IFS RSVP Bot

Quick Deploy Guide

This is a step-by-step guide which can teaches you deploy IFS RSVP Bot by your self.

You can deploy a IFS RSVP Bot for free in your Heroku [FN 1], and the bot deployed with this guide is full-powered. If you want some customized feature, you may deploy it by your self, but it is still recommended that read this guide first.

Prepare for Airtable

You need a Airtable account. If you havn't a account for Airtable, click here to sign up.

Visit the sample base, then click “Add a workspace” in “Bases” page (your Airtable homepage) to create a workspace. You can name it as your preference.

A sample for new workspace

Click the arrow located in the right-bottom of “Base Sample” icon, then click “Duplicate base”. Choose the workspace you just created. Do not forget to un-tick the “Duplicate records” option.

Copy base

Go to the base duplicated by you. Edit the sheet name as the name of city by click “Rename table” option. Also, you can edit the base name as your own preference.

Edit sheet name

Next. Go to account settings in Airtable, Click “Generate API Key”, keep your personal API key to a safe area for later steps.

Go to API documents of Airtable, find the base duplicated.

Which base is the target base?

If you doesn't edit the name of new base, it should be “Base Sample Copy”.

Find the base ID with this image. Also, it can be found on URL box or Omni box.

Get base ID

Create a Telegram bot

Talk to BotFather and request for a new bot with /newbot command. BotFather will give you a bot token seems like 123456:1234567890ABCDEFGabcdefg after the new bot created.

Then, the PoCs belonging to each faction need to chat with ID Bot or get id bot. Both will reply the Telegram ID in number (like Your Chat ID = 000000).

Deploy to Heroku

Click “Deploy to Heroku” button on project homepage, then fill in all those information:

  • AIRTABLE_TOKEN: Your Airtable API key.
  • BASE_ID: The base ID belonged to the target base.
  • DOMAIN：Fill in the App name field first (at the top of the form), then, fill https://<App name>.herokuapp.com in this field. Don't add / at the end of the URL.
  • IFS_INFO: Fill the JSON including your IFS information.
  • RANDOM_ADDRESS: Start with /, then input some random string fit to URL standard.
  • TELEGRAM_TOKEN: The bot token given by BotFather.

I haven't Heroku account yet...

Don't worry. Heroku will redirect to sign-up page after you click the button, and you can create a Heroku account with it.

The sample of IFS_INFO:

[{"location":"Mojave","enlpoc":[123456,789012],"respoc":[345678,901234]}]

[{"location":"El Capiton","enlpoc":[123456],"respoc":[789012]},{"location":"Yosemite","enlpoc":[345678],"respoc":[901234]}]

About the location field

IFS RSVP Bot supports multiple IFS events at the same time. The bot will identify different event by location field, and this field should be same as the sheet name (not the base name).

Then, the PoCs can send /start command to the bot created. If the bot reply a welcome message, the config is all comleted. 🎉

Next...

In the next part, we should import the RSVP list of First Saturday event.

Foot note

  1. The free service of Heroku has some restricitions, for example, limit running time in a period, 5 apps in your accounts (can be canceled with free credit card verification), etc. However, in theory, the free service is enough for bot running.

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