typpo / call-congress

Call Your Congresspeople

This app uses Twilio to connect people with their senators and representatives.

You can read more about it here: http://www.ianww.com/blog/2016/06/15/call-your-congressperson-with-one-phone-number-1-844-usa-4522/

Getting started running locally:

• Clone this repository and type npm install.
• Set up your .env file. For a dummy .env, run cp example_dot_env .env
• Run node cyc_entry.js to start the server.

Run with a specific configuration

By default, the app uses the configuration specified in config/default.js.

You can set this configuration in your .env file:

CONFIG=./config/my_config.js

Or you can override this on the command line:

CONFIG=./config/my_config.js node cyc_entry.js

How It Works

Call Congress uses the caller's ZIP code in conjunction with the Civil Serivces API to connect the caller directly to their federal representatives.

• Caller calls in to the central number handling all redirects
• Caller is instructed as to what will happen after having called this number
• Caller is prompted for their Zip Code, followed by the pound (#) sign. They're given 10 seconds to complete, or are disconnected
• Caller is informed that they'll be connected to their senators and representatives one-after-another. If they want to skip a call, they can press star (*).
• Once the caller has gone through all their senators and representatives, they are informed that their session is ended.
• App disconnects.

If a caller enters a bad Zip Code

• Caller is informed that no representatives were able to be found for their zip code, and they should try calling again.
• App disconnects.

Development

There are several commands that make development easier

• npm run start:watch runs the server and restarts on file changes
• npm run test:watch runs tests on every file change
• npm run tunnel sets up a tunnel using localtunnel and prints the web address that Twilio can use to the console

Contributing

Contributions welcomed and encouraged! Here's how you should contribute to this repository:

• Fork the repo into your own repository.
• Open an issue in this (the original) repository describing the feature you intend to work on. Ex: "Add support for calling City Representatives"
• Check out a new branch in your own fork for this feature. Ex: call-city-reps
• Do your work on that branch.
• When your changes are ready to be merged, open a pull request from your fork's branch to this repo's master branch.
• In the comments of your Pull Request, point out which issue you've resolved and how.

Example of things to do:

• Better options for return callers (eg. remembering zip code).
• Support for local numbers (city, local representatives).
• Collect info on what user is calling about? (eg. ask user to make a statement)
• Monitoring for the call server

License (MIT)

Copyright (C) 2016 by Ian Webster (http://www.ianww.com)

  Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

  The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

  THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

call-congress's Issues

Add linting + choose style guide

I'm partial to airbnb's style guide and the associated eslint config. https://github.com/airbnb/javascript

Google's is also an option. https://google.github.io/styleguide/jsguide.html

Add support for Spanish and other languages

Re-prompt when given bad input

Currently, when a caller puts in a bad/unusable ZIP code they are told that no reps could be found and are disconnected. There will be user attrition if this continues. The user should be re-prompted for a properly-formatted ZIP code (5-digit zip) before being disconnected. Maybe give them 3 tries?

Flesh out the Git Workflow

It's unclear how contributions should happen when including multiple developers to work on this project. This pull request is a start at addressing that, using a "feature branch" workflow pointing at issues in the repository.

Add main menu options for calling City OR State OR Federal legislators

Currently the app only allows for contacting Congress (hence the name). However, a user should be able to contact legislators at all relevant levels of government.

Test issue

Support for calling state representatives

There may be APIs to handle this.

https://sunlightlabs.github.io/openstates-api/

Include the expected User Experience in the README

It's unclear how exactly a user is supposed to interact with this app, so add a UX flow to the README for easy understanding for contributing developers.

Option for Reminder Callback

A person who calls has the option to opt-in for a callback reminder, so the service would callback within X amount of time to have the person call again.

fresh clone doesn't pass unit checks and doesn't work

I did a fresh clone and npm test fails. This seems to be because node.js is more stringent about checking. I'm able to fix this in the sources but it still doesn't work. When I point a browser at it all I get is
Cannot GET /
not the usual XML response. Using node.js v8.10.0

Persist ZIP codes for a given incoming numbers

If a user has used this app before and input their zip code, there's no reason why they should have to hear the same intro (unless they want to).

Support for calling local representatives

Deray's suggestion: crowdsource the contact information for the elected officials of the 100 largest cities

Lower priority as most of the upcoming work is on the federal level.