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Status Updater

The Status Updater provides a simple interface for a person with limited vision to routinely update their status to remote caregivers. They can choose "I'm OK" or "Call Me" and the application will automatically send an email to one or more caregivers.

The two buttons presented by the app are very large with large fonts with high contrast (black on yellow) so that they are easy to see.

The app should run as a desktop application of platforms as supported by the Wails framework (currently supporting Windows, MacOS, and Linux).

The simple and accessible interface looks as follows when the app is started from the desktop:

App at Startup

Once the large "I'm OK" button is clicked then the button is temporarily disabled and a status message will show that the email was successfully sent:

App after button pressed

Running the Application

Currently the application is available as a binary executable for the Windows 64-bit environment. You can download and run the program as follows:

  1. Download the latest executable from the Releases.

  2. Extract the zip to a folder.

  3. Copy example.config.toml file to config.toml.

  4. Edit the config.toml file for the email SMTP settings, the recipients email list, and the name of the user that will use the program. Optionally you can edit the button labels that will be seen by the user.

  5. Start the program by clicking on the status-updater.exe file. Use the Configuration -> Configure menu to set the SMTP User and Password for the email settings. This will write the encrypted settings back to the config.toml so that they are not visible as plain text.

  6. The program can then be tested by clicking on the status-updater.exe file. If all works as expected it can be distributed to the user, being sure to keep it with the config.toml file.

  7. For better ease of use for the end user you can right-mouse drag the status-updater.exe to the user's desktop and create a shortcut to the program.

Configuration File

The config.toml configuration file needs to be present with the executable file for the configuration of the SMTP server, the email recipients, and the name of the end user. Additionally the button labels can be changed for alternate languages or to send different messages than the default "I'm OK" and "Call Me".

The contents of the configuration file are as follows and are available in the example.config.toml.

Also, it is recommended to change the Encryption key to a different one before the program is first run. The website Random Key Generator can be used to randomly generate it using the "Encryption key 256" option for a 32 byte key.

# SMTP credentials for sending email notifications
SmtpUser     = ""  # Will be set as an encrypted string by the Configuration menu.
SmtpPassword = ""  # Will be set as an encrypted string by the Configuration menu.
EncryptionKey = "p04lCUCXBjDIlpiN1dIjRauOghtmL8f1"  # 32 bytes https://acte.ltd/utils/randomkeygen
SmtpServer   = "smtp.gmail.com"
SmtpPort     = "587"
FromEmail    = "sender@example.org"

# The comma-delimited list of email recipients to receive the updates.
Recipients = ["JohnDoe@example.com", "JaneDoe@example.com"]

# The name of the person that will use the program and send the updates.
Name = "Bill"

# The labels on the buttons. Can be changed to support alternate languages or different purposes.
# Try to keep the length short because of the button size.
Button1Label = "I'm OK"
Button2Label = "Call Me"

Development

If you wish to modify the way the application works you can use the following steps to set up a development environment.

  1. Clone the code from the Github repository: https://github.com/turnkey-commerce/status-updater.git

  2. Install Wails as described in the Wails documentation: Wails Installation

  3. Copy the file example.config.toml to config.toml and put in the correct settings for your environment.

  4. Modify the program as desired.

  5. Use the following command to start the iterative development environment:

        wails dev

  6. An application window will pop up and it will automatically update on code changes.

  7. Once you are satisfied with the changes and test that it works then build the application as follows:

        wails build

  8. The executable will be built in the /build/bin subfolder. Be sure and also copy the config.toml to distribute with the executable as they must be in the same directory.