What did we do? We took the reins ourselves and developed our own solution using low-code technology. Let me take you on our journey to develop the Blis Lunch Tool.
What was the situation?
At Blis, lunch is provided every day for colleagues in the office. Employees from another organization in our office building also participate. To prevent us from ordering too many or too few groceries, our colleagues and external parties must sign up for lunch. Our lunch supplier offered its own app for this purpose. As it turned out... not everyone used the app and it didn't work on all devices. Of course, we could do that better ourselves!
Low-code to the rescue
Efficiency and time savings were the most important requirements. We found experimenting with new techniques a nice bonus. Together with a number of colleagues, we wrote down our wishes and requirements on a whiteboard:
- Saying goodbye to the old (software) solution
- Share your preferences quickly and easily
- Prefer no app on your phone
- Not only Bli's colleagues must be able to sign up, external parties too
- Ready as soon as possible
- Minimal management costs
- Reporting options would be nice
With these principles, of course, we had no choice but to also use low-code. We quickly came to the conclusion that colleagues still make extensive use of Outlook, and that some colleagues are also working with Teams.
The result is a smart mix of technologies:
- Outlook Actionable Messages with Adaptive Cards: to send lunch invitations via email. We opted for an email solution because it is accessible and because it also works for Blis' partner companies. Everyone has access to email. And with minimal effort, we can also offer this solution with Adaptive Cards for colleagues who prefer to work via Teams 💪.
- Azure Logic Apps: this automates the sending of lunch cards and processing the response. This also generates the information that is required for purchasing lunch. This part of the solution was initially designed in Power Automate but was not used due to licensing costs; Azure Logic Apps is cheaper 💸.
- SharePoint Lists: This is where the information about the participants and their preferences is stored. The advantage is that this immediately provides UI for the solution administrators who can indicate which participants are there, and that results are quickly visible. 📃
- Power BI: makes the data visually transparent. This Power BI report is accessible via Microsoft Teams. 📊
The result in outlook
The result in outlook is a single e-mail where you can easily specify each week when you will have lunch;
Other considerations
Of course, we've also considered other Microsoft solutions, such as creating a Power App or offering an Adaptive Card in Microsoft Teams. These solutions have their advantages and disadvantages. With a Power App, we could have recreated the original lunch solution, but this Power App is not available externally, or needs to be unlocked via Power Pages, which in turn means extra work. An Adaptive Card in Microsoft Teams could have been possible, but that would require more set-up work to deliver the card to the other organizations. So for now, an email for external parties, and for internal colleagues, we can easily switch to Teams for those who want to.
Points of interest
The only thing that was still disappointing is that we did have to jump through a number of hoops. After all, you can't just send Actionable Messages to the whole world. To do so, you have to 'sign' it and ask Microsoft for approval. You will then receive an “originator id” (a type of unique key), which you must provide neatly so that you can send the email. This has a lead time of a few days, so good to take that into account. In addition, it is characteristic that the adaptive card must be opened in Outlook. In the event that a recipient opens the email in another email client, an alternate text must be displayed. We were able to achieve this easily.
Conclusion
With the Blis Lunch Tool, we show how we get more out of our daily routines with smart, accessible solutions. We're excited about this step and hope to inspire others to get more out of their productivity tools, too.
Do you also want to use this solution, or do you have another cool idea? Get in touch with us. We'd love to give you a demo!
.jpg)
