Overview

Documentation

Description

This app helps you organize your next (digital) hackathon, both inside and outside of your organization. It’s an out-of-the box solution that is easy to set-up and ready to use. With this app:

• Organizers can set up hackathons, including challenges, timelines, awards, prizes and a jury panel

• Participants can register their team, communicate with each other and upload their solutions

• Jury members can select the winners

• Everyone can view uploaded solutions and check out the winners

To make participating more fun, the app has a great look and feel, including a dark theme and countdown widget (see screenshots).

Typical usage scenario

Everyone who is interested in organizing a hackathon to promote and encourage innovation, attract new talent or find out of the box solutions to complex problems. This template can be used for both internal and external hackathons.

Features and limitations

Features:

• Setting up a Hackathon: An administrator enters an easy to use wizard to set up a Hackathon. In here, they first configure general information and the starting and opening time of each respective phase (Registration, Hackathon, Voting). In turn, the challenges, jury panel and awards (including their prizes) are added as well.

• Registering your team: Users of the app are able to register their team in order to participate in the hackathon, here they select a challenge and provide a team-name, slogan and image. Besides, all hackathon details such as general info, challenges and awards can be viewed.

• Newsfeed: Both team members participating in the hackathon and the administrator can create newsfeed posts. Organizers can use the newsfeed as a primary communication channel, alerting participants of important updates or sharing tips & tricks. Participants can use it to contact the organization or to engage with other teams sharing their progress during the hackathon.

• Solutions & Winners: Participants are asked to upload their solution before the hackathon deadline, they do this by uploading a video, description and links to relevant sites. After the hackathon finishes everyone is able to watch the different solutions.
  Jury members are assigned by the organziation and are asked to select the winners and award prizes before the end of the voting phase. The winners will become visible for everyone once the voting phase has ended.

Limitations:

• Video player widget in the app that is used for watching the solution videos is currently not supported on Safari. Please check out the widget documentation for more details.

User roles and permissions:

Administrator

The administrator is able to create and configure Hackathon information through the wizard and admin pages. This userrole is for the organization of the hackathon.

User

‘User’ is the default role someone gets when entering the application. If applicable, he/she can register for a team for a hackathon, or he/she can be assigned to the jury panel by the administrator. Participants and jury members are not their own user role but through access rights.

Configurator

This is a technical role, usually given to the app-developers or whoever is installing the app. By default, the Configurator has access to Users & Permissions, SAML configuration, Email configuration and all system interfaces. This allows the Configurator to add or remove users from the app and adjust their roles for the initial setup.This allows the features that are required to get the app up and running to be hidden from the end-users. the Configurator never has access to any app-specific data, but only to meta-data (if necessary).

Dependencies (Included from the Marketplace)

• Atlas Core and Atlas Web Content

• Community Commons

• Deeplink

• Datagrid 2

• Email Template

• Encryption

• ForgotPassword

• Mx Model Reflection

Installation:

The application is available as a starter app. To create your own version, the MxHackathon application is available via the create new app flow on the Marketplace

Configuration

In order to use the application, the user the configurator and administrator role needs to set up certain things which are listed below.

Configurator:

• Under settings → administration → model reflection: check the modules en entities and press ‘Click to Refresh’. This allows you to access information about the domain model of our app from your app. This is for example required to use placeholders in email templates.

• Under settings → administration → Email: The configurator will need to add an email address of your organisation and its relevant server settings. In addition, the configurator needs to add the tokens as placeholders (Email, then Templates) on the email templates (or remove the placeholders from the default email content) in order to use the standard email templates. When adding the placeholders, make sure to give them the exact same name as in the template. Its data is stored in the ‘Emaildata’ entity, so please select that when adding placeholders.

• Under settings → Users & Permissions: Here you can add the users of your app. Please make sure to give them the appropriate user role. Make sure to add at least 1 admin so he/she can start organizing a hackathon. Please note that the app is set up to use someone’s email address as their username to log in and find existing accounts.

• Under settings → administration → Forgot Password Settings (tab deeplink): When someone is adding a team member to join their team in the hackathon, an email is sent with a reset password link. In order for this link to work, the deeplink needs to be configured. Please use the following configuration:

  • Name: ForgotPassword

  • Microflow: ForgotPassword.Step3_DL_SetNewPassword

  • Check the following checkboxes: Include GET parameters, Seperate GET parameters, Allows guests

Administrator:

• Under settings → Users & Permissions: Here you can add the users of your app. Please make sure to give them the appropriate user role. Please note that the app is set up to use someone’s email address as their username to log in and find existing accounts.

• When no hackathon is added yet, the first screen will provide a wizard with instructions how to set up one.

Bugs:

• No bugs known.