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Comment by gjvnq | Hacker News Reader

Business automation.

There seems to be so much that can be easily automated by simple scripts. We just need a better UI and a better way to teach people how to use it.

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There's been a lot of products that try, including MS's current "Power Apps" and "Power Automate" utilities. But the problem is that lots of intricate business rules need to be understood and maintained longer term. RAD has had a problem with long-term maintainability of business rules. Instead, I'd like to see a focus on a stateful GUI markup standard so that it's easier to do regular code-based CRUD apps without dealing with screwy web (un) standards, such as bloated JavaScript libraries and CSS wankiness. The UI is a bottleneck to CRUD dev productivity.

TBH that can already work quite well with Zapier and the like (in cloud-based businesses). I know businesses where almost every department from operations to HR has one or two Zapier accounts and connecting their dots, no IT or Software Engineering involved. It just needs a bit of oversight from compliance and security.

Isn’t that Microsoft’s entire “hey use active directory, and write this no code flow app” premise?

This so much.

Also I'm a big fan of chat-bots. How about a chat-bot that answers typical HR questions for an organisation?

"How much leave do I have remaining this year?" -> 16 days.

"Book the dates 10/5/2021 to 11/5/2021 as leave" -> Confirmed. Request sent to your line-manager.

etc...

I've seen so many bespoke web pages for these sorts of tasks. Including emailing someone in HR to do it for you.

I'm sure a system exists, but too lazy to google for it :)

I feel the opposite about chat-bots. It just adds to the clutter of the website (along with cookie notification, asking for email signup, etc).

If I need help, I'll go specifically to the "contact us" page.

I think the opposite. Those questions are incredibly easy to answer, why would an HR organization pay for something that's about 2 clicks away on a (yes crappy, but readily available) web portal?

It's the questions that are difficult that you need people to answer and some chat bot cannot figure out. "Chatbot, does my spouse taking a new job trigger health plan reselection allowance for my family?" Go figure out that one and maybe you've got an idea.

We have this at work with a `/afk` command in slack.

That's Workday, except it's a web gui.

Interesting idea. I thought that everything in business is automated already. Can you give some examples?

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