Project Details
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ALIMS WhatsApp Engine
Project description
Putting an academic record where the researchers already are
The Challenge
ALIMS is a research-record platform, and the researchers it serves do not live in a web dashboard — they live in WhatsApp. A workflow that requires somebody to remember to open a website and log in will be used for a week and then abandoned, however good the website is.
Automating a personal messaging account is a different proposition from using a business API: it carries real risk of the account being restricted, so the engine is built as an internal integration for the owner's workflows rather than a product other people connect their accounts to.
The Solution
Keep the academic record authoritative and make WhatsApp the interface: records are created, checked and verified through a conversation, with the session layer translating between the two. Nothing is stored only in a chat — the conversation is a client, not a database.
Skills and deliverables
Features delivered
The hard part
Session durability and the boundary of what may be automated. A dropped session has to be recoverable without losing state, and the engine stays deliberately on the internal side of the line.
The Impact
A working integration engine connecting the record workflow to WhatsApp, deliberately not shipped as a general product and described as an internal engine wherever it appears.
