NCCA
Power Platform and Sharepoint Development
Overview
The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA), is a statutory body under the aegis of the Department of Education. The role of the NCCA is to advise the Minister for Education on:
- curriculum and assessment for early childhood education, primary and post-primary schools.
- assessment procedures used in schools and examinations on subjects which are part of the curriculum.
Through this, NCCA seeks to lead innovation in education for learning, living and working in a changing world. The Council does this by working in a spirit of partnership and consensus with a wide range of stakeholders.
Increasingly, innovation through technology is a feature of NCCA’s work processes. This is the backdrop for HCS’s work with the organisation.
Challenge
NCCA were using the out-of-the-box SharePoint form with a SharePoint list to manage their purchase order requests. As part of this solution, older versions of workflows were in place to try to increase the automation of the process but still, the solution required multiple manual inputs to complete the task. As a public body, there were certain financial thresholds that required specific actions and this was done on a manual basis by searching through purchase orders raised and emailing the relevant person. Working with a modest budget, NCCA needed HCS to write them a purchase order system that suited their needs.
Solution
Using Microsoft Power Platform, we wrote a bespoke purchase order system that met NCCA’s individual requirements. Using Power Automate, we set up an automated approval process aligned to the specific guidelines within which NCCA works.
We created a user-friendly interface to enter, administer and review PO Requests from all NCCA users, with all of the required conditionality. We produced a series of Microsoft Flow workflows that validate and process purchase order requests against public sector procurement rules. We integrated Power Platform and Sharepoint to create online lists and list views to make administration data, such as dropdown field items, automatically available to the Power Apps interface.
The data these programs produce can then be exported for automated data analysis to further improve operation practices in the future. With a rapid turnaround, we produced the system they needed, offering quick and immediate benefits to their business, at a low-cost point of entry.
HCS listened to what we needed and moved quickly to recommend a solution that covered all our requirements. They quickly delivered a solution that gives us greater automation in our process. What was developed exceeded our expectation and is easy to use while being built at an affordable cost. As a result of the effectiveness of this solution, we have engaged with HCS on other projects to help develop our SharePoint systems.
