Adding New Capabilities to a Property Management Platform With Microservices

Adding New Capabilities to a Property Management Platform With Microservices

JatApp developed a self-contained notification microservice that allows house residents and services providers to get various types of notifications to their mobile devices, via SMS and email.

  • Duration: 1 year
  • Country: Germany
  • Industry: Real Estate

Background story

In property management, effective and transparent communication is a crucial part of the business. When things get lost in emails, phone calls, and text messages, property maintenance requests get ignored, renewal deadlines get missed, and rent goes unpaid.

When communication breaks down, it impacts tenant retention. Tenant turnover has a huge impact on the building’s bottom line.

The right technology can improve communication between tenants, landlords, property managers, and service providers and keep everything organized and under control. We helped Cunio build this technology.

About Cunio

Headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, Cunio is a communication platform that connects tenants, landlords, service providers, and property managers via an integrated messaging service and a virtual pinboard.

Cunio

Cunio consists of several solutions:

  • 1
    A command center for property managers to connect tenants, landlords, and service providers on one platform and have immediate access to announcements, maintenance requests, and upcoming activities.
  • 2
    Web-based landlord software that allows rental managers to control all aspects of rental property including screening and managing tenants, appointment bookings, responding to maintenance requests, and more.
  • 3
    Project management software for service providers where they can add their employees, coordinate services, and organize appointments.
  • 4
    iOS and Android applications that allow tenants, landlords, property managers, and service providers to communicate with each other, see recent announcements and monitor the status of maintenance requests.

Challenge

When Cunio turned to JatApp, they already had the platform built. But their software had some faults and errors that needed to be addressed as quickly as possible.

In addition to bug fixing and software maintenance, the Cunio team also needed us to build a large chunk of functionality that would enable notification features to keep everyone in the loop about what’s going on in the building.

Solution

  • Writing a technical specification

    Our team ran a comprehensive discovery phase where we specified and documented all notification events that we needed to implement.
  • API integrations

    We integrated the service with SendGrid for email notifications, Twilio for SMS notifications, and Firebase for mobile push notifications.
  • Code review and bug fixing

    We did a thorough code review and evaluated database structure to find issues and provide bug fixing before we could continue with the development of new features.
  • Implementing notifications with a microservices architecture

    To build a notification service, we chose microservices. Because with this architectural approach, code can be updated more easily, faster and cheaper. By building software components independently, we reduced the cost associated with having to scale the entire application.

Technologies Used

  • Swift
  • Kotlin
  • Laravel
  • SendGrid
  • Twilio
  • Firebase

Results

The notification microservice we developed is responsible for sending the following types of notifications: pinboard announcements, new comments, incoming messages, resolved issues, scheduled services, etc. In the settings, users can choose what type of notifications they want to receive.

Here is how our notification service works: When a tenant submits a new request to fix lights in the hallway, a service provider gets a notification and can schedule a date when they’re going to fix it. Once the date is set, the tenant gets notified about it via SMS, email, and push notifications. When the job is completed, the tenant can rate the service, and a push notification with rating will be sent back to the handyman.

Benefits

Our solution completely satisfied our client's acceptance criteria.
We completed this project within a few months and continued working with Cunio to support and maintain their platform for about a year.

  • Stateless, horizontally scalable and maintainable solution
  • Enhanced control over the development cycle
  • The possibility to upgrade the service without interfering with other parts of the system
  • Simpler integration with other services
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If you’re looking to build mobile or web applications, move your real estate solution to the cloud, or support and maintain your existing system, at JatApp you can find all the resources you need to take your project further.

Let us know if you’re interested in our real estate software development services.

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