Automated NLP parser in Facebook Group Conversations

Prompt

I am part of a group of volunteers in our local church that reads scripture during mass service. Sometimes, volunteers are unavailable and post that they will not be able to attend their scheduled assignments. These volunteers message within a private group chat in Facebook informing the group that they will not be able to serve.

Me and my fellow lectors at church.
Me and my fellow lectors at church. Censored for privacy purposes.

Challenge: Because of the nature of chat, it is difficult to see at a glance whether there are lacking servers in a specific mass service.

Opportunity: The information of who are the servers and whether there is a need for substitutes can be better recorded and communicated rather than historically in a conversation/message thread.

Angle of attack: An automated Facebook conversation listener that is able to detect when a person states they will not be able to serve on a given schedule. A single-page application that can display the servers for a certain day.

Preflight

Objective

To effectively, efficiently, and quickly find out whether there are enough lectors who will be serving in the mass services.

Scope

  1. This project should only take me a total of 30 hours to work on.

Strategy

Meta

I am currently exploring the format that I want to follow for multi-part series/articles. For now, I am aiming at a four-part series of posts that encapsulates a personal project of mine.

  1. Prompt, Preflight, Strategy
  2. Architecture, Specs, Design
  3. Development and Technologies
  4. Analysis and Review