Custom development Archives | ISDK - eCommerce development, omnichannel solutions, CRM-marketing

May

Air cargo booking SaaS-platform

Custom developmentadmin

Customer

An innovative startup in the air cargo industry

Background and Challenges

Background:

Quick rise of digitalization in the global economy and in the cargo industry in particular.
Carriers and cargo companies who can seize new opportunities and implied technologies will get ahead of competitors.
Cargobooking365 spin-off has been launched as a response to modern industry’s challenges and aims to capture a share in a new niche of air cargo e-booking.

Air cargo industry challenges:

In comparison to passengers e-booking, cargo booking is much more sophisticated.
Pricing depends on numerous factors such as route, airport terminal (in both points), cargo type, its transportation and storage characteristics, aircraft and its compartment dimensions, etc.
Lack of modern and widely accepted electronic industry standards – interaction and data exchange are based on outdated CargoImp standard while the newer one CargoXML is still poorly used.
As a result, clients and airlines are used to manual calculations, this leads to significant delays and losses.

Objectives

Foremost startup goals:

Ensure company’s leading position and market share in e-booking solutions for the air cargo industry.
Digitalize interaction with existing customs to streamline communication and booking processes.
Use an open SaaS-platform to attract new partners – both end customers of cargo services and airlines and their agents providing transportation services.

Tasks

Tasks to fulfill the goals:

Develop a platform that would bring together client companies, agents and airlines within the process of finding and selecting flights for air cargo transportation.
Develop a system for calculating the cost of transportation:
- The algorithm should take into account many parameters – a flight route, cargo type and parameters, conditions of receiving and storing cargo in the dispatch and receipt terminals, board and compartments parameters of the aircraft operating the flight.
- The calculation system should be implemented as a separate microservice capable of returning the calculation result to various clients who needs this data.
Implement a module for storing and selecting flight schedules.
Automate business processes of flight selection and booking.
Minimize phone and email communication between the parties – client, agent and carrier – thus speed up the process of selecting and booking flights.
Implement an Air Waybills recognition module to reduce processing and generation time of major flight documents.
Integrate the system with the local ERP system (Dynamics CRM 365) to synchronize customer data, search queries and ongoing booking requests.

SaaS-platform architecture

The main feature of the system is that it uses SaaS model. This determines the choice of the solution tech stack.
The architecture is based on cross-platform and open-source technologies. This makes it relatively easy to scale the system geographically, as well as when growing its performance. The system can be launched in the most suitable environment depending on the business goals – be it cloud solutions from Microsoft Azure / Amazon AWS or private or virtual servers.
Functionally, the solution is composed of several modules:

The heart of the system: search and calculation of the rates,
Schedules module – loading flight schedules and selecting specific flights,
Integration gateway to provide the exchange of key data with third-party systems:
- A service for air waybill documents recognition,
- Dynamics CRM 365 system,
- Aviation data reference and information services on the Internet.

Back-end:

The backend is composed of a PostgreSQL database and a set of API services that implement the application logic:

API service for the front-end,
Calculator API service,
API service for OCR recognition of air waybills.

All services are hosted in the Azure cloud as an AppService. For the development we used a modular open-source software development platform .Net Core. The ORM tool is EF Core, which provides a high level of abstraction when working with databases.
Within the development process, the CQRS design pattern was used. This pattern allows to operate with such categories as commands and queries.
The main source of system data is cloud Dynamics CRM 365; information from there is loaded according to a schedule and stored in PostgreSQL. Similarly, by using remote API calls, additional reference and flight information is loaded from third-party systems (IATA codes, system tracking, schedules, …).
With its multi-tenant architecture, the system is designed to be used by several clients at the same time. Each tenant may have its own settings and its own UI.
The calculator API service is the “brain” not only for the cargobooking365 portal, but also for the functional modules launched on the Dynamics CRM 365 side. The calculator service is like a core of the two systems and is responsible for the selection of transportation routes based on the input request parameters. The service does not only filter data linearly, but also performs complex manipulations to deploy group routes, check cargo dimensions against the dimensions of airliners, select tariffs and air taxes, and much more.
Technologies and services used:

.Net Core
EF Core
CQRS
PostgreSQL
Cognitive services Microsoft Azure (object characters recognition)
API services for the SaaS-platform

Front-end:

The frontend is implemented in the React framework using typescript. React allows to create encapsulated components with their own state and then combine them into complex user interfaces. TypeScript is a static typing tool; it allows to find most of the errors before the code is executed.
For more understandable and simple integration between the client and the server, the server-side type generation is used. The code generator can generate typescript typing based on .net classes.
Some of the front-end tools:

Redux
Redux Toolkit
Formik
Yup
Axios
react-i18next
react-bootstrap

The frontend also has a module that allows to implement multi-tenant support. By specifying an ID of a certain tenant during assembly, it then receives the client’s bundles with styles, images and texts inherent only to him.
Technologies and services used:

React.js
react-bootstrap
Formik
NGINX

The project was launched in spring of 2020.

The service public website is https://cargobooking365.com

The first tenant operator using the SaaS model was already registered on the platform. It is FFCargo Services company, which provides services for selection and fulfillment of air cargo transportation in the Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

The platform operator is currently negotiating with some cargo airlines a possibility to connect to the platform and start working there.

Jun

SharePoint Tablet App

Custom development, Mobile, SharePoint, UI-designadmin

Customer

RUSSIAN TELECOMMUNICATION HOLDING COMPANY THAT OFFERS A WIDE RANGE OF SERVICES INCLUDING BROADBAND AND MOBILE INTERNET ACCESS, TELEPHONY AND DIGITAL TV

Client management was looking for a long time possibility of a high-level integration center for project and process tasks accompanied with the easy to use KPI dashboards. Besides that, top management wanted not only integration on its own but also easy to use aggregated information visualization tools and quick functions (task assignment, commenting, and attachments).

Ultimately, this solution was supposed to be implemented within the scope of corporate Internet portal upgrade and migration to SharePoint Server 2013 (due to the fact SharePoint became an integration center itself). Customer also planned automation for some of its internal business services and that was a good point as well to develop a desirable integration center and its services.

One of these services was a module for integration of investment planning, technical projects and billing systems. Main business users of this service are company top managers. Certain challenges included the need to integrate data from independent systems in single information space. Systems were not designed for such integration either technically or logically (from business models perspective).

Another key goal (above integration) – as highlighted in the very beginning – was to get lightweight mobile client for company top management. The idea was to gather and aggregate all key information for current projects and top-level tasks. Top managers wanted to have analysis tool accessible from tablets and wide format devices.

To achieve the set goals, project included the following tasks:

Integration and aggregation of data from disparate IT systems
Creation of a single task center based on Microsoft SharePoint corporate portal
Development of a visualization and monitoring tool for key programs and project and their KPIs
Development of a mobile client for tablets and wide-format devices allowing to show key aggregated data and KPI on dashboards and do quick task assignments

Technically solution was developed using Devexpress Devextreme HTML5 application development platform (https://js.devexpress.com/). This platform is a large collection of JS/HTML components for building interactive and lightweight Web applications responsive for both common laptops and modern tablets and mobile devices.

We used the following components:

DataGrid
Charting Widgets
UI Widgets (main UI building blocks)

Data exchange and work logic of HTML5 components is standard – call (usually asynchronously) for Web services located on a company’s SharePoint portal.

Developed solution allowed integration of 3 key corporate systems that were complete disparate before. System provided top and middle management with single tool for analysis and management of project and technical tasks. In total system monitors more than 200 projects and program tasks.

Mobile client for tablets includes dashboards for aggregated project information – target KPIs and dates, actual statuses and key issues with the ability to quickly create and assign tasks. Average mobile application response time with stable Internet connection is 1 second or less.

About 20 top and middle-level company managers including its president use this system.

Jun

Real Estate. Property Maps and Database

Custom developmentadmin

Customer

One of the leaders in the development, leasing and management of commercial, residential, retail, and hotel assets in premier urban locations

Customer processes hundreds of requests from its clients for commercial and residential property search every day. To speed up preparation of client materials (prospects and brochures) customer decided that he needs to reorganize internal business processes and to implement modern IT tools for automation of routine operations.

For example, employees needed a tool for quick property search using many different parameters. They also wanted to analyze property locations on a map with geo linking to neighbor key objects (commercial centers, hotels etc.) Result of client request processing should be an automatic creation of prospect for selected property.

ISDK, together with FinCode (US based company) developed and deployed interactive geo-database for property.

Main functions of this system:

Storage of information on property in largest US cities
Interactive search and review of property using Google.Maps
Embedded CRM system for clients, brokers and property owners
Online generation of profiles, reports and commercial proposals for property sale and rent

System is designed as a Web-solution. Some functions are also accessible from mobile phones.

System was deployed in 2013 in the first pilot region – New York City. System is used by more than 150 company employees, database includes more than 5000 clients and contacts and 30000 property objects were imported into the system prior to Go Live. Average response time for searches in database or via Goolge Maps – 1.5 seconds. Full prospect for selected object is generated within 2.5 seconds.

May

RF Equipment Control System – Development and QA

Business applications, Custom development, Testing and QAadmin

Customer

Russian tele- and mobile communication company

When improving and expanding its base stations network customer decided to automate new radio-frequency equipment database maintenance (data entry and verification). Project goals were as follows:

Store information about 2G, 3G, 4G, radio-relay, wireless access equipment in structured digital form;
Store documents from legal authorities in structured form;
Paper-less interaction between customer and legal authorities for obtaining results of findings and examinations;
Automation of legitimacy checks for radio frequency resource usage;
Unified reporting;
Control of user access to information.

Contractor in this project was one of the leading IT system integrators in this segment. Its employees designed main system architectural concepts and developed UI mockup.

Then they subcontracted ISDK (proved itself as reliable partner in previous projects) for development of certain system modules. We did not only development but also significant amount of system testing prior to Go Live of the system.

System testing was divided into two large phases: preparation and approval of test cases, and functional testing itself.

System and its modules development took 6 months. Then for 1.5 months the system was tested and changes were made based on testing results and results of acceptance by customer.

Technically system modules were developed using .NET platform and its Web user interface – using ASP.NET MVC.

Within QA stream more than 40 test cases of different level of details were developed and approved. Functional testing was done mostly in manual mode but some key tests were automated which allowed to save time in Go Live phase.

ISDK had 5 people in the project’s team: 3 developers and 2 analysts-testers.

May

Self-service Kiosks. Hardware and Software Testing

Analysis and design, Custom development, Testing and QAadmin

Customer

International cargo company providing a wide range of logistic services in more than 10 countries

Customer as a part of its logistic business manages a network of self-service terminals across Russia regions and in some other remote countries. As a part of market expansion program, company did a pilot to put new sales terminals in Baltic countries.

When company goes to new markets in another country and geographic region, there are many technical, organizational and legal requirements that need to be accounted for in devices. Such implementation requires rigorous testing prior to Go Live. For example, in this case there were specific payment requirements (notes and coins collectors, card readers), tax requirements (printer and check formats, requirements to available goods etc.

Also testing required prior deployment of special software (POS clients) on terminals.

Final phase of testing and QA was validation of order and transactions data transfer into customer’s ERP system. Integration was implemented using remote calls to SSL-secured Web services (https).

Organizational complexity of this project related to the need to build communications with several parties involved in implementation. This included main customer as well as several hardware and software vendors.

Our company in this project acted as an independent external contractor for solution quality control prior to Go Live.

To achieve project goals we built detailed deployment and testing plan. This plan included the following:

software update for newly connected terminals,
rigorous testing of each device, both software and hardware (payment processing, receipt printing, goods issuing),
functional and load-testing for transfer of fiscal data and transactions to ERP,
preparation of support documentation package (test cases, instructions).

Each project step included several testing iterations with fixing issues found and final check. As a result, our team of testers and system analysts passed to the customer supporting documentation package, test cases and protocols of testing.

Project resulted in 50 POS terminals successfully put into pilot production. Customer has plans to further expand its self-service kiosks network in this region.

IDSK project team included two testers and one system analyst. They did this work for 1.5 months as full time engagement.

We developed more than 20 detailed test cases 8-10 steps each in each test scenario.

Apr

SharePoint Enterprise Portal. HRM. Trainings

Custom development, Integration, SharePointadmin

Customer

Kazakh engineering company

As part of the Company’s corporate SharePoint portal evolution and introduction of HRM-functionality the decision was made to develop specialized training management system.

Company has extensive training program that includes various activities. Decision to move training management into corporate portal was a natural way of growth for services that Company provides to its employees.

Service development goal was to gather information on all Company training activities in one place and to automate management of these activities.

System allows management of training schedules, registration for coming training activities and (for trainers, defined as separate role in the system) assessing results of trainings completed by employees.

Service specifics included the following requirements:

Management of training activities schedule.
Registration for coming activities.
Employee manager approvals for training participation.
Training results assessment (trainer gives marks for trainees).
Personal employee training data card with information on completed, active and future trainings.

Project development and implementation included the following:

System architecture, functional and graphical design works. Deliverables – functional UML diagrams and UI mockups;
Training form development (InfoPath Forms);
Training catalog import from external database;
Access rights configuration – only administrators and trainers can make changes;
Employee training data card development (asp.net, JavaScript and web services). Corresponding form uses ajax and doesn’t require reloading;
Training schedule development using standard SharePoint functionality;
Training approval process development using SharePoint Workflow;
Training results assessment feature development. Trainer assesses trainees by giving them marks after training completion. These marks are stored in personal employee training data card;
Development of user and administrator documentation;
Customer key users training;
Full system testing, go live and putting system into full production mode.

System was deployed into corporate portal in autumn 2013.

It allowed convenient and consistent training management for more than 700 employees. System provides line managers and HR team with convenient tool for training management and monitoring. Now system includes more than 100 various training courses. Employees successfully completed more than 2500 man-courses, and training time exceeded 30000 man-hours.

Apr

SharePoint Enterprise Portal. HRM. Reports

Custom development, Integration, SharePointadmin

customer

Kazakh engineering company

As part of the Company’s corporate SharePoint portal evolution and introduction of HRM-functionality the decision was made to develop reporting system with the ability to download detailed employee data.

Service development goal was to provide users with the ability to generate reports using various filters and data views.

Module specifics:

A large number of reports;
Inability to implement required data aggregation using standard SharePoint tools;
Calculated fields in reports depending on certain rules and conditions.

The following reports were implemented within project scope:

Labor book log
Employees on probation
Sick leaves
Employee’ documents
Salary changes
Work trips
Health insurance
Job locations
Vacations
Trainings passed
Employment contracts
Employee’ marital status
General monthly report
Schedule of positions and salaries
Leave balance

Development specifics:

Module is based on SQL Server Reporting Services Platform;
A special web service performing server-based searches was developed to fill reports with data. Upon report opening Reporting Services platform calls certain web service methods passing report parameters to them. Methods collect and aggregate the data and return it using xml;
Client part of the system uses this data to create reports for end users.

More than 20 reports of varying complexity were created. Now it is possible to aggregate information and obtain reports on more than 700 Company employees.

Apr

Bank SharePoint Portal. Employee Surveys

Analysis and design, Custom development, SharePointadmin

Customer

Russian bank, in the TOP-10, with large branch network over the country

Bank has more than 20 thousand employees. As a part of corporate portal development, there was a need to implement survey service for employees who use this portal.

Service development goal was to obtain flexible and customizable tool for survey creation and execution as well as survey results reporting.

Standard SharePoint platform functionality was not enough for that task because of the lack of needed customization capabilities.

Specifics of this project included the following requirements:

IE8+ browser support;

Capability to customize look and feel of each separate survey: page and column splitting, question sequence setup;
Ability to create answer validation rules;
Creation of several question types not existing in SharePoint;
Ability to add pictures into survey;
Percent of completion indication;
Report creation

Project development and implementation included the following:

System architecture, functional and graphical design works. Deliverables – functional UML diagrams and UI mockups;
System is based on standard SharePoint survey functionality but survey content was enhanced to load survey visual settings during survey loading;
Standard survey template is transformed using JavaScript and web services;
Visual representation of each survey can be set up using newly developed administration page. Then this representation is saved into a file;
It is possible to customize visuals for each separate question like showing answer options in a row or in a column and setting indentation;
Answer validation rules are applied using JavaScript;
DevExpress was used to develop reports on user survey passing with per-department analytics. This required integration with other portal module which stores organizational structure information;
Development of user and administrator documentation;
Customer key users training;
Full system testing, go live and putting system into full production mode.

System was deployed into corporate portal in autumn 2015.

This development significantly extends existing SharePoint survey functionality and makes it lot easier to create new surveys and analyze their results.

Apr

Sharepoint-portal-eRequest-Approval-Service-nintex

SharePoint. eRequest Approval Service

Custom development, Integration, SharePointadmin

Customer

Global manufacturer of perfumes, cosmetics and body care, Russian branch

As part of the internal business module, it was decided to introduce an electronic module in the Customer’s SharePoint portal to coordinate requests to access information systems and corporate services of the Company for new employees.

The rights to enterprise services can be granted or extended when hiring a new employee or for existing employees. In particular, an employee might get a mobile phone, a PC, and the access to a variety of enterprise information systems might be provided.

Specific experts, such as heads, financial departments and the IT team, consider each request.

The purpose of the service is automation of the process to coordinate requests grouped into general queries for each user.

The following requirements are peculiar for the project:

Grouping multiple requests within a single application for approval. It is possible to create several types of generalized requests per employee divided into relevant units.
Capability to approve each request separately.
Capability to approve or reject the request unit directly from the request form.
Automatic task completion if in a request form a user approves or rejects the entire units relating to this application.
Setting the visibility of the units and/or their parts for a user depending on his/her role and the current approval stage. Only a certain set of actions of the current approval stage is available to a user making a request.
Extension of the standard delegation of the NINTEX functionality is available. It allows determining whether the rights have been delegated to the current user or he/she initially had them.

The following project activities have been performed:

Architecture and system functional and graphic design have been developed. As a result, functional UML diagrams and sketch forms of the user interface have been created.
The Nintex Platform has been installed and configured.
A ready-to-install wsp-package with lists containing directories and safety groups has been developed.
The request form divided into units has been created using the Nintex Forms. Each unit has its approval status and buttons for approval/rejection.
The logic displaying units and controls for a user has been configured using the rules and js-scripts.
The branched workflow that separately approves each unit has been developed using the Nintex Workflow. In this case, if multiple tasks should be assigned to the same user/group, they are combined into one task.
As part of the approval process, task forms have been designed in case manual task closing is required. At that, it is verified in each task form whether the request actions specified in the task have been performed.
Email notification templates have been provided for the approval process.
Automatic task closing in approval/rejection of units in the request form has been implemented.
A web service operating with Nintex API to determine whether tasks have been delegated to the particular user has been developed.
User’s and administrator’s guidance have been developed.
The Customer’s key personnel have been trained.
The system has been completely tested and its pilot and commercial operation has been launched.

The system was implemented in the Customer’s enterprise portal in spring 2016.

The process of creating and approving requests to provide equipment or an access to the information systems was reduced as much as possible because every employee involved in the process got a task with its timely notification. Besides, he/she performs minimum actions to approve the request.

Each user according to his/her role has a predetermined access to the functionality to coordinate the request and information.

Mar

Corporate Portal - Manege Employee Work Schedule

SharePoint. Employee Work Schedule

Custom development, Integration, SharePointadmin

Customer

Global manufacturer of perfumes, cosmetics and body care, Russian branch

Customer has about 2,000 sales outlets across all Russia and more than 600 sales consultants specialized on certain brands.

Previously, managers scheduled consultants manually in Excel and sent resulting schedules to consultants once in a month.

Service development goal was to automate work schedules creation (based on previous months’ data) and distribution.

Main challenges of system development included the following:

Setting up work schedules access rights based on user position, department, region and certain brands knowledge.
Possibility to automatically prepare schedule based on past months information. Each consultant can work in different retail outlets according to specific schedule. He/she can have sick leaves, vacations and compensatory leaves and replace employees in other outlets – all this information is taken into account when constructing a schedule.
In parallel with a consultant’s work schedule, a load schedule for each outlet is created. It is possible to manage data from any of these schedules.
Automatic data check in case of any changes. For example, it should not be possible to assign a consultant to work in different outlets at the same time.
Ability to lock schedules from changes for individual consultants;
System performance is a critical requirement.
Data on consultants from different departments was stored in different locations using different formats.

Project development and implementation included the following:

System architecture, functional and graphical design works. Deliverables – functional UML diagrams and UI mockups;
Import of data on consultants from various external systems.
System coding according to functional requirements. Development of algorithm that allows connecting consultant work schedule with the outlet load schedule. The algorithm ensures complete data consistency.
Development of non-standard access rights setup system which uses SharePoint lists and allows configuration by administrators.
DevExpress controls, JavaScript JQuery and knockout.js libraries were used for schedule creation and management forms.
All user access rights configuration is done using SharePoint groups and lists.
Since information on each consultant can be stored for several years, it required development of storage architecture that reduces number of rows and columns in the list to maximize SharePoint lists data access speed.
Partial data download was implemented to speed up tables with embedded graphics.
Schedules are uploaded to Excel.
All user controls are completely interactive and operate without page reload.
Development of user and administrator documentation;
Customer key users training;
Full system testing, go live and putting system into full production mode.

System was deployed into corporate SharePoint portal in spring 2015. Data on more than 600 consultants was imported from external systems.

System allowed reducing time spent by managers to create and distribute schedules by more than three times. Only manual operations left are start of schedule creation, entry of information on sick leaves, vacations and compensatory leaves and noting of employee transfer to different outlet.

System evolution plan was developed together with the Customer. It provides for managing consultants work time down to single hour within a day to allow consultants work in different outlets same day. Meal breaks will be taken into account as well.