Hack Flow

Host Next Gen Hackathons

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Inspiration

I've been participating in hackathons since 2018, and have won 7 hackathons with over ~$6850 in cash prizes. Three wins in Devpost. I wanted to contribute my learning throughout these years about how hackathons have evolved. The pandemic has given a new shape to how hackathons can be organized, leveraging technology and online tools for communicating and bridging the gap between participating teaming up, and connecting with mentors online. I wanted to solve hackathon challenges organized in big organizations, with 10,000+ employees. I was part of two massive hackathons where we had around 400+ teams and 1000+ employees participating. Since it was within the organization the communication was mostly in emails and long threads, I never wanted to read any of them.

What it does

  • Bridge the gap of effective communication between employees participating
  • Know who is who and what is their role
  • Keep them posted on updates
  • Reduce the need to switch to different applications for submitting your solution

How we built it

  • Power Apps - UI for admin-related activities if the team wants to manage participants
  • Power Automate - to send automated messages on Teams Channel and Outlook
  • Microsoft Teams - have a single source of information and take actions from there
  • Microsoft Sharepoint - Store user's roles and details
  • Azure Functions - custom functions via Python code

Challenges we ran into

  • Still not a clear idea of the APIs available for developers to interact programmatically with Devpost for Teams (at least not publicly available)

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Was able to connect the Sharepoint list to Microsoft Teams
  • Send messages on Teams Channel when we receive an update on Outlook from a specific email address

What we learned

  • API management and authentication
  • Tokens and authorizations
  • Handling users and posts

Why use Hack Flow

  • No extra cost for E5 and above licenses
  • Easy to integrate with Microsoft Office tools
  • Easy to manage and view the big picture
  • High level of customizations for each organization

What's next for Hack Flow

  • Implement the solution at a real hackathon, gather metrics on the performance and impact

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