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Alma Cardenas’s work lies at the intersection of technology and the environment.
Cardenas and her team support AI for Earth, an AI for Good initiative that connects grant recipients with the Microsoft cloud and AI technologies to improve how researchers and scientists monitor, model, and manage Earth’s natural systems.
“Supporting scientists who conduct innovative research on the environment using our technology is nothing short of a dream job,” says Cardenas, a senior program manager in Microsoft Corporate, External, and Legal Affairs (CELA). “Their work supports everything from tracking biodiversity using camera traps to understanding how we use our lands. Cloud and AI technologies can help automate some of that and put time back into research.”
It’s been three years since AI for Earth’s inception, and Cardenas says that her team currently supports more than 600 grant recipients across 90 countries. With the Microsoft Azure AI tools and cloud computing they need, companies like environmental startups and researchers are taking environmental challenges by storm.
“AI for Earth democratizes the use of data and AI for environmental solutions,” Cardenas says. “With the funds and access to Azure, environmental organizations can innovate and contribute to a more sustainable world.”
Cardenas hopes to make the AI for Earth grant process straightforward for grantees, but doing so hasn’t always been easy.
“Our program runs like a small startup–we’re a very small team responsible for the grants process end to end, and have to move quickly,” Cardenas says. “We used a Microsoft Excel sheet to track more than 500 grant recipients, and it quickly became challenging to manage. We couldn’t track everything we needed efficiently.”
There was a clear opportunity to use automation to modernize how the team tracks grant applicants and provide a better experience for applicants. Thankfully, an engineering team in Microsoft Digital was ready to take this on.
Their goal?
Build a tool that could manage all AI for Good grant applications, including the one Cardenas used to manage AI for Earth grants.
Developing a modern tool for managing grant applications
Gina Sauers, a program manager who oversees CELA projects that use Microsoft Dynamics 365, worked with Cardenas and her team to understand how they managed grant application data.
“They had to manually take things out of SQL and put it somewhere else to review it,” Sauers says. “It was clunky and manual, and a lot of the data was incorrect or missing.”
The engineering team built out the back end of the grant application management tool with Microsoft SQL Server. They built the front end using Microsoft Dynamics 365.
“We needed to deliver it quickly, but the architecture we developed pays dividends for other Microsoft grant programs as well,” says Ajay Dandage, a software engineer who worked on the Business Applications Solutions team in Microsoft Digital, which developed the application management tool. “We were able to use features for our other grant application programs under AI for Good.”
Because AI for Earth provides funding over a few years, grant recipients are required to submit progress reports about their Azure usage. Cardenas and her team were accustomed to reading through scores of emails to identify returning grant recipients, individually emailing them to submit progress reports, and tracking which grant recipients need support.
Sintayehu Lemma, a software engineer in Microsoft Digital, and the Business Applications Solutions team automated the notifications process using the out-of-the-box capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and some custom code.
“We used Dynamics’s functionalities to send notifications to grant recipients about their application status and send reminder emails about upcoming progress report deadlines,” Lemma says.
The original manual process increased the risk for error, but the new system built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 handles the process of reminding grant recipients to submit their progress reports and tracks the organizations who haven’t engaged yet.
“Dynamics was a great fit for our tool because it enables us to track incoming grant applications and send confirmation notifications,” Cardenas says. “We have a central database to manage everything and no longer need to rely on Excel sheets.”
Cardenas says that this new tool will make it much easier to track each grantee’s progress and provide technical advice when needed. They can also follow up with relevant Microsoft Azure training materials or connect them with experts.
“We have a 360-degree view of our grant recipients through Microsoft Dynamics 365, so we can engage with those who need the most support,” Cardenas says.
Sauers also believes that the new grant application management tool will provide a better experience for applicants.
“The application portal is their first interaction with our grant program, and we want to make sure it’s a positive one,” Sauers says. “We want to make it quick and easy for grant recipients to track their application and for Alma’s team to measure the global impact of their work.”
The grant application tool provides a base infrastructure that can be used for future AI for Good initiatives. Each grant program has its own instance, so each team managing grant applications can only access data for its initiative.
“We can easily onboard new grant programs using existing reusable back-end components,” Lemma says. “Then, we can fulfill additional requirements that may require additional customization.”
Using the out-of-the-box capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics 365
Dandage believes that Microsoft Dynamics 365 offers a lot of out-of-the-box features that can automate business processes, like sending reminders or receiving notifications when a grant application is submitted.
“For enterprise scenarios, Dynamics 365 provides a lot of capabilities for digital transformation,” Dandage says.
For their part, Cardenas and her team view and manage grant applications, send notifications, and even use Microsoft Azure Monitor to learn how many people visited the portal versus those who applied.
“You can take applications live in a matter of days using Dynamics 365’s capabilities and any customizations you may need,” Dandage says. “If you need to scale to create a large enterprise application, you can use the Dynamics platform to build as quickly as needed.”
In addition to the out-of-the box functionalities, Lemma says that teams can make customizations.
“For example, you can configure your workflow to send a notification every time a grant application is submitted,” Lemma says. “We also used custom code to generate a notification to remind grant recipients to submit a progress report at six-month intervals.”
For other teams building out application management solutions, Sauers suggests leading with your end goal rather than the technology used to build the solution. Keeping this as her North Star ensured that there was alignment across teams.
“Do you want to have a centralized tool to manage multiple applications?” Sauers says. “Do you have a short timeline? Lead with those requirements and choosing the right technology will follow suit.”
AI for Earth proposals are accepted on a rolling basis and reviewed four times a year.
