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Anything is possible when a group of people are given the right tools, flexibility, and freedom to collaborate and innovate. And the recent Genesys Hackathon is proof of that.
This past weekend, the Genesys Hackathon, held in Toronto, invited a group of talented developers from near and far to build some impressive apps using Genesys PureCloud. We partnered with George Brown College to host 11 teams that innovated for two days with the platform APIs.
The event kicked off with an overview of Genesys PureCloud, our all-in-one cloud contact center solution. This prepared developers to build a PureCloud app—any public URL that adds value to PureCloud. Our platform provides the foundation for the future of communication while making it easy to integrate development work into the product to improve the contact center experience and enter new verticals. In addition to using PureCloud APIs to create their products, each team had to present a five-minute pitch and a live, working demo of their app.
The teams were given a robust set of tools, including documentation, open source code, APIs and tutorials. The suite enables them to validate apps with tools, including the API Explorer, to test API calls without having to write any code or a Web Chat/Callback generator to put test chats and calls in the queue. Developers had about 24 hours to hack before presenting to our judges: Vadim Snitkovsky, Director of Development at Genesys; Xander Dumaine, Senior Software Engineer at Genesys; and Leor Grebler, Co-Founder and CEO at Unified Computer Intelligence Corporation.
Ready, Set, Hack
Equipped with the right developer tools, a deep dive into PureCloud APIs and an awesome team of Genesys experts for support, the teams banded together through the night to build some amazing integrations. In just 24 hours, they tested over 10,000 API calls and loaded over 1,000 PureCloud apps. It was a long night, but they continued hacking and stuck it out until the end.
And the Winners Are…
The talent in the room was too much for the judges to choose just three winning teams. In the end, six talented Hackathon teams claimed victory—one first-place team, two-second place teams, two third-place teams and an honorable mention.
Team Hackathonees received an Honorable Mention for their hard work and dedication. They kicked off the presentations with a working demo of their chat integration that breaks down language barriers and translates to achieve global support—without the need for multilingual agents.
Third Place went to two teams. Team Uporniki showed off a cool PureCloud app built on our SDK using JavaScript to manage and predict agent efficiency using notifications, email summaries, and machine learning. Team 2 created Textify, a PureCloud web chat solution that enables users to get the best of both worlds of chat and voice. The team demoed the solution by recording audio to text and then successfully sent it to an agent for support.
Second Place was also a close call, with two teams winning the slot. Team Don’t Worry Be Hacky created an impressive solution called SentimentAI, which uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to detect emotions via text. This app can boost the customer experience by allowing agents to build better rapport in every chat. Team Vision used Natural Language Processing (NLP) to provide agents with interaction details, including a summary of calls, downloadable recordings, and suggestions for future interactions.
The Grand Prize went to Team Goose. This two-developer team presented a brilliant demo that used facial and emotional recognition to send information live to web portals in the Genesys console. A supervisor could use this information to maintain quality management by detecting customer emotions—happy, irritated, confused, etc. Not only that, but the app also can detect if the agent is happy and engaging.
All the teams received hands-on experience at the Hackathon, and the six winning teams walked away with some cool prizes. Runners-up in the Hackathon received a new Google Home or Amazon Echo Dot device; the winning team received Microsoft Surface Pro tablets and bragging rights that they cracked the PureCloud code.
A bonus competition let teams of Genesys employees battle it out for the internal honor. Team Outrageous Aura hacked into the PureCloud API using Javascript to create an automated bot that provides agent training. While Team Magneto gained the glory with their use case to transfer files and notes between Workspace Web Edition Agent Desktop and third-party cloud storage solutions.
Each team at the Genesys Hackathon helped make this event a success, and they gained valuable exposure to the world of Genesys PureCloud in the process. We’re happy to have the privilege to foster an environment for innovation in Toronto and beyond.
Collaboration and innovation are not new concepts at Genesys. Whether you want to spur teamwork on PureCloud Collaboration or connect with customers via PureCloud, our platform offers the strength and flexibility to make it happen. Just ask AppFoundry member and Genesys technology partner, nGUVU. Their platform integrates into PureCloud to create an environment focused on improving employee engagement and the overall customer experience. The nGAGEMENT solution transforms the daily life of a contact center agent with a blend of intrinsic motivation and machine learning.
Want to join in on the collaboration? Take the time to explore PureCloud resources including webinars, features, support, apps, billing information and more. PureCloud is built to be extensible—exposing data and functionality through a cloud microservice architecture and modern web technologies. Our public APIs and other valuable resources can enable you to build on PureCloud. Visit our documentation site today to learn more.
