Engineering a Scalable Notice Bot for AIUB Students

The Problem: Missing Critical Updates

For students at American International University-Bangladesh (AIUB), missing a university notice can mean missing an exam registration or a critical deadline. I identified this communication gap and decided to build a technical solution to bridge it.

The Solution: A Serverless Telegram Bot

I built a Telegram bot that automatically monitors the official AIUB Notices Page and notifies all subscribed users the moment a new update is published. Today, the bot serves over 400+ daily active users.

Technical Architecture

Instead of managing a traditional server, I leveraged Google Apps Script (GAS) to create a serverless backend.

1. Backend & Database

• Google Apps Script: Handles webhooks and scheduled tasks.
• Google Sheets: Acts as a lightweight database for subscriber management and notice history.

2. The Webhook Handler

The bot uses a doPost(e) function to handle real-time interactions, supporting commands like /start, /latest, and /about.

3. Automated Monitoring

The bot is proactive. Using the createHourlyTrigger() function, I set up a time-based trigger that runs the scraping logic every hour.