Watch Prasith present his winning submission

Meet Prasith

Prasith began his career as a Pega PRPC developer in Sri Lanka, eventually becoming a Pega Certified Senior System Architect. After garnering five years of experience, he moved to the US to work as an onsite Technical Architect. 

In 2019, he attended training on the Unqork platform and began working in the insurance domain creating solutions that digitize forms using OCR tools. “I never thought I would choose Unqork over Pega, because I had 7.5 years with Pega PRPC at that time,” says Prasith. But that’s what he did, and he never looked back. Since then, Prasith has gone on to earn his Intermediate, Associate, and Professional Configurator certificates in Unqork.

What he loves about Unqork

• Easy to learn. Unqork developers never have to learn a new code. All development is visual and intuitive. “It’s very easy to learn and start building with Unqork,” says Prasith.
• A platform that keeps evolving. “Having access to the latest platform features without any additional work is my favorite,” says Prasith. “And the Unqork platform keeps evolving!” 
• Accelerated development. “When I was working in traditional software developments, I remember the struggles I had setting up environments, maintaining them, and especially upgrading the software platforms to newer versions,” says Prasith. “Unqork project implementation takes considerably less time and effort from the developer’s point of view.” 

The power of Dynamic Refresh

Unqork’s Dynamic Refresh feature enables seamless content delivery by refreshing (or loading) parts of an Unqork application without reloading the entire page. This speeds performance and makes changes in content on a page feel more intuitive, helping to keep users engaged. 

In addition, it allows for much greater component reusability. “Apart from dynamically loading physically existing modules, Dynamic Refresh unlocks a new avenue to developers where they can manipulate component definition data and render Unqork components,” explains Prasith. 

His winning 2023 Hackathon submission: Unqork Form-Building Accelerator

Called Zaapy, Prasith’s submission took first prize in the individual contributor category. His app enables non-technical business users to automatically generate high-level Unqork front-end modules. “During the end of discovery phase, this tool can be used to generate simple front-end modules and later share those modules with the configurator team to enhance them with complex business logic,” explains Prasith. “Overall, the tool gives a jump-start to project development and reduces development time.”  

Dynamic Refresh is a key component of Prasith’s solution. “While building forms using the tool, end users can see what their final module is going to look like in an interactive preview window,” explains Prasith. “That preview window loads components using Dynamic Refresh, and changes are instantly previewed in the window, which is a very powerful and fun experience at the same time.” 

Watch the KPMG team present their winning submission

Meet the Team

• Harish Dabade, Assistant Manager. With more than seven years of professional experience, Harish has spent the last three years working on Unqork and has earned his Professional Configurator Certificate. Before developing on Unqork, he worked as a site reliability engineer. 
• Monica Sridaran, Assistant Manager. A seasoned middleware web services developer with more than nine years of experience, Monica has almost four years of experience on the Unqork platform and has earned her Professional Configurator Certificate. She is also Unqork’s first repeat Hackathon Finalist, having finished as runner up in 2022. 
• Hariharan Subramanian, Associate Consultant. With four years of professional experience as a developer, Hariharan has been an Unqork Creator for the last two years and has earned his Associate Configurator Certificate. Before working on Unqork, he was a backend Java developer and specialized in developing and consuming APIs. 

What they love about Unqork

• Release management: Monica says she loves the release management capabilities of Unqork, which help creators promote multiple Unqork applications together. This increases creator productivity and reduces the risk of error. “We used to have to manage it by ourselves. It has been life-changing,” she explains. 
• Dynamic Refresh: Besides making it easier to improve page performance, Dynamic Refresh makes it “much easier to reuse functionality in multiple places,” says Harish.
• Codeless integrations: Hariharan likes how easy it is to build integrations. “You just provide the details of the API, set the security credentials, and add the plug-in,” he explains. “You get it done in a day instead of writing code for two weeks.” 

The power of Dynamic Refresh

Unqork’s Dynamic Refresh feature enables seamless content delivery by refreshing (or loading) parts of an Unqork application without reloading the entire page. This speeds performance and makes change in content on a page feel intuitive, helping to keep users engaged. 

In addition, it allows for much greater component reusability. “Dynamic Refresh enables you to break pages into different components, so that you can easily reuse functionality in multiple places,” explains the KPMG team. 

Their 2023 Hackathon submission: Snakes & Ladders

Together, Harish, Monica, and Hariharan created an online version of the traditional board game Snakes and Ladders, which originated in ancient India as Moksha Patam. Their game is designed for two players, who roll digital dice, and then the game moves them along the board accordingly.  

When plays roll the dice, their position on the board is instantly updated.  “There is absolutely no lag,” the team members explain. 

Watch Manish present his finalst submission

Meet Manish

With 17 years of professional experience, Manish started his career as a traditional coder, eventually specializing as a .NET developer. In 2017, he joined the Persistent Systems team, and he began his journey as an Unqork creator in 2019. In the last four years, he has quickly progressed to become a Senior Architect. 

In the meantime, Manish has earned his Professional Configurator Certificate and a badge for his Unqork Agile Framework (UAF) skills. He has also been named an Unqork SME for his generous contributions to the Unqork community on the Community Hub.

What he loves about Unqork

• More creativity, less “cruft.” What Manish likes most is the fact that Unqork gets rid of cruft—all boring repetitive tasks developers have traditionally spent way too much time on. By getting rid of cruft, Manish says he can focus on the more rewarding aspects of development. “With Unqork, you don’t have to do all that duplicative work,” he says,  Manish. “I can be more creative and focus on turning ideas into practical applications.” 
• Data workflows. Unqork’s data workflow component is an ETL tool that makes it much more intuitive for creators to transform, manipulate, and move data. “It lets you easily transform one format to another format without writing a single line of code,” says Manish. 

The power of Dynamic Refresh

Unqork’s Dynamic Refresh feature enables seamless content delivery by refreshing (or loading) parts of an Unqork application without reloading the entire page. This speeds performance and makes changes in content on a page feel intuitive, helping to keep users engaged. 

His 2023 Hackathon submission: Conference Manager

To streamline and automate conference management as much as possible, Manish used Unqork to create a conference management solution, including fast and intuitive guest registration and the ability for managers to choose from a range of predefined, customizable dashboards with predefined KPIs. 

To create faster, more personalized, and more engaging user experiences, Manish leveraged Unqork’s new Dynamic Refresh capability. “With Dynamic Refresh, you only load components that are being used,” says Manish, making it much easier to ensure both fast performance as well as personalized experiences across different roles. 

Watch the Expleo team present their winning submission

Meet the Team

• Christopher Chan, Associate Developer. Soon after earning his university degree in computer science in 2021, Christopher joined the Expleo team and started training as an Unqork developer. He has two years of experience on Unqork and has earned his Associate Configurator certificate. Currently, he is working on his Professional Configurator certificate. 
• Adam Kelly, Developer. Adam also joined the Expleo team after getting his computer science degree in 2019. He began training on Unqork right away, and has been building apps on Unqork ever since. Adam is currently working on his Associate Configurator certificate. 
• Ross Walker, Senior Developer. Even before getting his computer science degree, Ross began working as a performance engineer. He joined the Expleo team in 2020, and began his career as an Unqork creator in 2021. Within six months, he was heading a development team. He has earned his Associate Configurator certificate and is now working on his Professional Configurator certificate. 

What they love about Unqork

• Data workflows: Adam says that Unqork is a great stepping stone for recent university grads. “You fear you will be thrown into the deep end,” he says. “Unqork was a great transition.” He also appreciates Unqork’s data workflow capabilities. “Data workflows help you scale configuration. You can start simply and make them more and more complex,” Adam explains. 
• Accelerated development: Christopher appreciates how quickly he can turn an idea into a working prototype—and the way that speed helps unlock creativity, thanks to the drag-and-drop interface. “With Unqork you can ideate and get to a working prototype really quickly,” says Christopher. 
• Sophisticated apps without any coding: It’s simple to get started creating on the Unqork platform, Ross explains, but that does not mean you are limited to creating simple apps. “It’s amazing how complex you can make applications with Unqork,” Ross explains. He also appreciates Unqork’s investment in expanding the platform’s capabilities. “Unqork is evolving to be much more powerful, thanks to new capabilities like Dynamic Refresh,” he says. 

The power of Dynamic Refresh

Unqork’s Dynamic Refresh feature enables seamless content delivery by refreshing (or loading) parts of an Unqork application without reloading the entire page. This speeds performance and makes changes in content on a page feel intuitive and keeps users engaged. 

“Dynamic Refresh is going to be critical for any app we build,” explains the Expleo team, which is already using the new feature extensively on client projects. “It reduces the size of pages massively and makes loads far slicker.” 

Their 2023 Hackathon submission: Property Pal 

Christopher, Adam, and Ross created Property Pal, which enables potential buyers, tenants, and sellers of properties to find the perfect match for their requirements. The application includes both admin and customer portals, and even allows users to book appointments. 

Rather than a traditional navigation using workflows, Property Pal is a single-page application with a container that relies on Dynamic Refresh to make changes on the page extremely fast, based on user inputs. “We have experience using Dynamic Refresh on our client project, and we have seen massive improvements in performance,” says Ross. “We had fun using Dynamic Refresh to build the app and see what it can do.” 

A Project Manager for Wealth & Asset Management at JPMorgan Chase, Kriti Shrivastava discusses her transition from business analyst to a codeless developer leading a team of fellow creators. Kriti and her team were recipients of the “The Fastest App to Market” award at the Unqork Create 2022 conference. 

What was your professional experience before becoming an Unqork Creator?

Kriti: I worked predominantly as a business analyst in the banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) domain. I started with insurance and worked mainly with life insurance clients in the policy administration domain. I learned that the BFSI sector has major pain points due to legacy systems that slow digital adoption. But that is just the right playground for digital and transformation opportunities.

How long have you been an Unqork Creator, and how quickly were you able to start creating?  

I started working on the Unqork platform in 2020. I didn’t have a coding background or programming knowledge, but I worked with technical strategic projects with a build timeline of three to four years. 

I have worked on Unqork on projects with similar, or even more advanced, complexity, and with Unqork we have delivered them in a matter of months. In the last three years, I have seen the platform evolve, and I have evolved with it. It is a really logical and intuitive tool.

I worked with technical strategic projects with a build timeline of three to four years. I have worked on Unqork on projects with similar, or even more advanced, complexity, and with Unqork we have delivered them in a matter of months.

Do the capabilities of the Unqork platform or in Unqork Marketplace help you think more creatively about the projects you are working on? 

They definitely do. Recently, in our company’s hackathon event, we were brainstorming ideas to automate and enhance the customer journey for fund selection and dashboarding. I came across Unqork templates for Fund Selection and Investment Management in Unqork Marketplace, and it really helped us shape our ideas and leverage the tool in a much better, much more innovative way.

Tell us about the most exciting project you have built using Unqork? 

The most exciting project, and one which I credit the most to my learning curve, is a mortgage modification workflow application, which received the Create 2022 award for “The Fastest App to Market.” 

Before, customers had to go through a very manual process of initiating a request and then filling in lots of entries on a very ugly-looking form. There were different teams involved in the approvals process, and all that was happening in a very manual way, too. Now, the whole process is streamlined and automated. 

We were very proud to deliver the project within four months. 

In your experience, is it faster to build with Unqork than it would have been with another platform (e.g. low-code or traditional code)? 

It is definitely faster to build and test with Unqork as compared to other low-code/no-code tools—and definitely much faster than traditional coding. However, anyone with knowledge of coding and who understands the logic used in low-code tools has an advantage when it comes to using the Unqork platform.  

How has Unqork changed the way you collaborate with business partners? Other developers? 

As a business analyst, I had to interact with different stakeholders—business, tech, etc., And it was often challenging to ensure that developers and the business were aligned. But with Unqork, the process becomes visual and understandable, enabling me to communicate easily with business users and collaborate with them to create better solutions and designs.

When it comes to developers, with whom we usually engage for API integrations, it has also become easier to align tech requirements and business needs using the Unqork Agile Framework templates.

What are your favorite aspects of the Unqork platform? 

First, there is the delight of previewing what we have just configured and seeing what we have created in action. The other thing is the way in which modules can be reused. Unqork offers a lot of reusability and modularity to its creators, which I feel is great.

Do you have any best practices to share with your fellow Unqork Creators? 

I would like to share two best practices. One concern is regarding storing and saving sensitive data to the Unqork platform. The other concerns securing integrations, content components, and sensitive data stored in your applications.

• Sensitive data storage. A way to keep your sensitive data secure is to use Unqork’s RBAC capabilities. Using RBAC can limit the exposure of sensitive data. Build your application so that only roles that are authorized can access sensitive data. You can control RBAC at the environment, module, and component level. That means you can customize exactly what roles have access to sensitive data. We usually restrict the data exposure by giving the right level of access, sometimes even at the component level. In addition to getting the RBAC setting right, it is very important to understand and discuss with stakeholders what data is being stored in Unqork database, for how long, and in which environment you want to store that data.
  
  
• Integration security. While doing an external integration, always try to authenticate the service/API that you are adding. This will also protect your application from external threats. You can also improve your integration security by limiting your API rate. In the API Rate Limiting settings section, you can limit the number of API requests from any single IP per server per 60 seconds. The smallest number of requests you can enter is 100, while the largest is 1,000,000. We recommend setting this to a lower number, since this reduces the likelihood of automated attacks.

Deepa was introduced to the Unqork platform in late 2020 after working four years as a program analyst coding with Java. Over the last two years, she has become a strong advocate for codeless, becoming a Certified Professional Configurator and taking a leadership role on her team at Accenture.  

How quickly were you able to get up and running on the Unqork platform?

Deepa: I attended Unqork’s bootcamp training for three weeks. Right away I could see that, compared to working in Java, Unqork was much easier to adopt. As soon as I completed the training, I was put right onto a client project. 

I thought it would be difficult, but I was able to explore and use Unqork components, functionalities, and whatever else I needed in a much easier way than if I had been working in Java. 

How does working on the Unqork platform compare to your experience working with code?   

When you’re working with code, everything takes much longer, and you have to analyze long lines of code. Everything changed when I started working on Unqork projects, and I am not about to return to working in Java. 

With Unqork, everything is drag-and-drop, so it is very easy to learn. You can figure out issues and resolve them really quickly and easily. You’re able to do more in less time. It makes it easier to stick to timelines, which means much less stress.

Tell us about some of the most exciting projects you have built using Unqork on the job? 

I worked on a major policy administration application for health insurance that included everything from Rate/Quote/Bind and policy purchase through both automatic and manual renewal as well as cancellation. 

I also worked on a really interesting property insurance project that involves lots of possible scenarios and conditions. It was a challenging project, and it took time to work through all the logic, but not a lot of time to actually build it in Unqork. I was able to complete the work myself, and I was recognized for what I accomplished, which was exciting. 

The speed with which we can complete a change or enhancement makes us happy, and our business partners too. 

Has Unqork’s codeless approach changed the way you collaborate with clients and business partners? 

Yes, definitely. When we demo something to business partners and they want us to make a change or add an enhancement, we can do so in a short span of time. If we have any doubts about how to proceed, we can reach out to the business partners and make sure we resolve any issues quickly. The speed with which we can complete a change or enhancement makes us happy, and our business partners too. 

What is your favorite thing about creating with the Unqork platform? 

My favorite thing is the Unqork Grid System. In addition, Unqork Workflow also makes things much easier and faster. Above all, I like the fact that someone who is not a coding professional can learn the Unqork platform within a short span of time. As I mentioned, within three weeks I completed initial training on Unqork, and I was suddenly working on a client project. Anyone can easily learn how to build a complex application in a short time.  

Do you have any best practices to share with your fellow Unqork creators? 

Yes, I would mention error handling. I recommend having error handling in every plugin, no matter what plugin you’re using. That way, you can easily find out which plugin is failing or what API call is failing. That will make the job much easier. 

Also, remember that you can use the transforms function rather than the data workflow when you know the API request will involve a large data set. 

Priyanka was introduced to the Unqork platform in early 2021 after five years as a backend engineer working in Java databases and services. In less than two years, she has become a Certified Professional Configurator and taken a leadership role with her team at Accenture. To top it all off, her entry in the 2022 Unqork Creator Hackathon—an expense tracking app—won first place.  

Tell us about your award-winning Hackathon project?

Priyanka: I created an expense tracker application using different features of Unqork, including the workflow module, dynamic grids and free-form grid, and Unqork Marketplace snippets. The application helps employees claim their expenses. Once entered, the submissions are routed to management for approval or rejection. The application also includes dashboards for employees and managers, email notifications to employees upon approval, and cash transfers based on the employee’s bank details.

How did the Unqork platform enable you to build this solution so quickly?  

The Marketplace snippets helped me a lot, especially functionalities like date pickers and single upload files. I was able to easily modify them according to my needs. The app also included complex logics such as loops, and Marketplace provides a variety of loop snippets, including batch loop. 

I also used API configurations and SSN masking. I just had to implement the logic, and those features were easily available in the modules.

In addition, Unqork’s enhanced grid system helped a lot. It has lots of inbuilt functionalities similar to Excel spreadsheets. And the nested data structures and inline functions made things go faster. 

With Unqork, the entire application can be built surprisingly fast, thanks to its cloud-based architecture. That means we can really focus on client requirements, rather than building complex coding structures.

Tell us about some of the most exciting projects you have built using Unqork on the job? 

Currently, I’m working on an insurance project with a centralized workflow that enables vehicle insurance quoting. The application has multiple external interfaces, timers, and also includes a variety of different roles. It has a dashboard too, with a graphical overview of KPIs. 

How does working with Unqork compare to your previous experience as a developer? 

Before Unqork, I was working in Java. We would work for months or years on huge, code-based applications. Just fixing runtime errors and debugging was really time-consuming. 

I was lucky enough to be introduced to the Unqork platform after this coding journey, and I can see a huge difference. With Unqork, the entire application can be built surprisingly fast, thanks to its cloud-based architecture. That means we can really focus on client requirements, rather than building complex coding structures.

How does Unqork change your day-to-day experience? 

I really like working with Unqork. It has allowed me to work on a larger variety of projects, and also across different domains. When I was coding, I was much more limited. I worked only within a single domain. Also, we were confined to one aspect of development, For example, testing and promotion were handled by different teams, so I didn’t get much exposure to the larger software lifecycle. With Unqork, you can visualize the entire flow. You can easily build, test, deploy, and promote an end-to-end application in no time.

What is your favorite thing about creating with the Unqork platform? 

With Unqork, you can be more creative, because you are able to build an application just by dragging and dropping. Complex logic—sending emails, automating Google addresses, maps, charts, and graphs—are very easy to implement, and so are third-party integrations. I also really enjoy data workflows, which have a  lot of functionality and can be configured in multiple ways. You can even visualize the data flow. All this gives you a sense of confidence that you can build any application end to end.

However, my favorite aspect is security and encryption, which is required in a perfect application. I particularly love the role-based features in Unqork. I recently built an application with lots of different roles for different users, including a portal with different views depending on roles. Unqork made it much easier to handle all of that. 

Do you have any best practices to share with your fellow Unqork Creators? 

First, when you are creating a module for a large application, there can be a huge amount of components. It really helps to  break those modules into smaller modules, and then import them to the main module. 

Also, the naming convention is very important, especially in a large project. It helps other Creators understand a module’s logic properly and ensure things like proper error handling for better performance.

“Soon after earning her degree in computer science in 2020, Shweta Patil, Software Engineer, Marsh, began training on Unqork’s codeless platform. In the last two years, she has earned both her Associate and Professional Configurator Certificates. Most recently, her entry in the 2022 Unqork Creator Hackathon—a tool for teachers to manage their classes—was selected as a finalist. 

How quickly were you able to get up and running on Unqork?

Shweta: First, I attended Unqork Boot Camp in November 2020, and then completed all the courses to earn an Associate Configurator Certificate in about one month. Within a couple of more weeks, I was working on client projects. As I worked on that project, I kept learning and discovering new things about Unqork, and that hands-on experience helped me get a handle on working on the platform. 

Tell us about your award-winning Hackathon project.

I created an application called the Classroom, which is designed for teachers. Teachers can create a class on whatever subject they choose, whether over one or two terms. They can set up whatever exams are required for the class and upload an Excel spreadsheet with student details. Then anytime the teacher logs into the application, they can view the class details, and enter and view student grading. 

There is also an email option that enables the teacher to send exam results to individual students and any personalized comments. And a leaderboard enables teachers to monitor the progress of all their students. 

I was able to build the entire application in just 20 hours. 

How did the Unqork platform enable you to build this solution so quickly?  

I was able to build the login/logout pages by drawing on components in Unqork Marketplace. I just had to download the snippets from Marketplace, and that saved a lot of time building those features.

Tell us about the most interesting client projects you have worked on since becoming an Unqork Creator?  

While working at my previous employer, I worked on a project in the insurance domain. The client already had an existing application that took them about a year and a half to build. And it took them six months of development every time they wanted to offer a new insurance product. They decided to migrate the entire application to Unqork with the goal of being able to release new products as quickly as possible and with greater speed to market. 

With a group of five other Unqork developers, we were able to build the entire application in just four months, which really surprised our client. And we built it in a way that enables them to release a new product in just ten days, including testing. The client was really happy. In fact, they decided to migrate more applications to Unqork!

When developing any application, you have the logic and the syntax. For most developers, the syntax part, which usually involves coding, is the boring part. But we love dealing with the logic part. Unqork has removed the syntax part, so now we are not wasting our time writing code just to build a simple text field. With Unqork we are dealing with pure logic, and that is very exciting for me.

How is Unqork different from other development platforms you have worked with? 

Before working on Unqork, I was trained on ReactJS and worked as a front-end developer. ReactJS is a vast Javascript library, so it took a long time to get a good handle of it. It also required a lot of coding knowledge and multiple languages to build an application. With Unqork, I didn’t need any prior knowledge of any coding language. 

When developing any application, you have the logic and the syntax. For most developers, the syntax part, which usually involves coding, is the boring part. But we love dealing with the logic part. Unqork has removed the syntax part, so now we are not wasting our time writing code just to build a simple text field. With Unqork we are dealing with pure logic, and that is very exciting for me. 

Has Unqork changed the way you collaborate with clients?  

Every Friday, we have a client call to demo the work we have been doing. Unqork is a new technology, and the client is very curious about what it can do and all the ways it can integrate other technologies. That has helped make it a very collaborative process. 

One client was so curious that he started to learn how to use the Unqork himself. So he was using the Unqork lingo with us. That was great!

Do you have any best practices to share with other creators?  

Right now, I’m working on a really big project with a team of 40 or 50 developers that will be going on for years. We developers have a habit of skipping the step of writing notes about the components we are creating, which is important so that other developers understand the logic. But working in such a big team, it becomes very important to write those comments. Doing so makes it much easier for other developers to understand components and tweak them if they need to. This really helps to work collaboratively, especially because our team works in different time zones. 

I also suggest that when you are building a new application, you start generating conflict analysis reports right from the beginning. Then, if you are following all the instructions and resolving all the issues, you end up with a much cleaner configuration.