Dolores Landingham Bot, developed by 18F, is a Slack bot designed to help new employees at the General Services Administration (GSA) in the United States. The bot sends scheduled messages to new hires, offering information about the agency and its policies. It was named after the character Dolores Landingham from the television show ‘The West Wing’.

The bot is built with Ruby on Rails and uses the ‘slack-ruby-client’ gem to interact with the Slack API. It’s hosted on cloud.gov, a platform as a service (PaaS) provided by the U.S. federal government. The bot uses a PostgreSQL database and is tested with RSpec. The code for the bot is open-source, allowing other organisations to use and adapt it for their own needs.

The bot’s messages are customisable and can be scheduled to be sent at specific times. This ensures that new employees receive relevant information when they need it, without being overwhelmed by a flood of information on their first day. The bot also helps to foster a welcoming and inclusive culture, as it can be programmed to send messages that promote diversity and inclusion.

The Dolores Landingham Bot is a practical example of how technology can be used to improve the onboarding experience for new employees, by providing them with timely and relevant information in an engaging and accessible format.

Go to source article: https://github.com/18F/dolores-landingham-bot