Collaborate to innovate

In the lead-up to hack week, any staff member can pitch an idea. These ideas might take inspiration from our roadmap, involve trying out an emerging technology, or simply aim to resolve a pain point. Some years have a theme; this year, teams were encouraged to build both for and with AI. 

Hackers – including engineers, data scientists, and QAs – form small groups and adopt these ideas, or come up with their own schemes. Each group has four days to work on their project and prepare a short video presentation. Judges are appointed from across the company to pick their winners in three categories (most wanted, most innovative, and best video). There is a live audience vote in two further categories (best team name and best hack). 

2023 saw an exceptional crop of hacks with some very impressive videos. Let’s get to it.

Most wanted (and best hack)

Hack name: HappierKat!

Team name: That feeling when you look down expectantly for the second half of your sandwich only to realize that you’ve already eaten it 

The winning hack in the most wanted category takes data submitted in surveys, pages and forms and stores this as insight data. This unlocks various capabilities, such as being able to customize the email sent to form respondents. By pushing submitted data into an insight data collection, we can also use this data in program decision nodes to set marketing preferences, based on checked values in the submission.

As well as being picked by the judges, the Team That feeling … sandwich also saw off strong competition to be voted best hack by the audience.

Best video

Hack name: GPTranslatortron: Automate translations for in–app help, app translations, campaign translations, and perhaps even chat 

Team name: Lost in Translation

Our platform is already available in 15 languages, but can we use WinstonAI to automate translation as we add more features? Even better, can we offer translation for the text that merchants input into Easy Editor? Can we enable translation in chat threads? GPTranslatortron delivers a resounding Yes to all of these questions.

Most innovative

Hack name: Dotdigital Automation Alchemists: Using natural language to automate Program generation using GPT4, RAG, and custom models 

Team name: Team Automation Innovate (Team AI)

Inspired by the idea that program building could be automated to save time and cost, this hack explored the use of retrieval-augmented generation to teach ChatGPT about our programs. The team used Microsoft’s Azure AI Search platform to store and index vector embeddings, which then allowed WinstonAI to interpret a prompt containing a program description like:

At 1 pm on the day the contact is created, send the message “Hello there General Kenobi you are a bold one.”   

Best team name

That feeling when you look down expectantly for the second half of your sandwich only to realize that you’ve already eaten it

Arguably the longest and silliest team name in the history of hack week, That feeling … sandwich swept the board with over 40% of the popular vote. 

Notable mention

Hack name: Watercooler Roulette 

Team name: Culture Catalyst

A worthy runner-up in the best video category, this hack was all about team bonding and morale for remote teams. A series of Slack messages prompt interactions and conversations between employees who might not have the opportunity to meet in person around a physical water cooler.

Here are some examples of how you can get started with our plugin.

Classic sign-up widget

With our new “Dotdigital Signup Form” block, you can use the block editor to position a simple sign-up form wherever your theme permits – in a widget area alongside your content, or on any page or post. Use custom CSS to seamlessly align with your site design.

By default, we’ll reload the same page on submit – but you can have it redirect to a different page, or even a completely different website, if you prefer. With our very latest version, you can now opt to submit the form via AJAX, so users see a success message directly below the form, right after clicking ‘Subscribe’. 

Capture more detail

Your use case may require capturing more information. Our lists and data fields come into play here, providing added flexibility to construct many different types of form. 

Embed a survey

As an alternative to using the plugin configuration, you can now embed any of your Dotdigital surveys, landing pages and forms into your WordPress layouts using the block editor. With this approach, all the form fields are arranged and designed in Dotdigital – you simply select the form you want from a select element, inside a block.

Of course, with form options in Dotdigital, you can route sign-ups into specific lists in your account, or enroll contacts into a program.

Capture mobile numbers in a popover form

Dotdigital surveys, landing pages and forms can be set as popovers, with an option panel to tune the presentation of the modal on your website. Again, use the WordPress block editor to create timely promotions in seconds.

This is just a small selection of examples of what you can achieve with our Dotdigital for WordPress plugin. All of us in the engineering team here at Dotdigital are excited to see many more uses on your websites in the months to come.

Learn more about how to install and use Dotdigital for WordPress in our support documentation.