Microsoft Power Platform® Community
App Challenge with USD $12,000 Prizes!
We all know that given a set of business requirements, there are a wide variety of ways to implement them in the amazing Microsoft Power Platform®.
But which is the optimum way?
The Goal
The objective of this Challenge is to find the best design-patterns and the most appropriate set of components to be used when creating enterprise-class solutions. The idea is to step outside the Personal Productivity realm of Power Platform® and work more in the Production-Ready Business Apps realm, where things "have to work" and are not just demo-quality.
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The solution should manage a particular business function, and not just be a fancy CRUD app that leaves the responsibility of the management of the business function to the Users.
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The winning solution will be published for the benefit of the Power Platform® community.
We have selected a business function that everyone can relate to, with requirements that are easily understandable.
For the Challenge, the requirements have been simplified on-purpose; hence the applicability of the app is not important here. What is important, are the concepts it embodies, which are encountered in many real-life Business App Requirements.
The Challenge:
Build a "Travel Request Approval" App
Triple-Stage Challenge with Three Evolving Requirements
Just like real-life, the full extent of the business requirements are never all known upfront.
So, the requirements will be published in three Stages.
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Stage 1 are some simple requirements which are described here.
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Stage 2 will add some implicit requirements. That is, requirements that business users take for granted and according to them, they should have been “obvious”.
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The final Stage 3 will add some logical Change Requests, which typically appear once the business users have used the solution and identify how it could be improved.
The Judges
To keep things squeaky clean and transparent, there will be a panel 7 judges. Six distinguished independent professionals from the Power Platform® community plus one person from the AgileXRM team will constitute the panel (in alphabetical order):
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Ashish Rana (Canada)
Daniel Quijada (Spain) – AgileXRM
EY Kalman (UK)
Mar Llambí (Spain)
Marco Amoedo (Spain)
Rami Mounla (New Zealand)
Scott Durow (Canada)
The Prizes
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We expect all participants to have LOTS OF FUN and enjoy the whole Challenge process as well as the results!
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The Winner will receive a prize of USD $5,000 and a further $5,000 will be donated to their chosen charity. And Winner will also receive FREE perpetual AgileXRM Licenses for 500 Users.
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The Runner Up will receive a prize of USD $1,000 and a further $1,000 will be donated to their chosen charity. And will also receive FREE perpetual AgileXRM Licenses for 200 Users.
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Anyone who reaches Stage 3 receives FREE perpetual AgileXRM Licenses for 100 Users.
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Anyone who reaches Stage 2 receives FREE perpetual AgileXRM Licenses for 50 Users.
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[ The winning details will be published in our social media ]
Scoring Criteria
This Challenge is about finding the best solutions with these criteria in mind (maximum of 100 points):
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Requirements Coverage – 35 points – Minimum pass score 30 points
The most important criterion is that the solution should do what is required of it by the business.
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Low-Code & Low-Complexity – 10 Points
Though the use of some code is fine, the solution should be as Low-Code as possible. That’s what the Power Platform® is all about in the first place. And Low-Complexity means 40 lines of C# code are better than a 1,000 step Flow.
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Resilient – 10 Points
​Business users need Apps that do not break easily and are reliable. And when something does go wrong, the user should not suffer great loss.
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Maintainable and Extensible – 10 Points
Business Requirements evolve, so the solution should be able to evolve as well. It should not require the original author for its future enhancements. The idea is that a knowledgeable Citizen Developer from Business should be able to take over the maintenance of the solution. The whole solution should not need to be re-written when some new requirement arrives.
This Challenge very much tests this criterion.
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User Adoption – 10 Points
The solution should bring Business and IT closer together and not alienate Business with unneeded complexity. App should not ask users to jump through hoops to get things done. No matter how functionally-complete the solution is, if it is not easy to use and Users don’t adopt it, then the solution is no good. So UX is utmost.
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Replicable and Scalable – 10 Points
Businesses have hundreds of functions and need as many Apps. This solution’s design should be copy-able to take Business towards their Digital Transformation goal for the entire organization. If say another 100 Apps were made the same way, the experience of the Users should be homogeneous and they should not have to learn how to use each of those Apps. Many Apps share common sources of data and all Apps should behave well together.
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Low-Cost – 10 Points
The cost calculation should be the Total-Cost-of-Ownership, not just Licensing and Developer time, but also maintainability and change management cost. Also take into account costs of ProDevs if they are needed alongside the cost of the Citizen Developer.
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“Like factor” – 5 Points
This last scoring criterion for the judges is a subjective one. But we all know that the Like factor also plays a role in real-life.
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The Top 10 Stage 1 entries will pass through to Stage 2 with a minimum score of 60 Points.
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The Top 5 Stage 2 entries will pass through to Stage 3 with a minimum score of 70 Points.
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Stage 3 Runner Up should achieve a minimum score of 80 Points.
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Stage 3 Winner should achieve a minimum score of 90 Points.
The Evaluation Rules
The Timeline!
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The Challenge starts on July 18th and you can start Stage 1 as soon as you Register
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Stage 1 Submission open 1 week later and entries should arrive before end of 16-Sep-2022. At this point, no further registrations
are allowed.
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Stage 1 Evaluation by Judges takes 2 weeks, and those who pass are notified (on 3-Oct-2022).
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Stage 2 Requirements published as well at this time.
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Stage 2 Submission open 1 week later and entries should arrive before end of 21-Oct-2022 (you have around 3 weeks).
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Stage 2 Evaluation by Judges takes 2 weeks, and those who pass are notified (on 7-Nov-2022).
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Stage 3 Requirements published as well at this time.
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Stage 3 Submission opens 1 week later and entries should arrive before end of 9-Dec-2022 (you have around 5 weeks).
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Stage 3 Final Evaluation by Judges takes 2 weeks, and the Winner and the Runner Up, the winning solution and the decision criteria are all published on 21-Dec-2022.
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Who Can Participate?
Anyone can take up the Challenge. The Registration is individual.
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Exclusions to participate apply to:
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AgileXRM Employees and their relatives
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AgileXRM Partners’ Employees and their relatives
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The Judges and their co-workers; and their relatives
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Microsoft Employees and their relatives
Any of the Power Platform® products and components can be used to create the solution. If needed, any Office® Services, Azure® Services plus any third-party tools made for Power Platform® can also be used.
What Components can be used?
Register to Participate
If you would like to take up this Challenge, then please proceed with the Registration
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