Power User Spotlight: Marsh’s Shivkumar Hemke, Hackathon Finalist

Since the age of 11, Shivkumar has known he wanted to be a developer. In the two years since starting Unqork Boot Camp, Shivkumar has earned his Associate and Professional Configurator Certificate. In 2021, he became an Unqork Subject Matter Expert. And now, his entry in the 2022 Unqork Creator Hackathon—a tool for managing reservations for a resort facility—was selected as a finalist. 

Tell us about your award-winning Hackathon project.

Shivkumar: I created a reservation system for a resort, which includes both an application for customers and an admin dashboard. 

The customer-facing application consists of five pages. There is a homepage that welcomes users and tells them all the exciting activities at the resort. Then there is a one-day booking package page and a stay package page. On the one-day package page, users can make a reservation to enjoy all the activities in the resort. On the stay package page, users can book a luxurious overnight stay after a full day of adventures. Then, a review page enables them to add ratings and reviews for each section of the resort. Finally, there is a get-details/enquiry page, where users can enter their email and request details about packages via email. 

Then, there is the admin dashboard, which has four pages where admins and managers can see all the data about room details, room booking details, one-day booking details, and enquiry details. Admins and managers can see all the details of user interactions with the application. They can add or delete a room. They also have an option to add or delete a reservation. 

These changes then reflect in the user application, because all these elements, and both the user and admin applications, are linked dynamically and are able to handle bookings seamlessly.

How long did it take to complete the project? 

With Unqork, I was able to build out all the basic functionality in less than eight hours.

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

First of all, I used multiple snippets from Unqork Marketplace, which definitely sped things up. The snippets are already prebuilt with logic, so you just have to drag and drop and make any changes to the logic to meet your needs. I also used all three of the main grid components, which also helped to speed up the process a lot. 

What have been your favorite features of Unqork’s lately?  

There are so many things I love about Unqork, but my very favorite thing is the fact that you don’t need any setup on your PC to work on Unqork. You just need to have access to the server, and you can start working on your application from anywhere. 

Next on my list of favorites is role-based access control (RBAC). It lets you define all the personas/roles that will use an application, and then lets you provide access accordingly. You can set up APIs with security in less than five minutes. 

Also, Unqork Marketplace has so many snippets that have pre-built logic and configurations great features like Sendgrid, Loops, Carousel, etc.

Finally, I love the Unqork Community Hub. I am definitely an active user. Whenever you have any theoretical or technical questions, there are experts there to help you solve your challenges. And they respond very quickly, too. 

You’ve shared some of your best practices with us before. Do you have anything else you have learned in the meantime?  

When it comes to debugging, I suggest using the unit testing that is available in the workflow or calculator. That will make your life much easier because you can test what is happening in your calculator or data workflow in the config model itself. You can also use service logs to analyze any problems with API calls.

I have mentioned it before, but it is worth mentioning again. When building APIs, make sure to build complete layers (like proxy layer, Remote Execute) and utilize Server Side Execution and Error Handling. You want to make sure that the appropriate message is displayed to users, so they always stay informed about what’s happening in the application.