Embedded Files
Shuqri's
The First Week
The First Week
The first week was actually interesting. I initially wanted to go for OCBC's Challenge Statement and join my friends team. However, little did I know that we were supposed to be "kiasu" and had to be there early to 'book the seats'. At the end, I was late and had to find a random classroom to participate in the PFD module, so this is how I entered for Workato's Challenge Statement.
Once settled in the class, we had to decide what we wanted to do for our challenge and put in ideas into a Padlet that our lecturer, Mr Chee, had created. We selected based on the best ideas, and those people became the group leaders for the team. That's how I became one too.
We then had to choose our team members based on their skills and abilities, which is how I had Harshini, Jing Xi, Aloysius, and Haneef into my team!
Getting along with the team. Understanding stakeholders.
Getting along with the team. Understanding stakeholders.
In Week 2, our team had to think and finalise our idea for the challenge. Mr Chee had set up a call with Mr Steven Hoon, Business Technology Manager at Workato, to discuss further on what we can do for our challenge. He introduced us to Workato's system and workflow, which is using JAMF to manage their employees' MacBooks, Slack for internal communications, Snowflake for their database, and many other software for their whole operations. He also further explained on the challenge statement, and briefly run us through on why there is a need for compliance, where applications need to be updated to their latest version, deprovisioning applications where employees have not been using them, and etc.
With all that new information, we had to get it started. We were still new to each other and had a little friction when discussing on the project. We took quite a while for us to reach to the consensus and ended up focusing more towards ensuring user compliance when using their systems.
Ideating and Creating the Solution
Ideating and Creating the Solution
Since we were still early into the actual hackathon period in Week 5 (this was still in Week 3 & 4), we just created a rough idea of what we want for the project. We created a workflow for the Workato recipes.
We then decided on the applications to use, which was Snowflake and Slack (what Workato uses), and JumpCloud (an alternative to JAMF).
Presenting our idea to Workato
Presenting our idea to Workato
We created some low-fidelity prototypes for Mr Steven, and explained on how our solution works. He gave us feedback on how to refocus and refine our idea into a better overall solution.
With all the ideas we had, we refined our ideas before the hackathon week, ensuring that these ideas were a good fit to be completed through the 3 days.
Hackathon
Hackathon
In this Hackathon week, we spent 3 days turning all our drawings into Workato recipes. There were many setbacks, where there were problems integrating with the Jumpcloud API and the Snowflake database, however we managed to overcome them by customizing to our needs.
We presented our idea with heavily focusing on the workflow and how it's unique, and also how it uses all the software that Workato has already have, which would mean that they wouldn't need to spend any money on.
In the end, we had second place, but our spirits were still high as we knew that we did a great job with a good solution.
Re-igniting the flame! (with hurdles along the way)
Re-igniting the flame! (with hurdles along the way)
After taking a long break as it was our assignment and common test period, we were finally back to the board to think of new ideas either to expand the solution or make a new idea. We then decided on both, where we continue working on the deprovisioning of the application and software, and also creating an announcement bot.
Not long before we encountered another hurdle, where all of our Snowflake data disappeared as our trial had expired. There was no way for us to retrieve the lost information and we had to start from scratch.
Again with another hurdle where I tested positive for COVID-19 (finally after 3 years) where I felt really sick and couldn't help much with the team.
But after all the hassle, we geared up and moved fast so as to catch up with the other teams.
We managed to reconnect to a new Snowflake database instance and completed both ideas.
Adding a new announcement on Slack.
Finally at the finish line.
Finally at the finish line.
With our solution complete, we presented this idea to our lecturer Mr Chee. I had Jing Xi and Harshini to present the slides for this round as I believed they were the MVPs for this sprint.
I would say at the end that we were really proud of our work, and I was really proud of my team for crossing the finish line. The long hours spent working on this project was definitely worth it, as I really learnt a lot of new ways of integrating systems and applications together. You could definitely say that we were consultants here. Maybe that could be my dream job in the end?
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse