This month, in the lead up to Salesforce’s Dreamforce event here in San Francisco, we held our first annual Kintone Drag-and-Drop-athon, the no-coding required Hackathon. We are thrilled to announce the winner of the competition!
We were delighted with all the amazing, creative and practical submissions that focused on making teamwork better via standalone applications and application suites that touched on operations management, project management, client management, sales leads management, etc.
We judged the Kintone application submissions on the following characteristics:
- Does it improve teamwork?
- Does it improve productivity?
- Does it use Kintone’s features optimally?
- Is it designed to be adopted easily?
- How practical is it?
- How creative is it?
- Bonus: Does it use Kintone’s advanced featured such as plug-ins and APIs.
WINNER: Michael Callahan
Application Suite: “Auto-pilot”
He described his creation like this:
“Put your sales process on autopilot. Related records allows easy sharing of data across multiple apps. Integration with Box allows easy access to client data. Integration with Zendesk gives users the best tools for customer follow up. Track time to easily tell if over/under budget.”
His suite included:
- CRM / Sales leads – based on the Sales leads data provided to all contestants
- Client database (once leads become clients)
- Link Database for shortcuts to frequently used websites
- Checklist so staff know exactly what needs to be done
- Task list to easily budget for recurring tasks
- AutoPilot, main app for project management
According to our judges, Michael’s submission hit the mark on almost all fronts:
Does it improve teamwork?
Yes, it keeps people on the same track, providing full transparency and understanding of the various tasks that each other need to do and where everyone is in the process.
Does it improve productivity?
Yes,
- Automated workflow settings help move the tasks back and forth from Staff to Manager
- Action buttons help quickly place data into new records.
- Frequent use of Lookups and Related records reduces the time needed for users to keep looking back through their work now and again.
Does it use Kintone's features in an optimal way? (Automated Workflow, Collaboration, Drag-and-Drop Application building)?
Yes,
- He deployed numerous smart charts and graphs, as well as different custom views
- Used Action buttons to quickly create new records
- Deployed Lookups and Related records for greater efficiency
- Built Tables for collating data effectively
Is it designed to be easily adopted?
Being an app suite, there's more to learn than if it were a single application. But most of the apps lead to the main project management app called “Autopilot” that most end users would regularly interact with, so outside of a couple admins who would be inputting data and taking actions within all the Apps, it could be picked up relatively quickly. All in all, not the easiest adoption but considering the complexity and power of the suite, good.
How practical is its application?
The automated workflow keeps the stage of the client clear to the Staff and Managers, while the Manager can also easily keep track of the time used for each client.
Could have governed the access to data more effectively using Permission settings better and could have deployed trigger Notifications to be even more practical, but made a very good start.
How creative/unique is it?
He uniquely used the Action button feature to create a record in the “links” database, which he then used the Related Records feature to pull the links back up. It is a very useful way of collecting and storing reference links for clients that may build up over time in one central place.
Bonus: Does it use advanced features such as API, Plugins, etc.?
Michael customized Kintone using both our JavaScript API and REST API, as well deploying two of Kintone’s plug-ins: Box and Zendesk.
So, as you can tell the winning submission was very comprehensive, and well worth the grand prize trip to Tokyo.
Michael is the owner of the CPA firm Michael Callahan and Associates, providing accounting, bookkeeping, payroll, individual and business tax planning and preparation and paperless solutions www.mcaaccounting.com The firm is 100% paperless and with the help of Kintone Michael has been able to grow the practice from 75 clients in 2013 to currently almost 300 clients with almost zero client turnover.
Michael will join our management team and thousands of Kintone users, partners and fans at our annual Cybozu.com conference on November 6th in beautiful Tokyo, Japan. Interested in attending? Check out the official conference website at https://cybozuconf.com/.
HONORABLE MENTION: Rosie F.
Application Suite: Project Management Basics and Collaboration Tools Suite
We chatted with Rosie, an IT project manager currently working for a well-known cloud software company in San Francisco, and asked her about her application suite.
Combining Kintone's seamless collaboration platform with workflow automation, Rosie created applications that get project team members on the same page. Rosie's suite eliminates the need to update project statuses via email, while centralizing project data on the cloud instead of in loose spreadsheets. Team members are automatically notified of changes in the project and they can communicate with one another right inside the record. While project management can often feel like herding cats, Rosie's application suite gives PMs a foundation for keeping everyone informed and active.
On top of the Project Management Basics, Rosie put together several small apps in a Collaboration Tools Suite. These applications are fun, easy to use, and enable communication across departments.
The "Coffee Buddy" application is a great way to schedule 1:1 meetings with co-workers or managers, checking for availability and arranging a meeting location. As Kintone allows mentions and comments directly inside the record, team members can chat alongside meeting information rather than bouncing back and forth between messaging and calendaring.
As Rosie's application suite creatively and adeptly uses Kintone to solve common issues faced by project managers and teams, we wanted to make sure that her applications received a shout out from the Kintone team!
HONORABLE MENTION: Suman G.
Application Suite: Software Quality Assurance Test Scripts App
We caught up with Suman G., an intern at Wellington Investment in the Boston area, and asked him about his application suite. Using Kintone, Suman created apps to take Quality Assurance Testing out of Excel spreadsheets and onto the cloud.
With Kintone's easy-to-use workflow automation tool, Suman created a process flow by which quality assurance testing can be performed. If the test case passes, it can be moved on to the next stage while also notifying the appropriate employees responsible for testing at that stage.
This application makes use of automation, customization, centralized record-keeping, and collaboration. As such, we wanted to make sure that it receives a shout out as well.
Thank you again to all those that participated in the Drag-and-Drop-athon. If you or someone you know might be interested in participating in future events like the Drag-and-Drop-athon, let us know! We're always looking for feedback.
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