maxg / slack-alley

Piazza → Slack staff backchannel

Slack Alley

Piazza → Slack staff backchannel

Setup

Create a Piazza account for <course-number>@<slack-alley-domain>. Add that user as an instructor in the class. Set their email settings for the class to: real time + real time + follow everything.

Create a DynamoDB item:

{
  "cid": "class",
  "key": <course-number>,
  "val": {
    "piazza_nid": <piazza-network-id>,
    "piazza_password": <piazza-account-password>,
    "slack_channel": <slack-channel-id>,
    "slack_token": <slack-app-token>,
    "user_domain": <student-email-domain>,
    "user_info": <prefix-for-user-info-web-page>
  }
}

For users with non-user_domain email addresses on Piazza, create DynamoDB items:

{
  "cid": "email",
  "key": <email-address-on-piazza>,
  "val": <username>
}

Development

After creating Terraform configs, use lambda/local to run locally.

See:

• https://github.com/dyhwong/piazza-api (e.g. Content.js)
• https://github.com/hfaran/piazza-api (e.g. rpc.py, nonce.py)

Deployment

In setup, create terraform.tfvars and terraform.auto.tfvars following the examples.

In the development VM: in lambda run npm install, and in setup run pack to generate the Lambda deployment package.

After Terraform, complete SES domain verification.

To test on-email in the Lambda console, create test events:

{
  "Records": [ {
    "ses": { "mail": { "commonHeaders": {
      "messageId": "<"<piazza-message-cid>"@piazza.com>",
      "to": [ <course-number>"@"<slack-alley-domain> ]
    } } }
  } ]
}

slack-alley's Issues

encourage URLs

If post doesn't include a link, should Piazza bot post a followup asking for one?

notice missing numbers in the post sequence

missing posts might have been sent only to the instructors (instead of to all staff) -- Slack Alley should maybe highlight so that Piazza staff can @-mention the instructors to double-check

or they might have been created and then deleted?