Manage rounds of coffee roulette
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Colette: Coffee Roulette — pair with a random person for coffee
Colette is a command-line tool for organising pairings withing an organisation or community.
Aimed at organisations that want to encourage cross-team collaboration, or communities that want to encourage networking, it can be used to organise coffee roulettes, mentoring, or any other pairings.
It is designed to be simple to use, and to minimise the number of times people are paired with the same person as more rounds are run and can automatically send templated email to participants via Outlook, Mail.app or SMTP.
The algorithm can avoids pairing players from the same organisation or group, and it also has the concept or roles withing the pair. For example if you would like one participant to organise the meet-up, and the other to buy the coffee. One can also specify pairs that should be avoided, or that should be prioritized. These functions are optional.
Colette is written in Python, and is available on PyPI.
Installation
Colette requires Python 3.10+, and some familiarity with the command line.
Python can be obtained from official Python distribution, or Anaconda but be aware of the non-free licensing of the latter. You will need to add python to your PATH.
To install the package run the following code in the command line
pip install colette
Check the installation by running the following command:
colette --help
This should print the help message.
Getting started
Once installed, you will need to create a working directory for your coffee roulette.
The directory should contain the following files:
| File/Directory | Description |
|---|---|
people.csv |
List of participants, in format described in the next section |
round_*.toml |
Configuration files for each round. Generated by Colette to specify preferences like player exclusions and overrides. |
solution_*.csv |
Pairings generated by Colette. Alternatively, manually created if importing an existing program. |
templates/ |
Directory containing email templates |
templates/subject.txt |
File containing the subject line of the email |
templates/body.html |
File containing the body of the email (can be plain text or HTML) |
email.ini (optional) |
Configuration file for sending emails using SMTP. If absent, Colette uses the default mail client on your computer. |
People.csv
You will need a people.csv comma separated value file with the following header
name,organisation,email,active
You can create one with your favourite spreadsheet, or text editor. Each participating (or previously participating) player should be listed on an individual row with the following comma separated values:
-
name— the name of the player and is the only field that must non-empty -
organisation— whatever grouping sense for your programme. Colette will try to avoid pairing people from the same "organisation" value. This can be left blank if you don't want to use this functionality. -
email— populated with the email address of each player if you want to use the email functionality. -
active— Used mark players as no longer participating in the roulette. Note you can also use round configuration files to temporarily remove players from a round. (Discussed below.) Must have one of the following values:1,trueor empty == active,0orfalse== inactive.
Other columns in the CSV are ignored, and can have any format.
Templates
If you want to use the email functionality, you will need to create
templates for the email subject and body. These are plain text files, use
the Jinja2 templating language, and are stored in the templates directory.
For example, the subject.txt file could look like this:
Coffee Roulette ({{ round_config.date.strftime('%b-%Y') }})
Which will print the month and year of the round in the subject line. Eg. "Coffee Roulette (Jan-2021)"
In the body.html, you can either use plain text, or HTML, for example
<html>
<head></head>
<body>
Hi {{primary.name.split()[0]}} and {{secondary.name.split()[0]}},
<p>
The most advanced AI south of Campbell Town has been thinking long and
hard, and it has decided that it would be optimal for you two to have a
coffee this month.
<p>
Feel free to reschedule the time as it suits you! (It's not that clever.)
<div>
Cheers, <br>
The Coffee Robot <br>
</div>
</body>
</html>
The primary and secondary variables are populated people from the
people.csv file. If you wish to assign particular meaning or roles to the
primary and secondary designations, you can do so here.
Note Colette will try to swap the primary and secondary roles for a player
in each round, so that each player has a turn at being the "organiser" and the
"buyer".
email.ini
If using SMTP email, you will need to create an email.ini file.
If you want to use Outlook or Mail.app, you remove this file.
This needs the following format:
[email]
from = Joe Bloggs <email.name@emailprovider.com>
server = smtp.emailprovider.com
port = 587
ssl = true
username = email.name@emailprovider.com
password = thepasswordfortheaccount
Round configuration files (round_*.toml) (generated)
Colette will generate a round_*.toml file for each round.
At a minimum, this file will need to contain the round number and a nominal date
for the round — with Colette will used to determine the availabiliy for participants. For example:
number = 28
date = 2023-11-06
These files can be also be used to specify players that are temporarily removed
from the round, overrides, and other preferences. If you want to
temporarily remove a player from the round, you can add a [[remove]] block to
the file, with the name of the player and the date or round number they should
be removed until.
For example:
## By round number:
[[remove]]
name = "Mary Poppins"
until = 29
# Mary is on holiday until next round
## Or by date:
[[remove]]
name = "Joe Bloggs"
until = 2044-01-01
# Joe is in jail for the next 20 years
You can also add overrides to the round configuration file. For example, if you
want to avoid pairing two people, you can add a [[override]] block to the
file, with the pair of players and a weight to add to the cost of pairing
For example:
[[override]]
pair = ["Mary Poppins", "Joe Bloggs"]
weight = 1000000
# Mary and Joe are mortal enemies
# Joe made Mary's umbrella fly away
# Mary made Joe's coffee fly away
# They should never be paired
The weight is added to the cost of pairing the two players. So if you want to
prioritise pairing two people, you can add a negative weight. For example:
[[override]]
pair = ["Joe Bloggs", "Jane Doe"]
weight = -1000000
# Joe and Jane are in love
# They should always be paired
You can also add a [[override]] block to the file, with the name of the
player and a role to assign them. For example:
Solution files (solution_*.csv)
Colette will generate a solution_*.csv file for each round. This file will
contain the pairings for the round. It will have the following header:
primary,secondary,caveat
Where primary and secondary are the names of the players, and caveats is
a semi-colon separated list of warnings about the pairing. For example:
primary,secondary,caveat
Joe Bloggs,Mary Poppins,paired before
Jane Doe,Thomas Tank,paired before;same organisation
If you want to import an existing solution, you can create a solution_*.csv
file manually. The only requirement is that the header is present, and the
primary and secondary columns are populated with the names of the players.
The ordering of primary and secondary are not important if you don't want to
assign roles in the pairings.
Running the roulette
Once you have the files, your ready to create a round. In the command line,
colette new
[!NOTE]
You may need to add the path pip installed colette too to your PATH environment variable.
Alternatively you can run colette as
python -m colette
This will generate a new round configuration file. Make any changes you want to the file (see above), and then make a pairing by running:
colette pair
Inspect the solution_*.csv file to make sure you are happy with the pairings.
If you want to make changes, you can edit the round_*.toml file and re-run
by deleting the solution_*.csv file and re-running colette pair.
Once you are happy with the pairings, you can send the emails by running:
colette email
By default, this will preview the emails in your default mail client. If you
want to send the emails, you can add the --no-preview flag:
colette email --no-preview
Happy rouletting! Any problems with program itself, file an issue on the Colette Github project.
Tips
Start a round_*.toml early
It can be useful to start a round_*.toml file early, and use it to keep track
of people who are going to be away.
As people let you know they are going to be away, add them to the remove
section. This can make things easier when you come to generate the round.
Handling odd numbers
If you have an odd number of people, Colette will have to remove someone from the round.
This is flagged by marking them as pairing with themselves. If you would
like to prioritise who is removed, for example you the organiser, you can add an
override to the round configuration file (in round_n.toml). Something like:
[override]
pair = ["organiser", "organiser"]
weight = -900
Overrides are additive and the default weight for removing a player is 1000. So the net weight for removing the organiser will be 100.
Importing existing programmes
If you have an existing solution, you can import it by creating
solution_*.csv files in the data directory (eg.
coffee_roulette/solution_000001.csv,
coffee_roulette/solution_000002.csv ...
). The only requirement is that the
header is present, and the primary and secondary columns are populated with
the names of the players.
Upgrading from v0.1.x
If you are upgrading from v0.1.x, you will need to change your templates. The
subject.txt and body.html files should now be in the templates directory,
instead of the old organiser.template, buyer.template and
excluded.template files.
You will also need to update your old solution files. The organiser and
buyer names are now primary and secondary in the solution files. You will
need to change your templates to reflect this. You can do so with the following
sed command (backup first!)
sed -i 's/organiser/primary/g' solution_*.csv
sed -i 's/buyer/secondary/g' solution_*.csv
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