When trying to create under a strict deadline, Dyna Wang and Chais McRae of Canadian partner Online Business Systems sought to implement a vision to make a more beautiful and useful CMS portal for their clients, with no code knowledge needed by the end user. Wang and McRae won the Partner Competition in the 2015 CreateNow Hackathon, and Wang stopped by theCUBE during Knowledge 15 to discuss how he and McRae ultimately triumphed over the competition.

The power of the ServiceNow platform

The Hackathon is an annual competition hosted by ServiceNow where administrators and developers race the clock to create innovative, transformational uses of the ServiceNow Service Automation Platform. They get the opportunity to work side-by-side with some of the world’s most experienced ServiceNow developers during an 11-hour event designed to illustrate the power of the ServiceNow platform. The CreateNow Hackathon allows anyone to explore the limits of what can be created on the ServiceNow platform.

Dave Vellante, host of theCUBE, wanted more information on the partner company they worked for. Wang explained that they served clients from the energy, health, financial and public sectors. Their company seeks to guide organizations to strategies and realize innovative business and technology solutions. Commendations were in order for Wang, who became an employer of ServiceNow within a year of graduation and shortly thereafter won the coveted Partner Competition of the CreateNow Hackathon 2015.

Super user friendly

The vision and objectives of the winners were to give end-users access to their application so that every non-graphic designer can create a very rich and responsive user experience. Amazed at the ability to complete their task in such a short time frame, Vellante asked, “What did you anticipate to be your biggest challenge?” Wang explained that their biggest challenge was whether it was even possible.

After four hours into the competition, Wang and McRae were able to solve development issues they encountered just by browsing the ServiceNow Community. Nathan Firth and Travis Toulson helped to solve this issue. Consequently, they developed the packaged, bootstrapped portal page. ServiceNow aims to optimize user experience.  Using Bootstrap on the ServiceNow platform, no-code users will be able to build pages with vision flair, even without any knowledge of Bootstrap.  They described their innovation as “super user friendly” and something they will take to your customers as soon as possible, since it will make their lives easier.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of ServiceNow Knowledge 15.