I built a full system for our meditation center (a Buddhist temple in New Zealand) as a charity project in my spare time.
The need was simple.
Each month, devotees offer food for resident monks. Many devotees have a specific day in the month. It is a repeating appointment, and in busy life it is easy to forget.
From the temple side, managing this in a manual book was hard.
Plans change. People swap dates. Some devotees cannot come because of travel or personal reasons. The number of resident monks also changes from time to time.
So we built a small, practical system.
What we used
- A protected Google Sheet as the main yearly calendar
- Admins can assign, unassign, update, or remove devotees for each day
- If monk count changes, admins add that number as a comment in the cell
That handles the temple-side management.
Reminder flow
I also built a scheduled service on Azure.
It reads the protected sheet and sends both:
- Email reminders
- SMS reminders
Each devotee gets reminders 7 days before and 3 days before their date.
Why it helped
- Fewer missed or no-show days
- Admins can spot gaps early and arrange support
- If no food is assigned for a day, trust members are notified automatically
- Teams spend less time chasing updates manually
The solution is quick and simple, but it made everyone happy.
The process now runs smoothly.
This was not a commercial build. It was a community-focused project I am genuinely glad I could do.