On-demand truck sharing solution

On-demand truck sharing solution

PayLoader solution developed by Itransition automates the whole on-demand transportation process starting from an order placement to payment processing and client reviews management.

Table of contents

Problem

Customer

PayLoader LLC is an American startup standing behind the PayLoader solution. The company came out of the rising market demand for truck sharing. Addressing the need, the Customer decided to create a solution for connecting local truck owners with people in need of transporting items and turned to Itransition for mobile application development. 

Solution

Core Technologies

PayLoader solution developed by Itransition automates the whole on-demand transportation process starting from an order placement to payment processing and client reviews management. The solution includes:

  • 2 mobile applications for clients and truck drivers;
  • internal website for a system administrator;
  • public-facing website.

Once a client signs up and provides item and transit information (pick up and drop off locations, item photos and description), PayLoader automatically matches up a request with a truck owner nearby who is ready to help with moving items.

Solution Scheme

The admin website, developed as a single-page application, includes 13 multi-functional pages serving their own business purpose each.

Admin Website

Functional Features

Payment within the app

Thanks to the implemented payment algorithm and integration with the payment solution all transactions are cashless and handled within the app.

Immediate estimates

The application provides clients and loaders with preliminary estimation before they commit to a request.

Phone calls from inside the app

For both clients and drivers’ convenience IP-telephony was implemented to make calls available right from the application without using GSM.

Transit management

Loaders get directions to the pickup and drop off locations and are able to manage their transit time.

Process

Team

Itransition specialists were engaged in all the automotive software development stages. Our team investigated the Customer domain area and suggested optimal ways of developing and designing a functional and user-friendly application suite.

The Customer exactly knew what they wanted to achieve as a result but lacked the documented requirements. Our business analyst prepared a detailed specification incorporating Customer’s ideas into a thought-out solution with logical and intuitive algorithm.
Responsive design was implemented to make the solution easy-to-use and accessible from any devices.

In the course of testing our QA specialists ran functional tests for all the solution components, validated cross-browser compliance for public-facing website (Chrome, IE, Safari), performed compatibility testing for mobile applications (iOS 7, 8, 9), and conducted regression testing.

Team

Technology

Taking into account that the Customer was planning to add an Android application to the PayLoader solution suite in the short run, we recommended to build a mobile application using Xamarin.Forms and MVVM pattern. Shared code for different platforms was developed based on PCL. Xamarin.Insight was employed to ensure performance monitoring and collection of user interaction data.

Although the solution was developed from scratch, a part of mobile functionality (geolocation, maps, security) was built using IronKit framework libraries that were customized and refined during the development. Integration with IronKit was realized using NuGet packages, generated by internal Bamboo server.

 

Mobile Apps

Website

Presentation Layer

Xamarin.Forms AngularJS

Integration Layer

Web API, ModernHttpClient Owin, Rest Web API

Persistence Layer

SQLite, .NET Entity Framework 6.1

Integration with external systems was built using Authorize.NET, IronKit, Twilio, PushSharp, Microsoft Azure, and Google Maps.

Administrative website was built as a single-page application using AngularJS framework.

To make the payment process as easy and convenient as possible PayLoader was integrated with a payment gateway service provider Authorize.NET. Integration was realized on a server side, credit card information is obtained via mobile application.

Results

In the course of 6 months PayLoader solution was developed in accordance with all the Customer requirements. The solution, which comprises 2 mobile apps, external and internal websites went live and is breaking-in at the moment. 

The Customer appreciated a proactive approach of Itransition’s team and now is planning a new project with us - mobile applications development for Android users.