This is a large app that I built to handle employee feedback across an entire division of a large company. The objective was to provide a smooth experience for employees to submit and monitor feedback, and book themselves on available listening groups. Meanwhile, admins could use the app to create calendar events, add responses to feedback, and run the groups themselves.
I built the app with a view to full scalability across a large organisation. The data structure was designed to allow the app to be parameterised to different business units, so groups of admins could be identified in each unit and day-to-day running of the app delegated to them.
I made use of the OpenAI Whisper API, called via Power Automate and a custom connector, to add voice transcription to the app. Admins who are running a group can turn this on, and, via the Power Apps microphone control, send an audio packet to the API to be transcribed to text. The results are scarily accurate, taking into account pauses, context, listing and other formats in natural speech. I used Reza Dorrani’s video on setting up the API in Power Automate.
The UI is divided into small ‘chunks’ that act like inbox folders for the current user, so they don’t get overwhelmed. The latest groups available to book on are surfaced, and active bookings are displayed in a separate section (and removed from the original list). Admins have more sections, seeing ‘Actionable items’ on their home screen – this contains listening groups to run, or feedback to respond to.
Listening groups are simple to create, first asking for some basic details, then taking the user through steps including location, host (selected from a list maintained by the admins), invitees, and a final screen that allows them to review all details before submitting, and making the group live to all users.
The below progress component (a custom canvas component I made) helps show users their progress through the form journey. It also acts as a clickable navigation element, allowing them to jump back to any stage to make edits. The form inputs are held in a variable until submission, when they are written back to the database.
Overall, the client was very happy with this app, which prevented them from having to pay for expensive off-the-shelf software to handle the same functionality, and also allowed them to migrate away from unstructured data collection. Employee feedback can be very powerful but only when gathered, aggregated and reviewed.
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