Evidi Sabeltann’s Pirates 365 is a complete and automate Pirate Management System

We follow the lifecycle of a Pirate employment from early screening and recruitment to onboarding, training and at last offboarding.

Pirates 365 recruitment frontend: Pirates 365 Recruitment Terminal (PRT)

The Pirates 365 Recruitment Terminal (PRT) is an important part of the solution, and the first things the potential pirates meet.

It have several features

• Attract pirates so they can sign up to be a pirate
• Send in applications to the recruitment backend
• Scare pirates

The PTR is described more here:

The Pirates 365 Recruit Terminal – Glossy pixels & Thieving Bastards

On change from the original submission is that done more work in the attraction part of the application. We now use the result of the object detection to trigger music and animation to get more potential pirates to sign up.

We have also implemented a function to filter our easily scared pirates:

Pirates 365 recruitment backend

The recruitment backend is build arond Microsoft Teams – a familiar interface for many pirates

An AI mode built on Stable Diffusion is used to “pirateify” images. – thanks to Mikael and the Bastards for borrowing his installationd and API.

These images are used in the system for profile pictures etc.

In the recruitment backend a lot of things are happening

• generation of Pirate Names
• generation of Pirate images based on images taken in recruitment terminal
• creating leads in dataverse
• by popular request send out the pirate images to the pirate’s email
• creation of azure ad users for new pirates
• assigning of licenses to new pirates
• sending out SMS to new pirates with information about how to log in and link to the Pirate simulator
• PowerBI dashboards for learning status
• Offboarding of pirates

These components are described more in detail in the following posts:

Pirate 365 – Power BI Dashboards to show status for learning

Onboarding flow for new pirate recruits

Pirates 365 Enhance – training for newly recruited pirates

When new pirates are hired they are automatically been giving access to the Pirates 365 Enhance – the training system

Here the pirates can train before they get assigned to duty on the ships

Pirates need to complete several levels to become proper pirates, and if they fail to early the offboarding proccess is executed

Points are logged back to the recruitment backend, and based on score pirates are either onboarded to a ship or offboarded…into the water

Categories and more 👑

We believe that our solutions give much value in several of the categories, and we have written separate blog posts for these

Category king: Extreme Business Value

Category king: Excellent user experience

Category king: Rock Solid Geekness

We havent written a separate post for The “Killer app” category, but believe that this post summarizes much what is needed in a complete solution

Summary

Our idea this year was to create a complete solution for lifecycle of a Pirate employment from early screening and recruitment to onboarding, training and at last offboarding.

We have focused on learning new things, and we have learned a lot in several areas like

• frontend development in vue.js,
• different AI moules like tensorflow, gpt and stable diffusion.
• game development in Power Apps (fun but maybe not recommended)
• Streaming real time data in PowerBI

This blog post describes how we think that Pirates 365 a whole provide excellent user experience

We asked our new favourite souce of truth what defines good user experience

We think our solutions delivers many of these areas

Pirate-centric

The Pirate attractor is created to make it easy to use for (drunken) pirates with possible limited computer knowledge.

The animated parrot is moving based on the pirate actions, and responds whetere it can see pirates or not.

It is easy to apply to be a pirate – only 3 fields have to be filled, and the picture is taken automatically

After the application is sent in the next point of contact is a SMS sent automatically with information on how to log on to the system.

Easy to use for HR Recruitment team

Good automated processes is important for solutions with focus on great user experience.

For the recruitment team it is really easy to accept a new candidate – just with the click of a button

Many things are automated which HR often uses a lot of time doing – most of these tasks will often be done manually and error-prone by HR an IT staff

• Getting images automatically taken when the pirate recruit applies
• Lead generated in Dataverse for candidate collaboration
• Azure AD user created with correct UPN name and email address
• Licenses and permissions are added automatically for the newly hired pirate
• Candidate are automatically getting information about login

All tasks for the HR team is done in Teams – giving a single point of contact for all tasks regarding recruitment, onboarding and offboarding of the pirate

Best use of tools and technologies.

In a combination of the Pirate 365 Recruit and Pirate 365 Enhance applications we claim the ROCK SOLID GEEKNESS badge.

Pirates 365 Recruit – Recruitment of pirates

By using several AI components in Power Automate and leveraging vue.js, pinia, three, troisjs, tensorflow, and ChatGPT. The list goes on..

• The Existential Risk – using AI to detect potential recruits and giving them proper pirate names | Arctic Cloud Developer Challenge Submissions (acdc.blog)
• Using Power Automate to create Pirate Names using OpenAPIs Davinci model | Arctic Cloud Developer Challenge Submissions (acdc.blog)

The Pirate 365 Enhance app

What is the best use of tools to create a game? Canvas apps of course🤠🤓

We have used Power Apps canvas app to create a game that allows new pirate recruits show their skills and prepare them for the sea.

In short, the game uses a Timer that we use to move the ship forward. The timer repeats on short intervals and in the OnStart event we move the ship object on the Y axis and also calculate if the ship touches any of the different obstacles. If a collision is detected, the ship explodes (change the picture on the Picture object). If a crash is detected on the first level, a Game Over popup is displayed and the pirate is automatically offboarded (which technically means we call a Flow that deactivates the user in AAD…. and in real life the recruit is fed to the sharks).
We also check if the ship has reached to top of the screen. If it does, the level is complete and the next level will be shown.
We have a total of 4 levels.

If the player reaches level 2 (or more), we navigate (no pun intended) to a ‘final’ screen where the total points achieved are displayed – IF a collision is detected OR if the user reaches the top of the screen on level 4 OR docks the island on level 4.

We calculate ‘running scores’ as the ship moves forward and every time a new level is reached, points are added to the total score (these points we query from Dataverse). For each ‘event’ (e.g. reach new level) we log this to Dataverse (System User table). These events are used to calculate the total score for the user and is used in our other app to suggest a role for the recruit/pirate.

The crash detection and level completion require extremely complex expressions😉

If(
    shipPositionY > 85,
    Set(
        shipPositionY,
        shipPositionY - 10
    );
    Set(level1VariableScore, level1VariableScore + 1);
    Set(totalScore, totalScore + 1),
    Set(TimerStart, false);
    Set(
        shipPositionX,
        645
    );
    Set(
        shipPositionY,
        611
    );
    Navigate('Level 2')
);
If(
    Or(
        And(
            Image_PirateShip.X <= Image_ReefOne.X + Image_ReefOne.Width,
            Image_PirateShip.X + Image_PirateShip.Width >= Image_ReefOne.X,
            Image_PirateShip.Y <= Image_ReefOne.Y + Image_ReefOne.Height,
            Image_PirateShip.Y + Image_PirateShip.Height >= Image_ReefOne.Y
        ),
        And(
            Image_PirateShip.X <= Image_ReefTwo.X + Image_ReefTwo.Width,
            Image_PirateShip.X + Image_PirateShip.Width >= Image_ReefTwo.X,
            Image_PirateShip.Y <= Image_ReefTwo.Y + Image_ReefTwo.Height,
            Image_PirateShip.Y + Image_PirateShip.Height >= Image_ReefTwo.Y
        )
    ),
    Set(shipVisible, false);
    Set(shipExplodedVisible, true);
    Set(startGameOverTimer, true);
    Timer_GameRun.Repeat = false;
    Reset(Timer_GameRun);
    ,
    false
)

The game consists of four levels:

Level 1:
Easy level obviously. Must be passed to continue with the onboarding process. Only two obstacles in the water.
Tip: You don’t really need to do ANYTHING to pass this level 😉

Level 2:
Some more obstacles and you WILL have to move the boat (using one of the two buttons on the bottom right side of the screen).

Level 3:
Even more obstacles and much rougher sea.
Caution: you might get sea sick here – for real!

Level 4:
Still rough sea and many obstacles. You can pass this level in two ways. Either you dock on the island on top of the screen (this will give you some bonus points) or you can just reach the top of the screen.

If you fail level 1:

Please take note of the sharks as obstacles. We listened to the judges!

Badges

arrgghh, we claim to be awarded the “Rock Solid Geekness” because…..

• A game in canvas app 🙌, great playability and great graphics.
• Because we have a digital 3D parrot that moves, talks, and onboards recruits with on a really creative way.
• We got face recognition and object recognition
• Error handling for to many pirates or object during the photo process.
• Feature to scare the hell out of the judges
• No server side code, all in the browser.

In the Pirate 365 Enhance module the pirates goes through a simulation to prepare for the sea. The simulator has different levels that the pirate needs to go through. If the pirates don’t pass level one the pirate is offboarded and has to walk the plank, and that means that the AD User is disabled in the Azure Active Directory. If they pass level 1 they will proceed in the onboarding process.

The pirates goes through the Pirate 365 Enhance Simulator and here they get a score that it used to suggest the best role for the pirate (this will be described later in the post).

Gif from a gameplay:

During the gameplay we collect points based on the different levels they pass. We have created a list of points in Dataverse that they can achieve as can be seen below:

During the game play we assign points to the pirate that is later calculated to a final score. In the image below you can see the log of the game play and what Score Points they achieved.

They also get bonus points on each level based on how far they get in the game.

To calculate the total score we are using Roll Up fields in Dataverse, like below:

For the Pirate 365 Enhance Bonus Score:

For the Pirate 365 Enhance Score:

and a Business rule to add the bonus and the scores together:

And we have added a section with the score on user (pirate) table in the Model-driven app, Pirate 365 Manage:

This score is used in the next part of the evaluation process.

The Pirate 365 Evaluation app

After the game is over the process continues to an evaluation process and the pirate score is compared to the score limit of the different pirate roles we’ve created in Dataverse.
The role can be seen in the image below:

In the evaluation process we are using the Pirate 365 Evaluation app module that is used to evaluate the pirates scores and assign them to an appropriate role and ship. To handle this we have a Canvas app.

When a recruit is selected in the leftmost list, a Power Automate Flow is called with the recruits ID. The flow then finds the role that has a Score Limit closest to the recruit’s score from the game. The role is sent back to the canvas app.

The flow looks like the following after a flow run and returns the suggested role.

When the suggested role is received in the app, the role is highlighted in the Role Gallery in the canvas app. The user can then click on the suggested role (or any other role, if the user humanly evaluates the recruit to not qualify for the suggested role, for unknown reasons) and on the ship the recruit should be assigned to.

A flow is called and assignes the role and ship.

The pirate then gets assigned to a pirate ship and eventually there is enough crew members that they can go onto the big sea. Arrrghh..

When a recruit, role and ship has been selected, the app goes to the final stage of the process. On this screen the user can choose to onboard the recruit (hence, becoming a true pirate) OR offboard the recruit (meaning sending him/her out on the plank and leap to certain death in the shark and kraken infested waters).

See the gifs below:
Gif showing the onboarding process in the app.

Gif showing the offboarding in the app

Addition content

To illustrate how both the onboarding and the offboarding processes are carried out in person, we hired a professional movie crew to record both processes in real life.
Both the pirate and to different recruits in the videos have asked to be anonymous, for personal reasons.

Onboarding video from the Pirate 365 Evaluation app:

Video from the Office 365 Enhance app for offboarding when the pirates fails on level one.

Summary:

Business value:

• A screening process for getting the right people on a ship
  • A easy assignment process for onboarding of pirates and ships

Learning take aways:

• Creating games in Power Apps
• Using Power Automate, Dataverse, Canvas apps to create a game