Courier Tracking App for a Print Distribution Business
An Android app and a web admin panel that show managers where couriers work and which sectors are done
NDA Covered
About the project
- Client: a print distribution business (under NDA)
- Industry: Logistics and print media
- Timeline: 2017–2018
- Technologies: Android, Node.js, maps, GPS, push notifications
- Team: a Node.js developer, an Android developer and a project manager
The client runs a print distribution business. Its couriers deliver newspapers and leaflets house by house, and managers could not see where the couriers were or which houses were already done. The client wanted an Android app for the couriers and a web admin panel for the managers.
So the product needed to answer three questions at once: where is each courier, which sector is finished, and what does the courier need to know at the door.
What we delivered
THE CHALLENGE
- No view of courier positions.
- Work split into sectors and houses.
- Intercom codes at the door.
- An inherited PHP server and app.
THE SOLUTION
- An Android app with GPS tracking.
- A Node.js back end and admin panel.
- Sectors drawn on a map.
- Push notifications with intercom codes.
THE OUTCOME
- Couriers visible on a map.
- Sectors assigned by push.
- Reports for managers.
- A localized app.
A courier at the door needs a sector, a code and a button: everything else is for the manager.
A tool for couriers and managers
The courier opens the app and picks a sector. The app sends the GPS position in the background, so the manager sees the courier on the map. When the courier completes a sector, a button marks it as finished.
In addition, the courier reports completed houses and the number of newspapers delivered. Managers read this data in the admin panel, which also builds an Excel-style report.
Sectors drawn on a map
A sector is a zone of the city. At first the admin drew sectors as polygons on a map, and later the managers received the same right. We built the drawing, saving and editing of sectors in the first stage.
Meanwhile, the courier needed a way to say where he works. We discussed automatic detection of the sector by GPS, but sectors were only lines on a map, so detection would have been costly. As a result, we added a drop-down list of sector names in the app, and the API stores the choice.
Round two: notifications and intercom codes
In April 2018 the client asked for more. Sector numbers had to be visible in the app. The manager had to assign sectors to a courier with push notifications that the app stores for 24 hours. In addition, the manager could link intercom codes to houses and entrances, and the codes reached the courier by push.
For the map image of a sector, we proposed a screenshot that the manager sends, because an automatic screenshot was much more expensive. Finally, the app was localized, and we tested the first languages in May 2018.
A new back end
The first version of the server ran on PHP. For this reason, we decided to rewrite the back end and the admin panel from scratch on Node.js in the summer of 2017. The new server was ready in mid-August, and the sector tools followed within a week.
Later a new Android developer joined and reworked the existing app: the choice of a sector, the sending of the location in the background, notifications and localization.
What turned out to be hard
- Background location. Android does not let an app kill its own background process on demand, so we limited the sending of the position to 15 minutes.
- Inherited code. The first Android version had weak structure, and we reworked it step by step instead of rewriting it.
- Sectors without coordinates. Sectors are lines on a map, so automatic detection of the courier's sector was not realistic, and a drop-down became the solution.
- Old Android versions. The client reported a crash on Android 5, which we tried to reproduce on an emulator.
Result of the project
We delivered the app and the admin panel in iterations from 2017 to May 2018 and passed the builds to the client's coordinator for testing. The package covered sector drawing, courier tracking, push notifications for sectors and intercom codes, and reports for managers.
Looking for a similar tracking tool? See our Android app development or read how we built an esports platform MVP. The app relies on push notifications and map data.
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