Leadership Development Bot for Microsoft Teams
A Microsoft Teams bot and serverless back end for qChange, a US HR-tech start-up. Its Behavior360™ platform nudges leaders before their meetings, collects anonymous feedback from the people they work with and turns it into a perception gap and a leader score. EMBIQ designed the architecture, built the solution and took it through Microsoft's validation into the AppSource store.
Technologies used
Python, Angular, AWS Lambda, Serverless Framework, API Gateway, Cognito, Amplify, S3, EC2, Celery, SNS, SQS, CloudWatch, MongoDB Atlas, MongoDB Charts, Microsoft Teams bot, Office calendar, Azure
Tools
Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, Jenkins, Microsoft Teams test tenant
5
Project members
14 months
Project length
Web
Category
Management
Branch
The challenge
qChange, a US start-up in HR technology, came to EMBIQ in mid-2019 with a method for accelerating leadership growth and an existing code base: an Android app, an admin panel with an API written in plain PHP, and no iOS app yet. EMBIQ started with a code review. The code still worked, but it had been written years earlier, so the recommendation was to redesign the server side, the architecture and the apps together rather than keep extending the old code, so that the product could scale. Then the delivery model changed. Instead of separate mobile apps, qChange decided to meet leaders where they already work: in Microsoft Teams, driven by their Office calendar. A leader would get a short behaviour prompt before a meeting and a quick assessment afterwards, both from their colleagues and themselves. This raised new questions: how to pick the right meetings and the right nudge without flooding people with messages, how to keep colleagues' ratings anonymous and still meaningful, how to build on a young platform with little documentation and support, and how to pass Microsoft's validation for publishing an app in the Teams store.
The goal to develop a tool for leaders’ growth was set. However, the initial delivery model changed. It was decided to base the project on the information from MS Teams calendar.
Key Features
- Microsoft Teams bot that welcomes users, registers leaders and answers plain-language questions about nudges, influencers, perception gap and score
- Calendar watcher that reads the leader's Office calendar and sends a nudge before meetings with the influencers the leader selected
- Anonymous post-meeting ratings from the leader and influencers, turned into a perception gap, with optional anonymous written feedback
- Weekly summary with qInsights and a qChange Leader Score that tracks growth over time
- Nudge limits of two per day and ten per week, with a minimum gap between nudges
- Serverless back end in Python on AWS Lambda and API Gateway, with Celery and SNS/SQS for scheduled scoring and notifications and MongoDB Atlas for data
- Angular web application on S3 with Cognito sign-up and sign-in for leaders, plus reporting in MongoDB Charts
The result
The bot passed Microsoft's validation tests and qChange went live in the Microsoft AppSource store in June 2020. A new version, shaped by feedback from beta users, was released in August 2020. Leaders in organisations using Microsoft Teams can add the bot to a team, connect their calendar and receive nudges and feedback without leaving their everyday tools. Each piece of logic, from nudge sending and calendar sync to weekly scoring, runs as a separate serverless function, so individual rules could be changed quickly while the client refined its nudge engine with first users. EMBIQ's project manager also prepared qChange's feedback session with Microsoft on the Teams platform. The solution started as a tool for a single customer and became a SaaS offering. In its Clutch review, qChange's CEO described the work as high quality, noted that the team proactively suggested further opportunities, and praised its open, easy-going communication.
- Published in Microsoft AppSource after passing Microsoft's validation tests
- Nudges, anonymous feedback and leader scoring delivered inside Microsoft Teams
- Serverless AWS architecture that can be changed function by function
- Evolved from a single-customer solution into a SaaS offering
The largest challenge we faced was working in the Behavior360™ Platform. The Platform was fresh, there was no support, yet it was crucial to keep getting more and more educated and seek new solutions. Our efforts were repaid since we have programmed a highly extraordinary platform.
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Agnes
business development specialist
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