Move over gift cards, movie vouchers and career progression plans - today’s employee wants enamel pins!
What started as a proof of concept for a client has become the highlight of our weekly team meetings. We call it PinPals - and it combines AI image analysis, SharePoint automation, and a growing collection of enamel pins into something our team genuinely looks forward to every week.
Here’s how it works, why it works, and how we built it.
The Idea
Managing IT for Gold Coast businesses is rewarding, unpredictable, and occasionally chaotic. Between vulnerability management on a Monday morning and a printer rebellion on Friday afternoon, there’s a lot that happens in a week that deserves recognition.
We wanted a way to genuinely acknowledge the team - something more personal than an emoji reaction, more fun than a paper award. Something you could actually keep on your desk or lanyard.
Enter: enamel pins.
We started collecting them - quirky, colourful, pop-culture-inspired pins that have nothing to do with IT. Then we asked ourselves the obvious question: what would happen if we got AI involved?
The Tech Behind PinPals
PinPals runs on three things we already use every day: Azure OpenAI, SharePoint, and PowerShell.
Step 1: AI Pin Analysis
Each time we add new pins to the collection, we photograph them and run them through a custom PowerShell script. The script sends each pin image to an Azure OpenAI vision model deployed through Microsoft Foundry, with a system prompt we’ve fine-tuned for GCIT’s style.
The AI analyses the image and generates:
- A creative title - if the pin references pop culture, the AI picks up on it and gives it a fun name that fits our MSP world.
- A playful description - a short blurb about the pin’s personality.
- Award suggestions - two practical suggestions for when the pin might be awarded (think “for the team member who resolved the most tickets this week” or “for anyone who survived a firmware update without losing a client”) plus a third, slightly more cynical one for good measure.
All of this is returned as structured JSON and automatically uploaded to our SharePoint site. Analysing and summarising all 500 pins cost just a few dollars in total - a tiny investment for the amount of fun we’ve had with it.
Step 2: The Pin Gallery
The results land in a SharePoint list called Pin Collection - a visual gallery where each pin has its AI-generated title, description, image, and availability status. Think of it as a curated display cabinet, except it lives in the cloud and updates itself.
When a new round of pins arrives (we’re up to Round 10 and counting), the script processes the entire batch, uploads the images, and the gallery refreshes - no manual data entry required.
Step 3: Pin a Pal
During the week, the team nominates each other for pins. You pick a colleague, choose a pin from the gallery that suits them, and write a short note about what they did.
Maybe Ellen kept her cool during a particularly intense Exchange migration. Maybe Rohan wrote a PowerShell one-liner that saved hours of manual work. Maybe someone just made a really nice coffee.
A sync script runs to keep the Pin Collection and Pin a Pal nomination lists in harmony - marking awarded pins as claimed, linking nominations back to their pin, and keeping everything tidy.
Step 4: The Ceremony
The nominations are read out in the team meeting. The nominated team member gets their fun enamel pin.
Why It Actually Works
We’ve tried plenty of recognition ideas over the years. PinPals is the one that stuck, and we think there are a few reasons:
It’s tangible. A physical pin sitting on your desk is a constant reminder that your team noticed what you did. It doesn’t disappear into a notification feed.
It’s peer-driven. Nominations come from the team, not from management. That makes the recognition feel more genuine - your peers are the ones who see the day-to-day effort.
It’s fun. The AI-generated descriptions are genuinely entertaining.
It’s low-effort to maintain. Once the automation is set up, adding new pins takes minutes. The scripts handle everything from image analysis to gallery updates to nomination syncing.
The Technical Stack
For anyone curious about replicating something similar, here’s what we used:
| Component | Technology |
|---|---|
| Pin image analysis | Azure OpenAI vision model via Microsoft AI Foundry |
| Pin catalogue and nomination forms | SharePoint Online lists |
| Automation glue | PowerShell (PnP.PowerShell module) |
| Identity and access | Azure AD app registration with certificate auth |
| Sync and workflow | Custom PowerShell scripts scheduled via automation |
The beauty of this setup is that it runs almost entirely within the Microsoft ecosystem - something most businesses already have. The only additional cost is the Azure OpenAI usage, which came to just a few dollars to process all 500 pins. Beyond that, it’s SharePoint, PowerShell, and Azure AD - no third-party subscriptions or new platforms to learn.
What Started as a Proof of Concept
PinPals was originally built as a client demo - a proof of concept to show how AI-powered image analysis could plug into SharePoint workflows for practical business use. We wanted to demonstrate that Azure OpenAI’s vision capabilities can be embedded into real processes that categorise and enrich data automatically.
The demo worked well and we built something our team loves.
That’s the thing about automation done right - sometimes the best ideas come from applying serious technology to something that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Could This Work for Your Business?
The PinPals concept can be adapted well beyond enamel pins and IT teams:
- Customer recognition - Analyse product images or customer photos and generate personalised acknowledgements.
- Inventory cataloguing - Use AI vision to automatically describe, categorise, and tag physical items from photos.
- Safety and compliance - Photograph site conditions and have AI flag and categorise potential issues before they escalate.
- Training and onboarding - Gamify the onboarding process with collectible milestones.
If you’re using Microsoft 365 and curious about what AI automation could look like in your business - whether it’s image analysis, workflow automation, or something entirely different - we’d love to show you what’s possible.
Try It, Steal It, Make It Yours
We’re genuinely proud of how PinPals has landed with the team. It’s a small project that punches above its weight in terms of culture and morale.
If you’re looking for a way to bring a bit of personality to your team recognition - or if you just want to see what happens when you let AI describe enamel pins - we reckon it’s worth a shot.
And if you want help building something similar for your team, you know who to call.
