We conducted an architectural review of a Microsoft Power App for the South Australian Department of Human Services (DHS) to assess its suitability for business requirements and evaluate the Microsoft Power Platform’s viability. Our assessment identified key usability, data management, and technical challenges that were hindering staff efficiency, including connectivity issues, poor user interface, and reporting limitations. We provided DHS with a comprehensive review outlining these limitations, six key recommendations for improvement, and a proposed high-level architecture that leveraged Microsoft’s latest capabilities. As a result, DHS gained a clear roadmap for enhancing the application’s functionality, scalability, and alignment with their operational needs.
The Client
The Department of Human Services (DHS) brings together a range of services, funding and policy responsibilities which together support fairness, opportunity and choice for all South Australians.
DHS has lead responsibility in the areas of early intervention to support children’s wellbeing, disability, domestic violence, screening services and youth justice. The department also provides a wide range of grants to community organisations and concessions.
The Challenge
The Factor was engaged to conduct an architecture review of a Microsoft Power App for the Department of Human Services.
The key outcome of the review was to determine if the application was fit for purpose for the key business requirement of the Department, and secondly if the Microsoft Power Platform was the right technical choice to meet the requirements.
Users reported issues regarding the lack of ability for the application to efficiently capture and report the appropriate data required. Main issues included:
- Network connectivity issues
- Poor user interface
- Hardware constraints
- Resourcing constraints
- Users are not able to conduct searches based on keywords.
- Users are not able to search across multiple log types.
- Users must manually scroll through data to determine what is relevant for reporting purposes.
- The tool utilised to extract aggregate data is limited, and the key SME’s responsible for the tool are no longer available.
- Unable to filter on key pieces of information without creating an offline spreadsheet.
- Unable to report on aggregate data
SA Department of Human Services staff reported various environmental factors which impact their ability to successfully record information within the application, including:
- Time constraints
- Loss of connection to the network
- Staff training capability
- All system changes requiring development effort
The Solution
After deciding to upgrade their CRM system to Dynamics 365 cloud, the teams began reviewing their system architecture and creating a roadmap to transition them from their outdated and disjointed legacy system to Microsoft’s powerful cloud-based solution that covers a comprehensive suite of business applications, integrating customer engagement, sales, marketing, and service capabilities.
This included:
- Dynamics 365 Sales: Allows Austrade staff worldwide to engage with clients on relevant opportunities at the right time. Thanks to D365’s superior user experience that tracks client information with a single view and facilitates collaboration on client proposals.
- Dynamics 365 Customer Insights: Provides a 360-degree customer view which helps inform customer engagement choices and actions.
- Dynamics 365 Marketing: Enables personalized engagement across various channels.
- Integrations: Cohesive integration between Dynamics 365 and Microsoft stack, including Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Azure Data Lake, Azure Synapse Analytics and Azure Data Factory.
By adopting Dynamics 365, Austrade aimed to centralize its operations, enable seamless collaboration among its teams, and gain actionable insights from data to make informed business decisions.
Key personnel from The Factor were engaged in several roles including, Program Managers, D365 Functional Consultants and Developers.
The Review Assessment
Our review concluded that the application in its current form is not fit-for-purpose as it does not meet the requirements as set out for the solution.
However, Microsoft Power Platform can meet and exceed the existing requirements, leveraging design changes and using components that have not been utilised or were not available at the time when the application was initially built and implemented.
The Outcome
After delivering the Application Architectural review – Final Report, DHS obtained several positive outcomes.
- The Department was able to identify and understand all the key pain points and issues from the users of the application.
- DHS were provided with a summary and assessment of the current application architecture. Limitations were outlined and assessed to be inflexible and not scalable.
- We provided SA DHS with six key recommendations (with supporting information and context) to implement to enable the application to become fit-for-purpose to meet the requirements as set out for the solution.
- A high-level proposed architecture was produced with conceptual future state components of the system which would align with Microsoft’s recommended deployment of Power Apps.
- The Department was able to understand the estimated time and costs to implement each recommendation and the steps that would be involved.
Why did you choose The Factor to be part of your team?
We reached out to Microsoft to put us in touch with a Microsoft PowerApps partner with experience in regulatory environments to help us get a handle on where we were at and how to move forward. We were looking for someone to help rebuild trust in what the technology really can deliver and how to put us on a path that worked for us.
How would you summarise the experience as a whole?
Systematic, precise, detailed. Throughout our collaboration, Factor recommendations were insightful and deeply relevant to our specific needs and goals. Their ability to convey complex technical information concisely has been invaluable. Advice we trusted, put in a way that made sense for our context. They focused on what mattered and managed time well to deliver on the outcomes we needed.