{"id":2166,"date":"2022-07-21T11:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-21T15:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog2wrkdev.wpenginepowered.com\/automation-hackathon\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T08:17:55","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T12:17:55","slug":"automation-hackathon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog2workato.wpengine.com\/automation-hackathon\/","title":{"rendered":"Our BT team ran a hackathon that drove nearly 30% of employees to participate. Here\u2019s how they did it"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

While the individuals in these roles are certainly capable of working together to brainstorm and implement powerful solutions, you\u2019re neglecting the vast majority of employees. The opportunity cost in doing so can\u2019t be overstated: powerful solutions won\u2019t see the light of day; employees across regions and teams won\u2019t learn from and connect with one another; and the team at large will feel left out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our business technology team knew they could turn the traditional hackathon experience on its head with our low-code\/no-code platform. And just a few months ago, that\u2019s exactly what they did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They invited everyone<\/em> at the company to participate in our first-annual hackathon and empowered the teams that signed up to flex their creativity by allowing them to build any<\/em> solution with Workato.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And while the results were staggering (more on this later), the experience told a bigger story: <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ll share the specific steps our BT team took so that yours could do something similar.<\/p>\n\n\n\r\n

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Want to learn more?<\/h4>\r\n

Two of the employees who organized the hackathon walked through every step they took during their session at Automate.<\/p>\r\n <\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t Watch the session’s recording<\/a>\r\n\t\t\t\t <\/div>\r\n\t\t <\/div>\r\n\n\n\n

Acting as internal marketers<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The first challenge BT faced was making employees aware of the event itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To tackle this, they harnessed their inner marketer and promoted the event in several ways: Our CIO posted a Linkedin article that introduced the hackathon; our director of business applications and automations shared information on the hackathon in our #general Slack channel and in company-wide emails; and another employee in BT created a Slack channel dedicated to the hackathon and added every employee to it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, BT offered up cash prizes for 5 categories (\u201cBest Overall Hack\u201d, \u201cBiggest Value for Customers\u201d, \u201cBiggest Value for Internal Use\u201d, \u201cMost Whacky\u201d, and \u201cMost Innovative\u201d), which not only drew further attention to the event but also gave participating teams license to go in whatever direction they wanted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The enrollment numbers that came out of these recruitment efforts speak for themselves: 209 employees participated (nearly 30% of our employee base at the time) across 77 teams. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Automating the enrollment process<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Since BT already has critical day-to-day responsibilities to stay on top of, they needed a way to streamline the Hackaton\u2019s enrollment process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s when Weizhuang Tan, a Product Owner at Workato, ideated and implemented the following solution with \u201cApril Bot,\u201d a customized Workbot for Slack<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transformative solutions for our sales process, employee experience, and beyond<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

While there\u2019s not enough space to highlight all of our incredible submissions, you can get a sense of how inspired and savvy our teams were by reviewing the winners below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biggest Value for Internal Use: <\/strong>Deck Bot<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As our reps and CSMs prepare to have strategic conversations with prospects and clients, they often need to create personalized and comprehensive slide decks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each deck would take CSMs and reps roughly 30 minutes to create, making the endeavor time consuming and costly, considering the other activities they can pursue with that time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this in mind, Alvin Ee, a Customer Success Manager, and Andrew Tay, an Automation Consultant, built a solution that allows a CSM or rep to create their entire deck in a matter of clicks in Slack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biggest Value for Customers: Automated Recipe Review<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

When implementing automations in Workato, our customers\u2019 admin users have certain best practices they want to enforce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To help admins maintain these best practices, 3 of our Solutions Consultants\u2014Rohit Tiwari,  Narmadha Raji, and Amarnath Munkur\u2014and Prerna Sharma, a Security Information Analyst, teamed up to build the customized Workbot, \u201cRecipeReviewBot.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using the bot, our customers can set up the rules and policies they\u2019d like to enforce, and then select specific recipes they\u2019d like to assess against these rules\u2014all in a matter of clicks. The bot then returns a report that the client can download as a PDF or receive in an email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most Innovative: SportBot<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Here at Workato, we love taking prospects and customers out to sporting events. But the process of organizing these events can be manually-intensive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Akhil Reddy, a Senior Business Intelligence Analyst, largely removed the painful tasks involved with his customized Workbot, \u201cSportBot.\u201d Using the bot, employees can select the city they\u2019re interested in and the appropriate date range. From there, the bot not only returns the sporting events taking place but also the contacts at client and prospect accounts who live in that city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most Wacky: Memories Bot<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As you likely know all too well, channels in Slack or Microsoft Teams are constantly getting created and archived. And while there\u2019s nothing inherently wrong with this, it does mean that the messages, photos, and documents in a channel are likely available for a limited amount of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bryan Yap, a Senior Solutions Consultant, Ryan Tin, a Site Reliability Engineer, Ryan Koh, The Global Head of Partner Success, and Amlan Debnath, The SVP of Global Field Operations and Customer Success, decided to change this by building the customized Workbot, \u201cMemories Bot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whenever you want specific photos to last longer than the channel they\u2019re shared in, you can add Memories Bot to the channel. The bot will automatically recognize the photos, create a shared album in Google Photos, and add the photos to that album. The bot then shares the album with the channel and provides a bookmark so that anyone can access it easily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n