jamesives / dc-metro-google-assistant-action

🚉 🔉 DC Metro Google Assistant action that will show you the latest train and bus arrival information for your commute.

Software Engineer from London that loves all things front-end, design, and automation.

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dc-metro-google-assistant-action's Issues

Storing favorite stop/station

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Please provide a clear and concise description of what the problem is. Ex. I'm always frustrated when [...]

It can sometimes be tedious to have to always tell the action which station/stop you'd like to request.

Describe the solution you'd like

Please provide a clear and concise description of what you want to happen.

Actions on Google allow you to store data about a user similar to local storage in the browser. What would be nice is if you could tell the action "Remember my favorite bus stop is 11222" or something to similar, and then on follow invocations you could ask the action to tell me about the saved bus stop.

Additional Comments

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Docs: https://developers.google.com/actions/assistant/save-data

Bus Incidents

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Please provide a clear and concise description of what the problem is. Ex. I'm always frustrated when [...]

Only rail incidents are presented currently, the application should be mirrored for bus users.

Describe the solution you'd like

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Similar to rail incidents, it would be nice to include any bus incidents in a similar method. For instance if a user requests a stop id and one of the route numbers which stop there is affected by an incident, it should be presented to the user.

Additional Comments

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There is a separate incident for bus incidents on the WMATA API site.

Interruption Data

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

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The action be able to tell if there's a delay on any of the lines which stop at the requested station. This data can be surfaced in the Interruptions endpoint by WMATA.

Describe the solution you'd like

Please provide a clear and concise description of what you want to happen.

When the user asks for a station, for example: train times for Farragut North the action should be able to respond with There's x amount of interruptions that affect the lines which stop at this station, would you like to hear them?, answering with yes should provide a readout with what the interruptions are. If there's no interruptions the action should immediately close.

Additional Comments

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Incidents endpoint: https://developer.wmata.com/docs/services/54763641281d83086473f232/operations/54763641281d830c946a3d77?

There should also be a separate command to get interruptions, Ok Google, ask DC metro for train interrupts on the red line or Ok Google, ask DC metro for train/bus interruptions.

Spanish Localization

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

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It would be nice if some of the action data was localized in a secondary language. Spanish would make the most sense I believe. For content which is API sourced it would be best to use the Google translate API: https://cloud.google.com/translate/docs/

Describe the solution you'd like

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Whenever a user queries the application, it should return data in the users language of choice. For instance Spanish. Station names and incident data should be left in English as that makes the most sense.

Action should understand stop commands

When presented with the “Would you like to try another station?” question, if the user says no it doesn’t end the action. This should be fixed so any variation of no causes the action to terminate.

Handling when bus number not recognized

Describe the bug

Please provide a clear and concise description of what the bug is.

When DC Metro doesn't recognize a bus station number (because it doesn't exist), instead of asking for a different number, it just terminates the program.

Reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior.

Ask for bus times at stop number 1231233. Your query will be terminated.

Expected behavior

Please provide a clear and concise description of what you expected to happen.

It should tell me there was an issue and ask for a different bus station number

Screenshots

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Additional Comments

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Line Filtering

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

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Certain stations have a lot of trains arriving at a station, and often times the user only wants to see data about a specific line or destination.

Describe the solution you'd like

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You should be able to invoke the action to request a station and a specific line, for example Ok Google, Ask DC Metro for the Orange Line Train times at Farragut North to get the orange line trains at Farragut North.

Additional Comments

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The dialog flow will need to be improved generally to handle this more gracefully (#24), but the general lift should be relatively small to get the filtering in place.

General Action Improvements

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

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Describe the solution you'd like

Whenever the user runs the initial command Talk to DC Metro, the action should suggest possible speech responses. It should also display some of the data in a better way (for instance if there's incidents that data should be surfaced on the table somehow so it's not just reading off broken text).

Please provide a clear and concise description of what you want to happen.

• Use the speech suggestions.
• Look at what other actions do to make the flow more natural.
• Allow users to follow up to one station with another.
• Add incidents to bus stops.

Additional Comments

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Lots of random things here, just writing down some thoughts while I take the metro.

Timestamp is not EST on timetable

Describe the bug

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As this is for the Metro in DC, the timestamp should be displayed as Eastern time only.

Reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior.

• Ask the bot for a timetable, the time provided is UTC and not EST.

Expected behavior

Please provide a clear and concise description of what you expected to happen.

I expect the bot to give me the local time in DC.

Nearby Bus Stops

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

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Right now for bus stops you have to put in the stop ID which can be somewhat annoying because it's not always readily available to the user. This is a bad user experience and should be improved.

Describe the solution you'd like

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The WMATA API has an endpoint for nearby stops which accepts LAT/LONG coordinates. The proposed flow would be something like this...

> User asks for nearby stop
> Application asks if it can access the users location data.
> User accepts or denies, application then presents the top 3 stops near them if they accept. 
> User selects a stop, and the prediction data is presented to them.

This could be improved for assistant devices with a screen as an actual interface could be presented to the user for them to select, for speaker devices (Most Google Homes) the name could be read off to them, or the address.

Additional Comments

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I'm not sure if this is really needed for trains, or if the tools even exist for the functionality to be mimicked for that service.

Dialog Improvement

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

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Right now some of the dialog feels tricky to use, and the application doesn't always understand the user.

Describe the solution you'd like

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The DialogFlow settings should be improved, and potentially the way the app is invoked to provide a better user experience.

Additional Comments

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There's a lot to unfold here, so I'd like to use this thread to keep track of any ideas I or anyone else may have.

Stations with multiple platforms

Describe the bug

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Certain stations contain multiple platforms with different lines which stop at each such as Metro Center at Fort Tot. When we retrieve all stations from the stations endpoint there's a Code property which doesn't show all of the lines. There's a StationsTogether1 property on the API which should be used for these station types which will aggregate all of the data when the predictions endpoint is hit.

Reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior.

• Ask for train times for Metro Center
• Observe that only red line trains are shown.

Expected behavior

Please provide a clear and concise description of what you expected to happen.

Should show all of the trains arriving at this station.