I’ve tried all over, and I cannot find what I need. Here’s the long version:
In Jewish law, there is something called an eruv that permits you to carry items outside of a house on the Sabbath. I don’t care what you think of this concept. That’s not the point.
I work for our local eruv committee, and I setup a system of automatic updates.
- When the eruv’s status is determined for that week, we send out a Twitter update.
- This can be sent to you via SMS for those who really don’t want to use Twitter or cannot use Twitter on their cellphones. We give full directions on our webpage on how this is done.
- That Tweet is posted automatically onto our Webpage.
- We use Zapier to copy that tweet to Facebook.
- Once it is posted on Facebook, we use Groups.io to send out that Facebook post as an email.
See what we have here? You can get the eruv status via Twitter, SMS messaging, Facebook, the webpage, and email. Your pick. And, it’s all automatic. I don’t have to do anything once the Tweet comes out.
There is a sixth way you can get the eruv’s status. You can call a hotline. The Rabbi who heads the eruv committee updates the message with the latest status. This is done manually. This Rabbi has to remember to do this. Sometimes, he doesn’t update the status until right before our Sabbath begins. Believe it or not, there are a lot of people who still insist on calling the hotline.
At first, I thought “Hey, I can automate the phone hotline too! How hard could it be. Somewhere, someone has a service that I can use. I could simply have it read the last Tweet or Facebook post. Easy-Peasy!”. It turns out this isn’t so easy-peasy. I have yet found anything I can use. I’ve searched If This Then That. I’ve searched Zapier. I’ve called a dozen VOIP service providers to see if they have anything.
I know I could program this (or get someone to program this). All the pieces are there. However, I don’t have the funds or the server to make this a big project.
Anyone has any idea how we can update our eruv hotline automatically with the latest status of our eruv? This is the last piece of automation I want to fall into place.