EP 107: Interviews from Acumatica Hackathon 2023 (Podcast)

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Mark Franks
Location: Bellevue, Washington

About the Acumatica Hackathon

This episode discusses the Acumatica Hackathon, an annual event that brings developers and non-developers together in teams to extend the functionality of the Acumatica Cloud xRP platform by creating innovative and dynamic applications. The Hackathon takes place just before the Acumatica Summit and has participants working on their solutions over the weekend, with the presentations and judging occurring on Sunday.

Judging Criteria

The solutions developed during the Hackathon are evaluated based on the following criteria:

1. Creativity

2. Completeness

3. Technical Difficulty

4. Usefulness

5. Presentation Quality

Event Format

Participants are divided into teams formed months before the event.

Each team is assisted by a Subject Matter Expert (SME) to guide them during the development process.

The teams work on their solutions from Saturday before the Hackathon until noon on Sunday.
On Sunday, the teams present their solutions to a panel of judges, who evaluate them based on the criteria mentioned above.

Attendees, both participating and non-participating, are allowed to vote in real time for their favorite solutions.

The judges’ evaluations and the attendees’ votes are combined to determine the top three teams.

The top 3 teams are announced and recognized during the event.

Benefits of the Hackathon

Participants have the chance to learn from each other, collaborate, and build relationships within the developer community.

The Hackathon promotes creative problem-solving and innovation in extending the Acumatica platform.

Winners receive prizes, bragging rights, and their names inscribed on the Acumatica Developer Network Hackathon Cup. They are also recognized during the Acumatica Summit Keynote.

The 3 winning teams have the opportunity to showcase their solutions during the Developer Track.

The event provides a space for developers to network, connect, and ask for help from their peers, leading to increased efficiency and collaboration.

Next, representatives from some of the Hackathon teams are interviewed to get firsthand information on the innovative solutions being developed.

Team Alpha – Surveys to Validate and Incentivize Continuous Training Programs (14:11)

Team Alpha GitHub Project (click here)

The Acumatica Rewards project is aimed at addressing the challenge of employee engagement, ensuring that employees not only complete their training but are also able to demonstrate a solid understanding of the material.

The app displays a quiz or questionnaire using Acumatica Survey, an open-source Acumatica add-on. Employees are presented with questions related to their training, and successful completion of the quiz earns them reward points. The difficulty of the quiz determines the number of points earned. Accumulated reward points can be redeemed for various incentives, such as breakfast items or even extra vacation days. This incentivization approach is designed to encourage employees to willingly engage in training activities and assessments.

Since employees are already familiar with Acumatica and frequently use it for other tasks, integrating the rewards system within the same platform enhances user convenience and interaction. This not only increases the chances of participation but also aligns the rewards initiative with the employees’ daily workflow.

Team Beta – AI Analysis of Email Communications that Trigger Acumatica System Responses (16:34)

Team Beta GitHub Project (click here)

“B2Bot” aims to integrate AI technology into the Acumatica system to automate and enhance email interactions. The project utilizes Microsoft Cognitive Services and ChatGPT to analyze incoming email content and trigger actions within Acumatica based on the email’s intent.

For example, it could interpret vendor-related emails, such as purchase order status updates, delivery estimates, and backorder notifications, and then take the appropriate action in Acumatica, reducing the need for manual intervention. The app will eventually be able to explore sentiment analysis to evaluate email tone and gauge interactions’ positivity or negativity, helping users identify, for example, employees who consistently elicit positive or negative reactions from customers.

Team Delta – Expanding Global Search to Document Contents (23:32)

Team Delta GitHub Project (click here)

This project enhances content management and search capabilities within Acumatica, improving document organization and search efficiency. It extracts information from uploaded documents and associates it with relevant records based on criteria. Users can search not only for filenames but also for information within the documents themselves, such as contracts or other content. Additionally, the team is working on creating generic inquiries that allow users to associate documents with specific projects without needing to navigate to separate modules, simplifying the process of accessing relevant documentation and making document retrieval and management more intuitive and efficient.

Team Epsilon – Project Publishing History for Consultants (26:25)

Team Epsilon GitHub Project (click here)

Consultants often encounter the challenge of not knowing who published or unpublished customizations within the system, leading to potential confusion and lack of accountability. The app creates a history log that captures these details, including the user responsible and the content affected.

The team also aims to implement email notifications for publishing events and even explore mobile notifications via SMS. Additionally, there is the possibility of capturing the state of content at the time of publishing or unpublishing, even if it’s later deleted from the system. By offering a clear audit trail of publishing events, consultants and users will be better equipped to manage and understand the evolution of content within the platform.

Team Zeta – VAR Client Monitoring Dashboard (28:30)

Team Zeta GitHub Project (click here)

VARs will enjoy an Acumatica dashboard tailored just for them to provide a comprehensive overview of the Acumatica health and performance data from their clients. It is designed to offer a consolidated view of crucial information, allowing VARs to quickly assess the status of multiple customers without the need to log into each customer’s environment. Key data points displayed include the version of Acumatica the customers are using, the number of customization screens, license usage, financial status, period closure, outstanding items, and more.

Data is gathered without requiring customization projects in each customer’s environment, utilizing APIs and OData to retrieve the necessary information. The dashboard will feature tables, graphs, and other visualization elements to present the information in an organized and user-friendly manner.

Team Eta – Natural Language Processing for Common Customer and Employee Queries (30:25)

Team Eta GitHub Project (click here)

This solution enables users to interact with Acumatica’s data using natural language. It leverages ChatGPT to transform natural-language user queries into machine-readable questions. These questions are then processed using Acumatica’s data to generate relevant responses, which are formatted back into human-understandable language and delivered to users through various channels, such as chat interfaces or email.

The team has explored multiple implementation approaches for their solution. They have successfully integrated the chatbot with an Acumatica customization, demonstrating its functionality within the platform. Additionally, they’ve employed a no-code solution using Power Automate. Both implementations use the same ChatGPT brain and Acumatica data, emphasizing the flexibility of their
solution’s deployment.

Team Theta – Automated Customization Deployment with GitHub (32:39)

Team Theta GitHub Project (click here)

This project aims to empower developers and minimize disruptions to production instances when deploying customizations by utilizing GitHub actions and the recently introduced customization APIs in Acumatica 2022 R2.

It creates a seamless workflow that starts when committing code changes to a GitHub repository.
Next, GitHub Actions kick in and validate whether the customization will successfully publish to the production instance. Finally, it schedules the actual publishing, allowing for timed deployments that align with the client’s preferences. This approach eliminates the need for developers to manually publish during off-hours.

Team Iota – Desktop App to Upload Customer Data via Acumatica Web Endpoints (35:35)

Team Iota GitHub Project (click here)

Want to improve data conversions without relying on Excel? This tool performs live data conversions from a source ERP system to a destination ERP system (Acumatica) using SQL-to-SQL queries. It expedites the data conversion process, enabling a gradual approach instead of a single intensive go-live weekend.

The project is implemented as a Windows application that leverages TCP/IP connections and Acumatica’s web endpoints to facilitate data transfers. Instead of dealing with firewalls, the team plans to utilize the existing infrastructure to push data in smaller increments, ensuring a smoother transition and avoiding disruptions during the critical go-live phase.

Team Kappa – Data Collecting and Lead Generation through PipeDream API Bridge (37:28)

Team Kappa GitHub Project (click here)

PipeDream is a middleware platform that simplifies API interactions by combining various APIs to streamline communication between them. Team Kappa is leveraging this tool to create an SMS-based lead generation process, where attendees at an event can text a specific number to initiate interaction. The system collects attendees’ cell phone numbers, engages in text conversations using ChatGPT, asks additional questions, and ultimately converts the gathered information into leads within Acumatica’s system through API integration. They hope to show it to be viable for other messaging types, including email.

Team Lambda – Low Code Webhooks for End Users (40:00)

Team Lambda GitHub Project (click here)

This utility simplifies the process of working with webhooks in Acumatica by following a no-code/low-code approach. End users can configure webhooks by providing a URL and specific parameters, enabling external data providers to push data into Acumatica, which can then pass to sales orders, inventory, purchase orders, and more. It eliminates the need for developers to manually code the entire webhook process and instead empowers users to set up and manage it within the Acumatica interface.

Team Mu – Automatica: Automatic Customization Publishing and Developer Notifications (42:54)

Team Mu GitHub Project (click here)

Automatica aims to simplify and optimize the process of publishing customization packages in Acumatica through scheduling. This eliminates the need for developers to stay up late to publish packages manually, which often leads to errors and frustration. It utilizes Acumatica’s existing webhook and REST API functionality to trigger the package publication process.

Automatica introduces a user-friendly configuration screen within Acumatica that lets users set up the schedule, define recipients for notifications, and specify package owners. In case of failures during publication, the system sends emails to the designated recipients, providing trace information to troubleshoot the issues.

Team Gamma – Delivery Route Optimization (52:28)

Team Gamma GitHub Project (click here)

This application optimizes the delivery routing process after shipments have been confirmed. The team is streamlining the process of assigning shipments to drivers and then utilizing a routing API to calculate optimal travel routes for the drivers. It enhances the efficiency of deliveries by organizing the sequence of stops for drivers based on geographical data and estimated travel times gathered from a routing API.

Each shipment is treated as a record within the grid, and an editable column is used to assign a specific driver to each shipment. The team envisions extending this functionality to a mobile app, where drivers can access a list of assigned shipments and mark them complete once the deliveries have been made.

Conclusion

At the Acumatica Hackathon, many innovative applications were born. From automating customization package publishing to simplifying API interactions and streamlining delivery routing, each project showcases creative solutions that address real-world challenges. These projects underscore the power of collaboration, pushing the boundaries of Acumatica’s capabilities and offering insights into the potential for improved efficiency, user experience, and productivity within the platform. As the teams work diligently to bring their ideas to life, their projects exemplify the spirit of innovation and problem-solving at the heart of the Hackathon event.