Dreamfactory Case Study

Business Objective

To create a highly customized, fully scalable digital event app building platform. The platform would have its own business logic built-in – and coders as well as non-coders will be able to use it with equal, consummate ease.

Technical Challenge

Development and seamless integration of API services (backend-as-a-service), to enhance the performance of the product. From managing user roles and access, to ensuring high security standards and usability for the creation of custom mobile apps for all kinds of events – Eventify has to deliver cutting-edge functionalities. Generating efficient API services from database was also a challenge.

The Solution

In DreamFactory phpMyAdmin, a mySQL database was created. After connecting with the database and importing it, new API services were generated. Additional logic in pre-script and post-script were also added.

Priority 1:

Create Eventify as a user-friendly digital tool for promoting and managing ‘paperless events’.
Ensure that external API services (BaaS) can be generated from database and integrated to the platform.
Manage user-login, access and permissions according to their roles – while maintaining proper security standards.

Priority 2:

Add extra business logic in pre-script and post-script of APIs, for optimal functionality.
Offer users (event planners) smooth drag-and-drop features, so that those with no prior coding expertise can use the platform with ease.
Use Swagger for secure, continuous API documentation.

A Digital Platform For Building Mobile Event Apps

Eventify puts a fresh new spin to the task of promoting and managing events. The digital platform is highly scalable and comes with a wide array of personalized features – enabling users/planners to create custom mobile apps for their events, and maximize the exposure/awareness levels about the same. It has been created by Teksmobile – a leading mobile app and API development company, with 1000+ applications in its portfolio.

The Eventify platform can be used to create apps for practically all types of public and private events – right from conferences and trade shows, to business seminars, panel discussions, workshops and other personal occasions. For each event, a single app can be created. All pertinent information, like scheduling details, speaker bios and sessions, exhibitor information and sponsor details, can be added to apps created with Eventify. The platform also has ‘local’ and ‘global’ search capabilities.

“The global event management industry is witnessing rapid growth. The total number of business conferences organized every year is going up – and we identified that organizers need to have a digital tool in their hands, to manage and promote their events effectively. Eventify is a platform that they would find very handy in this regard”, opines the senior manager of the project.

With the market for event management software set to grow by 8.4% in 2016-2020, and over 85% event planners already having apps for their events (in 2016), coming up with an all-features-included app building platform made a lot of sense. The platform also enables users to add real-time chat feature, include location maps and floor plans, and delivers excellent networking opportunities.

Integrating API services via DreamFactory

“According to early estimates, we had guessed that it would take around 8-10 weeks to create and launch the Eventify platform. Development and deployment of API services, in particular, looked likely to eat up a lot of time. We then came across DreamFactory…and things became a lot more organized, streamlined.”

— Programming Head, Eventify Project

DreamFactory was instrumental in smoothing the roadmap for optimized backend automation in Eventify. The developers created a mySQL database in the phpMyAdmin of DreamFactory (just like application tables), and then, imported that database to generate full API services (i.e., the required REST API endpoints). Objective-C was the programming language used to code Eventify, and APIs were essential for integrating the full business logic in the app. In essence, DreamFactory served as an efficient mediator to manage the database and the delivery of APIs.

With the help of DreamFactory, the Teks Team managed to significantly shorten the duration of the development cycle. Instead of having to manually code each API, the platform now had automated API solutions from the database. From the security standpoint too, using DreamFactory proved beneficial.

Managing the user login session tokens and API key validations became extremely straightforward with DreamFactory. While accessing all the features of Eventify (like bookmarking, chatting) requires the user to login – there are certain ‘view-only’ elements which people can check out, without logging in with their credentials. With customized API solutions, providing this selective permission access was also rendered easier.

Building The Business Logic

One of the main reasons for integrating DreamFactory in the Eventify project was the creation and implementation of robust business/operational logic in the latter. All types of data entry, as well as all the validations, were automated, for superior performance. The API helper tools offered additional advantages (e.g., the Swagger API documentation tool).

The in-house team at Teksmobile also utilized the server-side scripting feature of DreamFactory to good effect. Provisions were made for adding extra logic in the API pre-script (e.g., checking the validity of a user or an event ID) and the post-script (e.g., checking the returned data after the user has logged in). Emails, notifications, and all the other third-party services on Eventify were also automated with DreamFactory.

“Eventify is a platform that looks to deliver complete event management control in the hands of the planners,” says the CEO of Teksmobile. “The automated backend solutions available in DreamFactory made our task considerably easier.”

The Future Of Event Management

Thanks to DreamFactory, the team in charge of creating Eventify managed to register big gains in terms of time-savings, business logic development, security, and data access management (according to user roles). The efficient automated architecture of DreamFactory made the task of expanding the functionality of Eventify easier than ever.

There is very little margin for error, when it comes to creating a dynamic app building platform like Eventify. Mobile apps are well and truly changing how events across the globe are being organized, promoted and managed – and this platform has the potential to emerge right at the forefront of this evolution.

Eventify

Eventify is a fully customized event app building platform, with a plethora of features and strong BaaS support – for smooth usability. Different types of public/private events can be created and promoted via the digital platform.

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Hussain Fakhruddin

CEO at Teknowledge Software

Hussain Fakhruddin is the founder/CEO of Teknowledge mobile apps company. He heads a large team of app developers, and has overseen the creation of nearly 600 applications. Apart from app development, his interests include reading, traveling and online blogging.