The Acumatica Summit 2023 took place at Las Vegas Wynn resorts on the 28th & 29th of January. The beginning of the Summit is usually the most awaited Hackathon event for developers, techies and tech enthusiasts. This year’s Hackathon comprised 12 teams – each team comprising 6 to 8 people from various backgrounds: developers, business owners, analysts, marketers or anyone who wanted to be part of the event and experience how things are hacked or customized.
For InfoSourcing’s founder Harsha Sarjapur, this was his fourth participation this year, and he had previously won the Hackathon in 2020 with Ask Fred, an AI assistant. This year he was a member of Team Mu! (Greek’s alphabet Mu, the 12th letter).
The team had to figure out the best hack after a meeting session to select from all the ideas shared by the members. They shortlisted the concept based on the technicality and functionality of the problem and the capability of finishing an end product within 1.5 days.
Team Members:
- Harsha Sarjapur – InfoSourcing Inc
- Vidhyalakshmi Hariharasubramanian – Acumatica SME
- Patrick Chen – SPS Commerce
- Paul Gilfoy – PriceKubecka
- Brandon Sproul – Blytheco
- Shawn Goodwin – Martin And Associates
- Chetan G – Kensium
AutoMatica
With the central theme of “Build Smarter, not Harder”, team Mu designed Automatica – an automated customization package manager for the Acumatica platform. Automatica allows the user to schedule the publishing of packages and the subsequent execution of the publishing of those packages. Automatica sends the trace log to the user if any issue arises during the publishing.
Automatica, therefore, helps bridge the time gap which is currently present where the manager has to wait for non-office hours to publish the package. The automation of the package manager saves ISVs the trouble of tracking the versions their clients are on and improves the tracking efficiency of packages to be published.
The constraints of Automatica are listed on the Git Hub and are open to be further worked on.
Problems:
- Compatibility issues with custom packages and newer versions of Acumatica.
- Limited ability to publish packages on-demand in production environment.
- Difficulty communicating and working with partners/ISVs to fix errors.
- Difficulty remembering to publish packages during non-office hours.
- Frustration caused by the challenges of customizing Acumatica.
Benefits:
- Automation of Acumatica’s Customization Manager, allowing for scheduling of upgrades and notifications during non-office hours.
- Ability to setup a Customization Profile, specifying package owner information and contact details.
- Notification of issues to package owner’s technical teams via email, with trace details included.
- Increased efficiency and organization in managing custom packages.
- Reduced frustration and improved communication with package owners.
With this win, it’s Harsha Sarjapur’s second hackathon consecutive win and the stride goes on …
