Power Platform - Rapid Screening App

The more we are into Covid, there it becomes clear, that there won't be a normal 'Back to Work'. Organizations start to realize, that they won't get their workers back to their offices by just demanding a full vaccination once. There will be new variants of this awful virus and (at least that is my opinion) we need to live with ongoing vaccinations - just like the yearly flu shots!

This renders it mandatory for at least some organizations to track the vaccination status of their employees and to provide their staff with an easy-to-use tool to book a vaccination appointment, to manage in-house screening facilities, and to enable employees to manage their screening results. Although this sounds like additional costs and development efforts, there is good news. Microsoft published a Rapid Screening application build on Power Platform to Github and it is free to use. Here is the link to the Github repository (Reference).

Solution Installation

The Rapid Screening app can be easily deployed to a Dataverse-enable Power Platform environment if you follow the detailed description. The solution comes with a fundamental configuration that can be applied after the solution has been imported. Although this configuration focuses on Canada, it can easily be adjusted to other countries. The documentation describes how this adjustment can be achieved. If the environment has been already set up, importing the solution and applying the fundamental configuration takes around 2-3 hrs.

Solution Structure

The solution comes with a bunch of Power Automate workflows, which are mainly used under the hood. Three apps provide the "user interface":

• Rapid Screening Booking app: this app is used by employees to book a screening at a facility (which can be configured), manage home screening, and assist with any follow-up actions.
• Health Safety Office Screening app: this app is used by a Health Officer working at a screening facility. This app is used to sign-in employees, perform the screening, and to provide the results
• Facility Safety Management: this app is used to configure the entire solution. Mainly, the app supports creating and configuring in-house screening facilities and creating appointments

Rapid Screening Booking App

If an employee wants to perform a screening, the employee just needs to select a facility (e.g., a dedicated room within the building configured to perform Covid screening) and a time slot. That's all that is required to book a screening appointment. The user receives a QR code, which is used during the log-in process. The QR code ensures a decent level of anonymity. This is how the appointment confirmation (incl. QR code and booking code) looks like:

The following screenshot provides an overview regarding the entire screening process:

Health Safety Office Screening app

This app is used to manage the screening process. The employee shows up at the screening facility and the Health Safety Officer scans the QR code which is presented by the employee. That's all that is required to sign in an employee. Now the screening takes place and once there is a result, the HSO uses the same app to provide the result. The employee receives an email confirmation regarding the result and if the result has been positive, the email also includes a detailed description of the next steps (which is configurable). The screening itself and the hand-over of the results can be configured to provide a decent level of anonymity.

Facility Safety Management

I wouldn't call this a classic PowerApps app, but this app is used to work on the configuration. This app allows creating screening facilities with individual opening hours and occupancies, individual email templates, and a lot of additional configuration (like guest access). This app is quite powerful and allows for a lot of customization. However, as this app also allows access to the underlying databases, access to this app must be highly restricted to ensure a decent level of privacy.

Power BI component

This solution also comes with a Power BI component that can be used to create reports regarding the screening, screening frequency and results. Again, the collected data is not entirely anonymized, so there is a chance to correlate results with individual employees.

Summary

The functional range of this solution is great and much more than you can expect from a free solution. Installation isn't rocket science (although I advise getting this installed by a Power Platform expert) and the usage of the solution is easy. It is customizable as long as you stay within the functional range. If your organization is looking for an app that can be used to manage in-house screening and enable employees to book in-house screening appointments, I highly recommend checking out this app. On the other hand: the solution is not perfect, but that was never the intention. It greatly shows, how a rapid screening app for organizations can be created with Power Platform. If the app meets your requirements and expectations, it is definitely worth a try. If you discover after an evaluation, that the solution only meets a fraction of your requirements, you should keep in mind that this solution can be adjusted, enhanced or upgraded, but that won't be easy and requires expert skills in PowerApps and Power Automate. Also, the provided documentation provides great support during importing and configuring the solution. Unfortunately, it is not entirely up-to-date and I recommend going slow and verifying each step of the import process.

In a nutshell: if you are looking for an app that supports your organization with rapid screening for employees, spent some time to import the solution, apply a fundamental configuration and check the process and the functional scope.