
Dashboard
Profile Picture Name Section Role Administrative Links
Alex Agris
Alex Agris (She/her)
F23-CME-102-01
Student
Carlos Emmanuelle Ayala Bellido
Carlos Emmanuelle Ayala Bellido
F23-CME-102-01
F23-ENGR-155A-01
TA
TA
Analiese Marie Bancroft
Analiese Marie Bancroft