Developing a Calendar App for Logistics
development
release
Background
Our client is a logistics company that decided to build a corporate secure calendar that is able to recognize hand-written notes and speech and help drivers, warehouse workers and managers to schedule shipping and receiving of goods. They had a clear vision of how a calendar should integrate into their everyday business processes, but didn’t have any concrete technical requirements.
Our team offered to start with an IT consultation where we could extract the main requirements and suggest technologies for their project. After the consultation our client chose us as their vendor, and we started the discovery phase of a project.
Project idea
Our client’s idea was to build a calendar application that would give shippers and carriers an opportunity to schedule and track their shipments.
They also wanted to sync the calendar with their existing CRM and a corporate messenger that would allow every member of the supply chain to be on the same page.
As we went through the discovery process, we extracted the main requirements for the future logistics calendar and recommended our client to start with an MVP.
The MVP would include these features:
- Login through a corporate email or a mobile number
- Personal profile
- Calendar interface
- Scheduling
- Active shipments
- Shipment history
- Documents
- Ability to attach files
- Search and filters by order and location
- Geolocation
- Insurance
- Settings
- Push notifications
After the successful MVP launch, we planned to add:
- Delivery time estimation
- Traffic conditions
- Delivery optimization
Goals
- Integrate the new calendar with the existing system
- To create a technical specification based on our client’s idea
- Develop UI/UX design for the future app
- Create an MVP
Challenges
- Lack of concrete requirements from the client
- Integration with the existing legacy system
- The need to adapt the same app to both mobile and desktop devices
Development process and results
Our first step was to interview our client and determine their requirements and business goals. Along with that we conducted a review of our client’s existing software to determine if there will be any integration issues.
Our business analyst worked closely with the client to formulate the requirements and recommend the best solutions. Then, we involved our tech lead to suggest the perfect tech stack for the project. Because the drivers, managers and warehouse workers use all kinds of devices from desktop computers and laptops to tablets and smartphones, we suggested Flutter, as it can be adapted to any screen from a single code base. Flutter would help our client to save budget significantly and avoid developing apps for each platform individually.
For the web part of the application, we offered our client to go with PHP paired with MySQL.
We also created an admin panel for our client to manage their shipments, employees, payments and optimize delivery by transferring packages between the vehicles.
Our team that worked on this project comprised:
- 2 Flutter developers
- 1 back end developer
- 1 business analyst
- 1 UI/UX designer
- 1 quality assurance specialist
- 1 project manager
Other team members from our client’s side:
- 1 product manager
- 1 quality assurance specialist
- 1 DevOps
Main features of this project
Shipment calendar
Users can view current and upcoming shipments with all additional information right from the calendar
Scheduling
Users can schedule shipments and and pick specific delivery timeframes to ensure timely delivery
Sorting
Users can find specific shipments or packages by name, date and destination
Push notifications
Employees and users can receive notifications about the upcoming deliveries, order status changes and delays
Admin panel
A business owner and managers can manage users, view payments, send push notifications and change content in the application as well as see analytics.
Technologies we used
What our client says about this project
What happens next:
