Demonstration of a Bespoke Application Management System with Portal Access - Microsoft | Power Apps
Introduction
With the ever-changing landscape either due to Covid 19 or other legislative measures, businesses require to adjust their digital abilities with agility. The Proof of Concept demonstrates how easily and quickly someone can create and maintain an Application Management System in a Dynamics 365 environment (D365). This article does not cover the configurable aspects of creating a "Model Driven Application "and the "Portal". However, they are quick and easy to be developed and deployed.
One important thing to note, is that this solution is entirely "Out of The Box", a term that essentially means that no coding skills (Citizen Developer Skills) are required. So, if you don't have any coding experience, you will still be able to create and maintain a viable solution for your business. Furthermore, a great Application Development Lifecycle demands to quickly roll out important features into production and D365 Customer Engagement (D365 CE) facilitates that.
If there are a list of backlog items in your business, it would require buy in from the business stakeholders and accordingly prioritize them and seek approval from the Application or Product Owner to deliver them in sprints. A great way to prioritize features is by putting on the lens that shows you, what is a "Nice to Have " feature as opposed to a "Must Have". A must have feature holds a higher priority and must be rolled out as quickly as possible to create business value. The speed at which a product enhancement is rolled out to production is directly proportional to business success. If a roll out feature is not received well by customers, businesses can effective immediately take that feedback into account and revoke the feature or quickly change them to a desirable state. This feedback loop mechanism is an ongoing process.
This article attempts to demonstrate the endless possibilities D365 CE products can offer irrespective of the industry, a business operates in. There are several complexities at different levels that can be introduced to cater for a bespoke solution. My aim (through this article) is to introduce businesses to the potential a D365 CE solution can bring for them.
In this article, I have endeavored to define a simple business problem statement (Business Case) and demonstrated the Proof of Concept (Solution Walkthrough), I have built in my demo environment. This could potentially lead you to identifying the gaps in your business and start solving them.
Business Case - Problem Definition
A University requires to build a candidate application recording capability with bespoke screening questions and business logic flows that allows the Admissions Application Manager to approve or reject applications. A Candidate must also be able to create several applications and delete them where necessary via an externally facing portal.
High Level Solution Architecture
Below is a diagrammatic representation of the solution with regards to the business case described above. This is a simple solution design to show the endless possibilities you can have in your organization and to start having those significant digital transformation discussions.
Solution Walk Through
Demonstration from an "Application Officer's" perspective (Model Driven Application)
2. The Application Officer creates a new application record with "General" information.
3. In the same application record, the application user now adds "Mentor "related information.
4. Continuing from step 3, the Application Officer adds "Alumni" related information. Once the record is "Saved & Closed", the application is successfully created, and the list of applications created from before can be seen along with the new one.
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Demonstration from an Applicant's perspective (Portal)
2. Once Desmond has provided a username and password for login, he will use that to sign into the portal as an Authenticated User.
3. As we have previously used the Application Officer's login to create an application (1033) for Desmond Jackson using the model driven application, the same (Application Number - 1033) will also be visible for Desmond Jackson when he logins via the portal.
4. As the Desmond's application has been worked on (in-Progress) and everything looks good to approve it, the application status is changed by the Application Officer in the model driven app. The status change to "Approved" reflects in the portal for the candidate as well. This is for the candidate to be made aware from portal that his application is now approved.
5. As an authenticated portal user, the applicant can choose to enter a new application via a portal. There are two ways of doing so. Go to Applications Tab and click New Application Form or Click on Create New for an easier access to the same form.
6. There are 2 business conditions included for an applicant while filling up the form. They are A. When entering the Mentor details, an attachment must (Red Asterix) be included else, it will prompt an error message. B. When applicant does not have a parent who is an alumnus, then they don't need to enter Alumni related information. The form would directly be submitted and the same can be seen in the model driven app interface.
7. Verify the application we created in the last step is reflected appropriately in model driven app interface. Also, note the attachment related to Mentor is visible under the Timeline section for1036 application.
8. An applicant might decide to delete the application they have just created, and it will reflect the same in model driven app interface.
Conclusion
In summary, the solution walkthrough hopefully demonstrates the endless possibilities and outcomes for your business. This article can be used as a starting point for identifying the business gaps and how a similar solution can be tweaked more or less to cater to a more personalized business problem.
For a complex custom business design, you could add "Approval Workflows" for all the applications recorded to make a well-informed decision to approve or reject them. This could be possible by adding conditional flows in the approval workflow (Power Automate). Additionally, you could integrate Power Automate to send application specific information (email) to the candidate when they are created, approved or rejected. You could also think about Power Virtual Agents to create a chatbot on your portal that answers most frequently asked questions and also provides the ability to speak to a real service agent (human).
The possibilities are truly endless to make your business as efficient as possible. This is my first attempt in creating an article that helps businesses in agile product development and also in engaging better with their customers. If you have any feedback, comments or would like to know more, please contact me on Linkedin.