Requirements
- They needed a robust platform that has the ability to onboard terminals quickly via APIs for a comprehensive, global user experience via a single app.
- To ease user access, they needed an app that :
- could help the shipping line, the cargo industry, and players like importers and exporters, freight carriers, customs brokers, shippers, etc, by providing real-time updates on each step of logistics.
- enabled the port users and stakeholders to monitor trucks, containers, and vessels,
- facilitated access to payment estimates from their corresponding terminals in advance.
- sent across real-time notifications via email/SMS/push notification
Challenges
- Each terminal having their own custom system and services
- There was a need to provide real time statistics to their customers
- There was an increasing demand to make the services available via mobile channel
- The constant change in requirements and scope
- Dependency on external APIs (Data lake & ACTS)
The Solution
Our team worked with the client to develop a multilingual application that supports 9 languages, is available on Web and Mobile (Android & iOS) environments, and is capable of supporting features like:
- Sign-in/Sign-up, User Profile setup & Management
- Tracking and tracing of vessels,
- Real-time updates on containers and trucks,
- Support payments options for import/export of containers,
- Sending notifications, watchlisting, 24 hours activities (vessels, truck, and containers events)
Overall Approach
The following steps were undertaken to build the solution:
- Drupal was chosen to be the center hub for the platform
- Chosen app Environments include: Web, Web-responsive, and Mobile (Android and iOS), while application platforms were Drupal, NodeJs
- A few Rest APIs are being used to communicate external systems of the platform
- The team also enabled third-party Integrations: such as Twilio for SMS, Azure Services like AD-B2C for storing user data and user authorization, Sendgrid for emails, notification Hub by Azure for real-time notifications,
- Their cloud infrastructure is hosted on Azure, while different environments were used for production and QA.
- Kubernetes was deployed for dynamic traffic management
Tech Stack
- Drupal
- Node.js
- Azure
- Twilio
- AWS
- Kubernetes
Business Benefit
- New terminals can now be onboarded to the platform in 2-4 weeks instead of building a customer solution for them
- Azure Data Lake integration provides for real time information and role based dashboard
- The app enabled a seamless and secure user experience on account of its varied personalized features.
- The users could now optimize their shipping experience through this app and reduce costs
- The app's global availability streamlined access for users across the globe.
- Within one month of its release
- the iOS version registered 1.3k downloads
- the Android version registered 3.75k downloads