Hello friends - I come to you in desperate need of some direction. Ever have that feeling that I'm accomplishing the task, but doing it in the most laborious way possible - unnecessarily so. That's where I'm at. I'm sorry for the narrative, in advance, but lemme explain....
As a recent "graduate" of the Power-Up Program, when folks at my workplace were talking about revamping the User Acceptance Testing process, I took a look at it, and opened my big mouth, and said "sure - there's an app we can build for that!" I want to be very careful here - the Power-Up Program was great and prepared me wonderfully....I just bit off a lot more than a recent grad should probably attempt to chew. So, what does all this mean? Previously, our UAT process involved some non-dynamic spreadsheets, where basically users just went from new feature to new feature in our software, tested whether it functioned, typed YES OR NO, included a screen shot if needed, saved the doc, sent it back. We could've included a carrier-pigeon for effect.
What we want is to build an app that gets distributed to the users for testing in a logical workflow, can be passed from user to user to complete testing (I'll explain this more), can be submitted by the users with alerts to our Product Team if there are fails, and to be able to run reports with the user inputted data. Right there, it feels manageable still - but when I started to roll this out - it quickly became unwieldy. Now, I'm like 25% into the project, and I needed to hit the brakes to bounce this off more capable brains...more experienced brains. I want to learn - but I want to learn the right way, and I want the best result for my workplace. I know I'm not managing the power of the Power Apps suite, and I want this to be scalable. So, at the risk of adding more words and confusion - here is what I'm trying to achieve.
Testing Form 1A
User 1 > Their testing involves adding four numbers (HRA IDs) to the form, a pass/fail toggle for each, and a comment box that appears only when the item fails. Same with a picture upload.
When those four numbers are obtained and testing complete, that form gets SUBMITTED with all that information being recorded on a table. When this is done, the next user on the team gets a notification (I dunnno, email, teams, etc.) and they do the following:
Testing Form 1B
User 2 > For each of the four HRA IDs above, they have to complete a separate form comprising 15 testing checkpoints, a pass/fail toggle, magically appearing comment box, and pic upload button. We'll say these are Forms 1B-1, 1B-2, 1B-3, and 1B-4.
As each form gets completed, the user submits, with the info going onto tables....rinse/repeat, whereas each one of those ID from 1A, then gets passed to a third team member, to complete the cycle with the following:
Testing Form 1C
User 3 > For each of the HRA's this user completes a separate form with 7 checkpoints that can only be completed when 1B-# is completed. Second verse same as the first - p/f toggle, comment box magic, and pic upload for each. These are forms 1C-1, 1C-2, 1C-3, and 1C-4.
When User 3 is complete, the cycle for that team is complete. The Product Dev team receives updates when User 1, 2, and 3 submit their forms respectively.
Right now - I have developed generally 1A and 1B - but, it seems clunky. I'm getting lost in connecting the input data to tables - how does that dynamically change for, in one UAT setting, 4 HRA IDs? Like, I'm creating ONE form, but I know it's going to need to multiply times four - each one coded with the unique HRA ID. And, that's just one team for one UAT cycle - we do this every month!!! So, i need this general concept to be able scale month to month to the different features we're testing.
I need to know whether anything about the path I'm carving is worthwhile - what should I pursue? What should I abandon? What am I missing? I downloaded a copy of the app and will attach it here. Hopefully you can parlay the code above with the company specific terms in the app. (MEC = User 1, VCC = User 2). I really don't know what you can or can't see in that downloaded version. Again, I am more than willing to do the work, I just know my brain isn't wrapping around this just yet, and wandering in the forest will do me no more good. I don't care - I'll pay for some consultant time - ijust wanna get it right!
Thank you, in advance for reading this far - I mean, by now, you're invested so you might as well answer. :) Thank you for any assistance - I promise when I get the knowledge I will pay it forward!
Best,
Bill N
