Sharing posts and images and communicating via chat.
A leading company that works in the navigation sector asked us to help it develop a internal corporate social network that would strengthen teamworking and encourage employees to interact with each other within the business context.
At Dev4Side we have taken up the challenge and created and implemented an application that allows workers to share photos and communicate via chat despite the numerous difficulties caused by the use of a satellite connection by users on ships.
La connectivity On ships it is famously limited due to the lack of repeaters. For this reason, there is an internal network on ships to which employees can connect to use internal and third-party services. However, since this is a satellite connection, latency is very high and employees are unable to communicate effectively with each other, renouncing to share images and opinions with their colleagues when they are away from the coast.
To resolve the situation, it was decided to develop ainternal application ad hoc. It was then created a complex structure that uses local databases, a central server, various background content synchronization services and satellite connection to create a social network that allows employees to connect immediately with colleagues on the same ship and, subsequently, to also communicate with users of other ships and offices on the ground.
The app allows all users to perform all typical actions of social networks. They can then publish photos, which are compressed to ensure a faster upload, comment on the posts of their colleagues and “like” the images they prefer. In addition, they have been implemented three different chats to allow workers to communicate with each other quickly:
A small number of users, who have been given the role of administrator, in addition to using the company's social network to share photos and communicate with colleagues, then have the opportunity to perform further actions. The actions they can carry out are entirely defined by their membership in Active Directory groups to allow the company to manage permissions independently.
The application was developed using the following technologies:
In this way, it was possible to develop adynamic application, compatible with different devices and operating systems and capable of retrieving user information quickly thanks to the use of a non-relational database. Thanks to the use of Twilio, a service that offers the integration of a chat between users, it has also been possible to allow users to communicate quickly with each other.
Ship employees carry out the log in with your Active Directory credentials and, once they log in to the application, they can use the application through the organization's internal network.
User posts and comments are immediately sent to the central server. If they were published by a user who is on a ship then they will be immediately visible inside the ship. After the background services send the image to the central server asynchronously with the publication of the post, post and comments. Instead, they will become public to the entire organization.
In this way, employees who work in offices will be able to see images and comments whilst the employees of the other ships will have to wait for further synchronization with the central server to be able to view all published posts.
The Modern Apps team specializes in development and integration across the entire Microsoft 365 ecosystem. We design native applications for Microsoft and Azure platforms, and implement business processes that integrate with and maximize the investment in Microsoft 365.
