LoomioBot for Facebook Messenger

@marcogiustini Could you talk a bit more about how you'd use such a Loomio Messenger-bot?

@matthewbartlett Matthew, on Medium in a post you suggested to read, is written: "Facebook messenger is quickly becoming the de-facto home of chatbots. More than 100K bots already published on Facebook". Imho, Facebook Messenger and not Slack is the killer app to spread to the masses the Loomio collaborative decision tools. The most of activists' groups worldwide use Facebook pages and could be very useful to provide the tools directely on them.

The LoomioBot could be used in a similar way is used on Slack.
https://www.loomio.org/slack

As I know a Facebook app can be subscribed to multiple pages
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/page/subscribed_apps/

Do you have a facebook group or page that you would like to use it with?

Yes

I've spend a bit of time looking at how an integration might work - reading up on facebook api's and capabilities - I came away unimpressed. We can announce decisions into a facebook group, and grant facebook group members access to participate. but the information you can post into the group is really limited (a title, description and image) and soon out of date, it's about the same as sharing the link from time to time in your group in terms of integration.

Isn't Marco talking about Messenger rather than Groups, though?

oh right!!! Thanks for the clarification @matthewbartlett. In that case we're much more likely to be able to add value... but it will take a big chunk of dev time which we don't have right now.

Is it not reausable the code developped for Slack?

The code is reuseable. But writing the code isn't the hard part of doing integrations - that's why integrations are so time consuming, because we have to be very careful about what we want the experience to be in using the two platforms together. Using Loomio in Facebook messenger will require a long lead in design and testing time to get properly right (and people won't use it or care unless it provides a really great experience)

Facebook integration is something I want to to take a hard look at again early next year, and indeed I think an integration with Facebook groups is something that won't take much time and will provide value (although Facebook doesn't have the ability to provide as nice an experience as we're able to provide with Slack.) A messenger bot is a bit more intriguing, but will require more time to get right.

That being said, I'm very interested in hearing how you'd imagine your experience working @marcogiustini :)

@gdpelican James, I think that integrating Loomio into Facebook give users a way to transform a group of people into a participative organization. I imagine something similar to what already is coded for Slack.

Imho Slack and Facebook Messenger have two different audiences. Slack basicly is used by english speaking professionals, Facebook is used worldwide. That's why I think that a chatbot for Facebook Messenger is a way to spread Loomio worldwide. Most of activists' groups I know use only Facebook and integrating decision tools into it could be a a great way to enhance the participation. Instead a bot only for Facebook Groups is not so useful.

How may it cost to dedicate a developer to such task? We may search for funds.

Hm, yep I think we agree on all points, in fact I had a decision-making process using Loomio and Facebook together recently that gave me some fun ideas. :)

Both Rob and I are incontrovertibly committed to tasks through the middle of January. At that time Loomio will reconvene and take an assessment at what the development for 2018 will look like; reaching out to facebook audiences with a chatbot will certainly be on that list of possibilities, and money always greases the wheels in the right direction, although it's impossible for me to say a figure right now.

Loomio is also open source, and if someone shows up and starts working on it (perhaps with external funds, perhaps not), we can certainly give our support to help it happen. Also, it doesn't necessarily need to be a developer doing developer work; someone who wants to familiarize themselves with the possibilities of the API and put together some specific workflows for what the chat app might do, that's actually the major hurdle at the moment.