Flex Messenger - References

SMS marketing product - Flex Messenger

Business Need

This website is custom web-application for receiving reminder SMS. This SMS sending portal is for users like Doctors-Patients, Trainer-Trainee etc. The service can be extended to the Consumable Product Users like food supplement consumers , or like Event Management team etc. The concept was shared to us by our valued customer and we were to develop a solution.

The scope of the solution was very wide, to cater all age group, languages, countries. The only condition is they should have mobile number!. Also the customer wanted to keep separate interface for website users (The customers), Business admin of the website, and the Developer's interface.

The website design is given by customer.

Solution

Initially the ‘single sender’ and ‘multiple receiver’ website was developed (aqua-alert.org), however at later date the second portal was developed (flexmessenger.com), catering to multiple Senders and Receivers - a much more complex web-application.

To elaborate, imagine a Doctor-Patient relation. The Patient often need reminder to take break at 7, 14, 18 hrs each day for self treatment. So the Doctor ask the Patient to join the website this website where the doctor is already a member. Now the Patient registers on the website & Select the Doctor.

The doctor can create a special SMS sending package by creating many SMS text and timings & dates, as below.

Time - Text

7 hr - Brisk walk for 30 mins
14 hr - Did you forget medicine? Drink water 2 glass of water
18 hr - Take dinner early, and spare time for walk for 20 mins

Now the Doctor allocate a SMS package to this patient. As per the scheduled dates the messages are received by the Patient at his local time.

Above is a simple basic elaboration to explain the business of the company. There are multiple complex situations which are possible in real life which are taken care in this web-product.

The software architecture is much complex. Large number of users simultaneously can work on the website.

SMS gateway integration

SMS sending gateway is Integrated with the website. Admin has to purchase SMS in bulk from the selected gateway. The Sender need to purchase SMS form the admin of the website. All the purchase history is maintained to the Sender and Admin of the website respectively. The SMS gateway API are implemented in such a way that Receiver receive the message as per the local time.

It is possible to change the SMS gateway, without interruption to sender and receiver.

Payment gateway integration

Admin purchase SMS from SMS gateway and Sender purchase SMS from the website. Both payment done by Paypal. However Admin can select the payment gateway.

Extensible structure

The website is configurable as per needs. The admin can set local times of the server, can select SMS and Payment gateway. It is even possible to change the Template of the website without much changes in the actual web-application. The website is developed using TYPO3 CMS, hence the website still remains extensible for future needs.

Approach

Lelesys analysed the business requirements designed a user workflow, data base design & software architecture
Lelesys used TYPO3 CMS as Content Management System and selected SMS and payment gateway for customer
Redmine was used as project management tool
Daily and weekly meetings with customer and development team were conducted during the process to match the time line