Challenge

Seeing numerous security issues that international companies faced when sending employees to potentially risky locations, our US client came up with an idea of an application that would allow companies to easily track their employees and provide them with immediate and actionable plans in case of any emergency.

When the client approached SoftTeco, the application was already in production but had many issues with usability and performance. In order to make the app more efficient, the client asked SoftTeco to optimize the functionality and redesign the application.

Solution

The developed solution caters to multiple aspects of the user’s security. Within the app, the users can see the safest areas and the most dangerous ones, create routes to avoid them, notify the administrators about one’s location and status and receive an interactive emergency plan in case anything goes wrong.

The SoftTeco development team significantly improved the algorithm of finding the most optimal route for the user. Thus, the application became more accurate and precise in the creation of safe routes which, in turn, contributed to higher users’ security.

How It Works

The application is adapted for both mobile and desktop and provides the user with the most up-to-date information on the safest routes and potential danger areas. For that, the admin collects the data from third-party sources (i.e. crowdsourcing, social media, governments and collaborators) and inputs it in the application.

Employers can receive notifications from the database upon the change of the user’s status or location. The SoftTeco team implemented this feature with the help of the Firebase realtime database. Before switching to the Firebase, the team used MySQL as the database management system of choice.

Since the main purpose of the application is to provide international companies with additional security measures of safeguarding the employees, the application has rich user functionality. The user can send notifications about the current location to the employer or app’s administrator, choose the safest route and avoid dangerous situations with the help of the app’s algorithm of finding the most optimal route.

The algorithm can build three options of the route: quick, safe or the safest one. A quick route is identical to the one the usual navigator builds and the safe route avoids the areas where any crime occurred. The safest route differs from the safe one by the minimal threshold of offense severity that is considered during the route creation.

As well, the team used AWS Amplify for in-app authorization and lambda function. The team chose AWS Amplify because it has SAML. The lambda function is needed for sending out push notifications, emails, and text messages.

Results

SoftTeco significantly optimized the existing application and enhance the users’ security through increased accuracy and better route tracking and creation. In this way, our development team contributed to better security services for both international companies and tourists that visit potentially dangerous areas with high crime rates.

The team continues to improve and support the application in order to expand its functionality and introduce the solution to the new markets.