Microapps integrate a wide range of systems into end users’ daily workflows — administrators can leverage templates to quickly integrate Citrix Workspace with enterprise systems such as Salesforce, Workday and ServiceNow, while developers can create custom integrations to interface with almost any web service. To celebrate Earth Day 2021, we’re challenging you, our community of coders, scripters, and builders, to create microapps with positive environmental impact.
In fact, your microapp’s impact is guaranteed because Citrix is partnering with TreeSisters, a UK-registered social change and reforestation charity, to fund the replanting of tropical forests across 12 locations in Brazil, Borneo, Cameroon, India, Kenya, Mozambique, Madagascar, Nepal, and West Papua. We will plant a tree for each microapp submitted to the challenge, and 5,000 trees in honor of the winning entry. We’ll also be giving away tickets for a Fully Charged LIVE event near you, plus a custom wind turbine light show courtesy of our friends at Octopus Energy.
We’ll also feature the winning entries on the Citrix Developer YouTube channel and invite the first-prize winners to discuss their winning entry with us on a CUGC webinar.
Hang on, what’s a microapp?
Citrix Workspace’s microapps help streamline functionality from complex enterprise applications. Users receive notifications and take actions within a feed of relevant content, rather than juggling an ever-increasing set of browser tabs. Each microapp encapsulates a frequently used feature of an application, for example, updating an opportunity in Salesforce, or approving an expense request in Concur.
Behind the scenes, microapps leverage APIs to send or retrieve data on behalf of the user. Applications with RESTful JSON web services can be integrated with little or no coding, while the new microapps scripting feature (coming very soon — watch this space!), will allow you to write JavaScript that interfaces with almost any online API.
It’s easy to get started with microapps, and the Citrix Developer channel contains dozens of videos by expert developers sharing their expertise and experience.
So, what’s a green microapp?
You tell us, or rather, show us! Perhaps it integrates with a smart thermostat to allow you to better manage energy use in your home. Maybe it prompts users to power down idle resources to save both power and money. Citrix Technical Account Manager Martyn Dews has created microapps to show flood alerts from the UK Environment Agency and power supply metrics from the UK National Grid and Octopus Energy.
Be creative — scripted integrations will allow you to integrate with pretty much any online API!
OK, I’m in! How do I play?
We encourage you to form a team to tackle this challenge. Lone wolves are allowed, but we’ve found that gathering three to five participants allows you to brainstorm solutions and divide the work among you. Look at problems you’ve encountered, and research relevant online web services. For example, you might regularly power up VMs in a cloud-based demo lab but forget to power them down again. A microapp could use your cloud service provider’s APIs to identify idle VMs, prompt you to power them down, and then actually do so on your behalf, all from the comfort of Citrix Workspace. (I’ll confess — I did actually go to Azure Portal and shut down two VMs that had been idling for the past few hours as I was writing this!)
If you need help, feel free to sign up to the Citrix Converge Slack workspace if you have not already. You’ll be able to ask questions in the #microapp-developer-questions channel for the duration of the challenge, and beyond.
You have a month to identify a use case, create a microapp, and record a five-minute video explaining the use case and showing your microapp in action. Again, this is your opportunity to get creative — you’re by no means limited to a screen recording, you can incorporate diagrams, slides, and even live action to get your message across.
Submit your video here, by 5pm Pacific time, Friday May 21, 2021. We’ll judge them over the course of the following two weeks and announce the winners in a blog post on Friday, June 4.
For more details, see the official rules.
Let the games begin!
Disclaimer: The development, release and timing of any features or functionality described for our products remains at our sole discretion and are subject to change without notice or consultation. The information provided is for informational purposes only and is not a commitment, promise or legal obligation to deliver any material, code or functionality and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions or incorporated into any contract.
