Bubcon
Type
Industry
Country
Germany
Highlights
- New generation messenger with increased security level and state-of-the-art interactive design
- End-to-end encryption ensures data reliability and private data safety
- Engaging and user-friendly design
- Data storage allows to securely track history of file exchange and access files whenever you need
Challenge
The customer turned to SoftTeco with an MVP of application for Android. The prototype was made as a test of the functional theory. SoftTeco’s tasks were to provide a review of the existing codebase and develop an iOS application from scratch along with a widget and smartwatch application. The iOS application architecture was completely built by our team in order to meet all the customer requirements in terms of increased security, end-to-end encryption, stable group chats and calls.
Considering a serious technical base implementation for iOS version, the Android app was timely enhanced with technical improvements on the client’s side. Overall, while developing this messenger we solved a number of challenges:
- Presented an optimal messenger suitable for professional corporate use, combining secured video calls and conferences.
- Provided a new communication tool that complies with European legislation on personal data protection. Now it’s possible to communicate with banking and insurance services, contractors and other service providers having the secured and GDPR-complied solution at hand.
Solution
BubCon is a flexible messenger application, giving its users the right tools to easily communicate across multiple groups and topics. The solution combines custom design, advanced functionality and high–level security.
One of the biggest BubCon advantages is the option to create secured chats and conferences that are guarded by end-to-end encryption. As well, the users can call and share files with one person or the whole group. To provide convenient and interactive user experience, the chats were designed in the form of bubbles. Users can move the chats around the app’s interface and arrange them as needed. As well, there are numerous sticker packs available in the AppStore to make the communication more engaging and fun.
The collaboration with external SMS providers – Twilio and Plivo allows doing prompt user verification and password recovery in case it’s forgotten. The application supports c3 standard for storing encrypted media content. SMTP channel encryption is done via TLS 1.2.
Tech Stack
Mobile
iOS
XMPP
WebRTC
Ejabberd
How it works
Backend details
The project’s backend is represented by 2 interconnected units: messenger’s backend and storage space’s backend. The storage space backend API was made in Java 8 and it uses Spring4 framework. It also works with PostgreSQL 9.4 database. The admin panel frontend was written in TypeScript 2.3 with Angular 4 framework. It was created mainly for adding stickers and scaling the application characteristics. The messenger’s backend was created with the help of Ejabberd tool, written in Erlang. The PostgreSQL database was used for data storage. Database management was performed through Mnesia service. Xmpp protocol was used to ensure the proper and timely data exchange and Grafana service – for monitoring and diagnostics. Clustering was implemented to maintain a continuous connection and it also allows the system to distribute the load evenly, ensuring good scalability. Now the system supports 20 000 connections simultaneously.
iOS details
iOS app was developed from scratch. SoftTeco took up the responsibility for all the stages, from architecture design to the final release. During the development process, we tried
to meet all the customer requirements, including innovative design and enhanced encryption potential.
The overall application performance and its high speed are worth being proud of. The encryption function of the application, aimed at processing all the incoming and outcoming data is usually time and resource consuming and the initial Bubсon’s architecture of the app didn’t meet the speed requirements, which consequently led to losing messages. In this connection, the architecture was completely redesigned by SoftTeco in order to reduce the load on the client’s servers, which in its turn considerably improved the entire system efficiency and facilitated the scalability of the solution. The latest Swift version was used in the development process (April 2018). Among tools, which were used while development, are the following:
- Web RTC for audio and video VoIP calls implementation.
- Alamofire for Rest requests.
- XMPP Framework for XMPP protocol.
- GOOGLE Phone Numberkit provided telephone numbers parsing and formatting.
- Swiftgen library was used for arranging constants and performing translations.
Overall, the application enables users to make secured audio and video calls, share files, create group chats and conferences, buy sticker packs from AppStore and much more.
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Results
The most innovative and creative ideas accumulated from the other projects were implemented and enforced while SoftTeco team worked on the application. The final product boasts perfection and enhanced functionality.
