Minerva Bot

Your personal assistant for everything McGill. Learn about courses, programs, buildings, cafeteria and library opening hours, uPrint locations and general FAQs.

Idea

Currently it takes 10 clicks to get to a search box that lets you search McGill courses. Minerva Bot lives in your messenger, one click away, to search everything McGill!

Features

Course Look Up

Specific Queries

• Ask for courses by code "COMP 202", "Where is PHYS 232 in the Fall"
• Ask for courses by title "Courses about machine learning in the fall", "Courses about quantum mechanics"

You will get a response with times, professors, buildings and sections!

Freeform Queries

• Ask for courses by level: "500 level biology courses"
• Ask for programs: "Honours physics", "Culturual Studies Major"

Building Look up

• Look for buildings on campus: "Where is the E-cafe?", "Show me frostbite"
• See where your classes are.
• Look for uPrint printers on campus.

Tech

Minerva Bot is organized into plugins. When the server receives a message or postback, the query along with context and history is passed along to a chain of plugins (which are promises) that will process the data in the context. Each plugin will save replies into the context which will be sent back to the user.