Project Scheduling Automation
This project was designed to replace an internal application that tracks estimating, planning, scheduling, and execution of projects at all client sites for the organization.
Challenge
The organization required an application that could be accessed by both internal staff and external installers who had a corporate account. The purpose of this application was to allow external project estimators to enter the required information for creating a cost estimate. Once the cost estimate was approved by the client, it was scheduled by the scheduling team. The installer team then used the application to retrieve the job details and inform the business that the job had been completed. After completion, a follow-up was performed to ensure customer satisfaction and job quality.
Technology Utilized
Power Application
The canvas application was designed for both mobile and desktop use and served as the interface for all users in the organization.
M365
SharePoint lists and libraries are used to store and house content for this process. As well as utilized Exchange to send and receive emails.
Power Flows
All flows were written based on specific functions needed by the application. Whether it was the main process that ran the application or sending out notifications to external users.
Strategy
This was a rather simple process to implement however the requirement from the customer that they wanted no premium licensing costs, or any custom development made this rather difficult based on their complicated UI requirements. We managed this all with a central SharePoint List that had archive ability to write off data that was outside of scope of the active projects. We utilized a power application with a monthly calendar view that showed 3 weeks at once. Since the out of the box features were rather rigid with a calendar type view in power apps, we made this all work with a gallery for each day of the week. We ended up creating one application for the internal users and one for the external users to ensure it worked on a mobile device without losing too much functionality in the UI.
Result
In the last 6 months that this project has been utilized it has had 0 errors and helped the customer perform over 100 jobs from start to finish with no additional licensing costs. It has been estimated by the customer that it has saved them over 50k in licensing costs and an untold amount in a working efficient process for the organization.