Our telegram bot for CodeFiesta

With what I learnt from the time I made my first telegram bot, making the second bot for the CodeFiesta hackathon became a lot easier. In fact, I finally learnt how to make use of an inline-keyboard, something I am still rather proud of (sadly I live for cheap thrills).

The problem statement was regarding 'making the lives of Singaporeans who live overseas better'. We decided to go with the idea of making a telegram bot that is able to provide curated information without the need to download any additional applications (which would occupy more storage on personal devices). We also felt that with the increasing use of telegram, it would be more accessible to get information from an interactive bot, rather than having to open up an application or website.

The main idea is that the bot would provide a curated list of information so that users do not have to jump from one website to the other and evaluate the credibility of each source. As a government initiative, users can easily trust the information disseminated by the bot, just like the Gov.sg bot which provides daily updates on the local Covid-19 situation.

We decided to include these features in our bot:

• Accessing healthcare policies for foreigners in a specific foreign country

• Accessing information of how to drive in a specific foreign country

• Accessing emergency information based on the location that a Singaporean overseas is living in

• Accessing information on moving back to Singapore (for foreign expats and returning Singaporeans)

• Accessing VISA information for a specific country

You can read further about our project and view our video demonstration here: https://devpost.com/software/sgconnect-bot

Our code for the telegram bot can be found here: https://replit.com/@h41dr3l/hackathonsubmission?v=1

I'm extremely keen to make a telegram bot that would be beneficial to someone in their daily life, but I feel like so many ideas have come to fruition already! Hopefully, one day, I'll dream of a novel ground-breaking idea!! I also feel like telegram bots are now my go-to solution for any project... Is it time to learn how to make an application? (We wanted to dabble in some wire-framing since we have no experience in building a phone application, perhaps one day I am able to get to it, we'll see!)