Crisis Communication solution feedback

[mabolan]

On Monday afternoon, as news of COVID-19 cases spread globally, we pulled together a team to help customers coordinate their own information sharing and team collaboration in response to evolving conditions in times of crisis. Today, less than 48 hours later, we’re releasing the first version of that solution for any customer organization to quickly implement. You can read more about the solution in our blog post or get the full instructions for how you can implement your own Crisis Communication app here.

We're extremely excited to hear how the community leverages this app, so we've created this thread to hear directly from you. Feel free to share your experience customizing the solution and altering it for your own needs. Over the next few weeks, we'll take your responses to make the app even better and post incremental updates. 😁

[Mr-Dang-MSFT]

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@martinkwright wrote:

Where would I see if the component is activating? Crisis Communication APP & The Admin APP? Would there be a new way on the admin app to add category and order? 

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If using Category and Order, these changes will only be in the Crisis Communication app. If using Rank, the fix I explained in the earlier post will work with the existing setup.

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@martinkwright wrote:

Is there a way to grab the latest app and upload w/o going through the entire set instructions? Just the Power APP's I suppose if the rest of the data structures and connections remain.

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You do not need to go through all the instructions. You only need to import the zips that you need (extract CrisisCommunication.zip from the package and import it on make.powerapps.com).

[martinkwright]

I tried I really did. Here is what I have and you can tell me if I missed something. Saved, Republished.. No Dice. Thanks for hanging in here w/ me. 

[LBlakeman_VS]

Love this! Only a couple "goofs" I see and 1 enhancement:

1. Under "Company News" I see the cards for each publication, it shows the Title and Blurbs, but otherwise, it's blank creating massive white space and wasted real estate. I would like to see it function similarly to the "World News" tab, where the body of the news article with "read more" option on the card. 
2. The "Links" shows the Description inputted, not the Title. I would rather it show the Title, possibly Description underneath. I had to change all the Descriptions to be the Title for it to show more effectively. 
3. On the actual app, you see "Emergency Contacts", while on the Admin side it's listed as "Contacts". I wish you could see all the company contacts and where each person's current working location ("status") with their job title and contact information. This would be slightly more useful than "emergency contacts" which we have very few of. 
   Example: I set my "status" as "Working for Home" or "In the Office" or "Traveling" or "At an Event". This would then populate into the "Contacts" tab, so anyone within the company knew where I was working from. The email thing is okay, but we're currently on Mandatory WFH (which makes the email obsolete) with a skeleton crew in each office. It'd be cool to know by looking at the contact list who was on this crew by seeing the Status of "In the Office" next to their name, job title, and contact info (which could be populated through Azure & Teams if they have a MS phone plan).

[Henryed07]

Thanks for the fix @demora  Apologies for the late response! 

[Anonymous]

Hi, I'm having troubles deploying the app because we don't have Outlook 365 yet. Is there any way around this?

[Anonymous]

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@martinkwright wrote:

Thank you so much for making this available. We have corporately implemented and have all functions working, a single point for communication and accurate information on our work from home resources. 

We have only had one issue so far. The sort order on the FAQ's does not seem to change no matter what rank we give the items. It always displays them in the order they were created. Is there a quick fix to address sorting on the FAQ's?

Thanks Again! 

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Hi @martinkwright , I had the same issue and solved it thusly:

Go to FAQList_1

Go to FAQ

Change the formula to SortByColumns(colFAQ, "Rank",Ascending)

Hope this helps!

Merel

[Anonymous]

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@Mr-Dang-MSFT wrote:

Hi @Anonymous 

Notes:

I think you're on a previous version of the app; the current version has a fix for auto-reply. You can download the latest CrisisCommunicationPackage.zip, extract, and import the parts of it that you need (CrisisCommunication.zip in this case).

Can you share more about what you mean by scrolling through the news screens?

Yes, you can add and revise colNav collection. For that matter there are configurations you can change in OnStart of the App and OnVisible of the first screen. Please be advised that if you have already changed these, you may want to copy them to a text editor before importing a new version of the app. Then copy parts of it back after reviewing changes.

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Hi @Mr-Dang-MSFT !

Again thanks for your swift response. 

I downloaded the latest version after your reply but... That gives me all kinds of errors related to me not having access rights to the data (which I do have, of course). 'Not a valid connector - Error response', for example. Luckily you explained about restoring previous versions, so I was able to do that 🙂

What I mean with the scrolling is that this button does not work:

In the company news feed or in the World news feed. (previously it worked in one of the feeds but now it doesn't in either). Shift+mouse wheel does scroll.

I will try with the colNav, I now understand (I think) how to do that, thanks!

So in addition to the other questions I had I now wonder why I get all those errors with the latest version of the app (I also deleted the previous SharePoint connections and added them again but that did not work, unfortunately).

Thanks,

Merel

[Anonymous]

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@Mr-Dang-MSFT wrote:

Hi @Anonymous 

Notes:

I think you're on a previous version of the app; the current version has a fix for auto-reply. You can download the latest CrisisCommunicationPackage.zip, extract, and import the parts of it that you need (CrisisCommunication.zip in this case).

Can you share more about what you mean by scrolling through the news screens?

Yes, you can add and revise colNav collection. For that matter there are configurations you can change in OnStart of the App and OnVisible of the first screen. Please be advised that if you have already changed these, you may want to copy them to a text editor before importing a new version of the app. Then copy parts of it back after reviewing changes.

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Hi @Mr-Dang-MSFT !

Again thanks for your swift response. 

I downloaded the latest version after your reply but... That gives me all kinds of errors related to me not having access rights to the data (which I do have, of course). 'Not a valid connector - Error response', for example. Luckily you explained about restoring previous versions, so I was able to do that 🙂

What I mean with the scrolling is that this button does not work:

In the company news feed or in the World news feed. (previously it worked in one of the feeds but now it doesn't in either). Shift+mouse wheel does scroll.

I will try with the colNav, I now understand (I think) how to do that, thanks!

So in addition to the other questions I had I now wonder why I get all those errors with the latest version of the app (I also deleted the previous SharePoint connections and added them again but that did not work, unfortunately).

Thanks,

Merel

[Anonymous]

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@Mr-Dang-MSFT wrote:

Hi @Anonymous 

Notes:

I think you're on a previous version of the app; the current version has a fix for auto-reply. You can download the latest CrisisCommunicationPackage.zip, extract, and import the parts of it that you need (CrisisCommunication.zip in this case).

Can you share more about what you mean by scrolling through the news screens?

Yes, you can add and revise colNav collection. For that matter there are configurations you can change in OnStart of the App and OnVisible of the first screen. Please be advised that if you have already changed these, you may want to copy them to a text editor before importing a new version of the app. Then copy parts of it back after reviewing changes.

---

Hi @Mr-Dang-MSFT !

Again thanks for your swift response. 
 
I downloaded the latest version after your reply but... That gives me all kinds of errors related to me not having access rights to the data (which I do have, of course). 'Not a valid connector - Error response', for example. Luckily you explained about restoring previous versions, so I was able to do that 🙂
 
What I mean with the scrolling is that this button does not work:

In the company news feed or in the World news feed. (previously it worked in one of the feeds but now it doesn't in either). Shift+mouse wheel does scroll.
 
I will try with the colNav, I now understand (I think) how to do that, thanks!
 
So in addition to the other questions I had I now wonder why I get all those errors with the latest version of the app (I also deleted the previous SharePoint connections and added them again but that did not work, unfortunately).
 
Thanks,
Merel

[himsoni85]

@Mr-Dang-MSFT  Just to confirm the process of updating the app version.

• We import the CrisisCommunication zip file.
• Re-configure the SharePoint list connections
• Optionally: customize icons, name and description of the App
• Save and Publish.

Will this retain the sharing permissions and URL or do we have to do this all over again? Is there a simpler way to deploy the enhancements?