Leveraging Microsoft Power Platform for Rapid Modernization of Key DHS HQ Workflows

Financial managers from DHS Components submit financial requests for approval by financial certifiers and fund approvers within HQ OCFO. PROMS provides a central location to monitor, review, and report on all financial requests within DHS. Requests are often time-sensitive, and PROMS ensures they are completed quickly through a prompt notification system.

Challenge

PROMS was originally built over the course of several years using Microsoft SharePoint. When Definitive Logic (DL) inherited the legacy PROMS, it resided on-premises on SharePoint 2016. DHS sought a rapid modernization of PROMS, while simultaneously continuing to maintain and support the existing PROMS site.

Approach

In 3 months, DL re-designed and rebuilt PROMS entirely within the DHS Office 365 tenant, becoming the 1st DHS application deployed on that platform.

A key design principle was the use of a single generic process form to establish a robust backbone for PROMS that would be easier for OCFO to maintain. By leveraging SharePoint Online, SPFx, and Microsoft Power Automate, DL established an architecture for PROMS that would allow process, form, and approval routing updates to be made without writing code by the staff in OCFO.

Outcomes

DL’s modernization of PROMS granted DHS OCFO several benefits, including:

• Reduced overall, maintenance and enhancements costs by ~80%.
• Increased scalability due to a new structured approach to storage and permissioning.
• Increased security due to migrating from fluid permissions to static permissions.

With this modern Microsoft architecture, PROMS has the groundwork to rapidly deploy additional workflows. Since the production release, DL has extended functionality several times, including the addition of a thorough “product checklist” for DHS OFO to manage Plant, Property and Equipment (PP&E) expenses.