First Ever Sitecore Hackathon Contest

NTT DATA is sponsoring the first ever Sitecore Hackathon! Teams that have signed up by 6 pm EST January 21, 2014 will have the opportunity to participate in the contest. Eligible teams will have 24 hours — starting Friday January 24th 2014 at 8PM EST and ending Saturday January 25th 2014 at 8PM EST – to build and submit a Sitecore module best implementing the idea for the Hackathon, as determined by our panel of judges. The idea will be will be announced an hour before the Hackathon starts on January 24th.

Best Authoring Experience Enhancement Module (Content Editor/Media Library)

The hackathon was judged by Pieter Brinkman (Sitecore), Tim Ward & Alistair Deneys (Sitecore) and Katherine Lee (NTT Data).

The top three teams in the order of highest score are:
1. Heisenberg (77 Points – Judge 1: 25 Points, Judge 2: 25 Points, Judge 3: 27 Points)
2. Team Orange (70 Points – Judge 1: 24 Points, Judge 2: 24 Points, Judge 3: 22 Points) – Winner
3. Uniques (68 Points – Judge 1: 22 Points, Judge 2: 23 Points, Judge 3: 23 Points)

Heisenberg is one of two NTT Data teams who participated and based on the rules they cannot win or be awarded any prizes.

Grifter Ink – The people responsible for performing approvals on Sitecore workflow items are often times managers who do not spend their days within the Sitecore Content Editor. Often times, these individuals can be unfamiliar and overwhelmed by the offerings of the Sitecore Content Editor. The GrifterInk.SmartWorkflowEmail has been designed to let these managers perform their responsibilities of approving content changes without having to be exposed to the entirety of the Content Editor. The GrifterInk.SmartWorkflowEmail module allows Content Authors and Sitecore Administrators to create a “Smart Email Action” item under any workflow command. The Smart Email Action allows for total customization by the Author / Admin.

Team Orange – Tools for visualizing content dependencies within Sitecore; when editing content, see on which pages that content is being used. GitHub project: https://github.com/team-orange/sitecore-content-usage-tools

Team Admin/B – Added an “Add Item” button to the Sitecore Multilist field, so that an author can create related content without having to search the content tree for the correct location.  When an author clicks “Add This”, the module presents a control allowing the author to enter an item name and select an item type from a dropdown list, populated from Insert Options.  The new item is created in the field’s data source location, and is opened in a nested tab for further editing.

Team Awesome – Chat application for use within the content editor to help editors in collaborating better when they are producing content. The chat application broadcasts messages between the editors in a SPEAK application using SignalR. The application is opened by clicking an icon in the tray. When a message is received the application also shows a notification with the message in the content editor even when the app is not running.

The Dream Corps – Our entry was an attempt to implement a feature that we’ve been asked for from several different clients over the years. The vision of the feature was to allow content editors to download a spread sheet of Sitecore items in CSV format, edit them as a group and then upload them back to Sitecore. The proof of concept we developed was tested with a set items using the sample item template and allows an editor to select a set of items from a specific template, choose the fields to be downloaded and download all items under “/sitecore/content” root of that template type to CSV. This file can then be edited and uploaded back to Sitecore which will update the items. Although the POC ended up being more rudimentary than we had initially planned. The concept was to allow users to upload an entire site of content via CSV, something that could be used to vastly speed up activities like content entry where clients often already have their data in spreadsheet format.

Team General Direction – The concept of the module is to enable workflows to notify editors real time. The notifications are visible within Sitecore or via a tray notification directly in the Windows desktop. To this end a workflow action, a Sitecore application and a WPF tray notification app have been created.

Team Heisenberg – Workflow Improvements: SPEAK Application that maps items to users based on the last person to move the item through workflow within a time frame.
Custom Search View on the Bucket Pane that shows the user workflow history for each item searched. Validation on Approve to ensure Datasources of renderings for the current item are all in a Final state. Warning Message on items that have Datasources not in Final state to allow the user to navigate to the items and update them. Pipeline that intercepts on Workflow comment output in order to create links to bug tracking software (ex: wpg-1020 would turn into …/nttdata.atlassian.net/browse/wgp-1020). New facet for the Bucket Pane that allows users to filter by items workflow state. https://github.com/NTTDATA/Heisenberg

Uniques – The module should give the content authors the possibility to view many different types of references on a Item in the Content Editor. Through simple providers and configuration, it’s highly extendable. https://github.com/unic/SitecoreReferenception and http://marketplace.sitecore.net/en/Modules/Referenception.aspx

3PT – Sitecore Super Search and Replace: Our entry allows content editors to run an advanced search for content items and export them in XML format to be edited en-masse in tools like Microsoft Excel and re-imported into Sitecore. We plan to re-develop and extend this solution to enable advanced find and replace functionality directly within the Sitecore client. Look for it in the marketplace sometime in the very near future!

Eligible teams must consist of at least three contributing code members, and teams must sign up by 6 pm EST January 21, 2014.

Eligible teams will be given access to DropBox folders for code submission. The date/time stamp on DropBox will be used as the official submission date/time. For consideration in the contest, a team’s submission must be uploaded by January 25th 2013, 8PM EST. The module should be compatible with the latest version of Sitecore 7.1.Teams should submit the Code, the installable package and any documentation to explain the package provided.

See Official Rules for full details.

We have three judges experienced with Sitecore who will be judging all submissions: Pieter Brinkman (Sitecore); CMS Product Team (Sitecore); and Katherine Lee (NTT DATA).
Each judge will award the each team points for how their module’s submission meets the following criteria.

• Quality of Code (potential of 10 points) – Cleanliness of code, commenting, code structure and follow standard coding standards & naming conventions.
• Creativity (10 points) – Is this solution unique? Did the team give us a diamond in the rough or a quality diamond?
• Performance (5 points) – Does the module work swiftly?
• Ease of Install and Config (5 points) – Does the module provide adequate instructions to the user installing it? How easy is it to install and configure?

The winner will be picked based on overall scores from all three judges.

Yes there are prizes. The winning team will receive a $100 Amazon gift card per team member, making the total $300 per team. The Amazon gift cards will be emailed to the email addresses on file no later than 10 days after the winning team is announced.

• No purchase necessary.
• Must not be a legal resident of Cuba, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Sudan, Italy, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, the Philippines, Venezuela, Vietnam, or Province of Quebec.
• Must 21 years or older at time of entry.
• Registration deadline 1/21/14, 6 pm EST; entry deadline 1/25/14, 8 pm EST.
• Additional terms, conditions and restrictions apply.
• See Official Rules for complete details, including judging criteria and prize details.

1. Pieter Brinkman – Sitecore
2. CMS Product Team – Sitecore
3. Katherine Lee – NTT Data

• Best Content/Blog Syndication Module (Lars N)
• Best Authoring Experience Improvement Module (Marek M)
• Best Sitecore User Control
• Best End User Widget (Marek M)
• Best Marketing Module – Improving the way of how Sitecore is demo’ed to potential customers (Marek M)
• Best Media Framework Integration Module (we already have Brightcove and Ooyala, what about Azure Media and Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)

• Best Integration Of User Generated Content
• Best Solution Of Reliable Time Based Scheduled Tasks
• Coolest Module using Item Buckets
• Best use of SPEAK
• Best Sitecore Rocks Plugin
• Open source API for sharing personalization info between sites without compromising PII
• A Sitecore plug-in/tool to help with WCAG 2.0 AA compliance
• Best Developer Productivity Tool
• Best Chat Module
• Best Sitecore Rocks Plugin
• Best Media Library Enhancement
• Index none sitecore content in SC 7.x
• Best extension to the Page Editor
• Best use of the Sitecore Web API
• Sitecore Review/Rating Module
• Sitecore WebForms Kickstarter
• Best new Sitecore field
• Best content import module – GUI with an extendable API

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