Marvel Internet Group blog

From this week I will be starting a multi-part series on the coding of JustRosters, touching specifically on the challenges and lessons learnt throughout the experience. Our journey starts on a February afternoon (02/02/2009) at 3pm. The first task that needed to be completed was the installation of a basic CakePHP install.

Installing CakePHP is quite a simple process and simply involves downloading it from the CakePHP page, after a donation, then uploading it on to the server. In our case it is our dedicated U.S. server that will host this application to ensure maximum load capacity and lowest latency for our target demographic. After CakePHP is extracted to a desired location we commit it into version control using Bazaar Version Control (bzr). Bzr is a distributed VCS similar to Git, however it is cross platform and has a much simpler command set.

Once we were able to see the CakePHP default page it was time to analyze the database models. Aulay, being the founder of JustRosters had the best idea of what the application should do and designed the database by himself. My job was to just make sure the table and column names matched the CakePHP conventions so that extra configuration settings would not need to be set on the CakePHP generated models. I also took the time to change any columns whose data types could be improved (int to tinyint) as well as start indexing foreign keys.

With only one hour our project foundation had been laid. Although it is not an exciting event our use of RAD frameworks makes it a much more relaxing process than previous projects where at least a week had to be spent gathering together various pieces of software that managed our database access, email access, templating, etc.

The next post will focus on setting up user registration, validation, as well as user logging in and out. Stay tuned for more.

Customer service email management can often be problematic for companies that offer email based support for their clients. Marvel Internet Group is responsible for handling customer service email messages of some applications that we have developed for clients. One such application has over 1400 user’s support request to manage; we do this with just two staff, before it is even time for lunch.

For some it can be difficult to co-ordinate efforts to ensure that a customer’s inbound enquiries are resolved as quickly as possible. Using a highly structured system for so few staff members will lead to increased cost per response and slow down overall response time. A system that is too simple will mean co-ordination failures leading to confused or neglected customers.

Marvel Internet Group’s solution to this problem is to use a Gmail account for customer service email management. This is achieved by creating a single Gmail address for all customer service support requests. With Gmail’s labelling feature we can quickly label emails based on source so that the support person can be focused on supporting a single application or all applications’ customers. The general work flow that prevents neglect of customers as well as ensuring a streamlined support process is to check, label, and action. This involves having the first person to view the mail account go through all mail and either archive, label another staff’s name, or take action on an email. Then as other staff members check the account they can see which items require their attention.

Prior to implementation of this customer service email management system we had difficulties delegating and following through with customer enquiries that fell out of the support staff’s field of expertise. Using labels such as “waiting”, “todo”, and “complete” each request can be delegated and tracked with ease with staff members in and out of the company. The result of utilizing this customer service system is greatly reduced time spent on support as items are either actioned, delegated, or waiting. Finally an end-of-week or end-of-month review of all incomplete messages prevents any request from falling through the cracks.

To try this for yourself simply create or forward your support emails to a free Gmail account and let your staff understand the simple work flow of: check, label, action. Having your support request come from custom support forms will also save you even more time!

JustRosters is an internal project for us here at Marvel Internet Group. It is a side project that is commercially unproven and therefore a risky investment for the company. With that in mind it is crucial for us to be able to complete the project as quickly as possible in terms of both man hours and actual calendar days. To help us achieve this we decided to comb through our previous work and build a reusable PHP library of our most commonly used functions. This collection of loosely coupled functions allows us to easily enhance any code base; belonging to either a client or Marvel Internet Group.

Our code library is split into three parts. One library contains global functions that are included in Cake PHP’s bootstrap file, which is loaded right after the configuration file and before everything else. We currently place debugging and some custom date/time manipulation functions in here so that it does not have to be duplicated elsewhere. Another part of the library is converted into a Cake PHP component. The custom component allows us to reuse convenience functions that are needed inside our controllers, such as permissions management, emailing with PHPMailer, PDF generation, etc. The remaining parts of our library are turned into a custom helper that performs view related formatting.

In total we have reused about 700 lines of code with the three files combined. Using the general rule of thumb that a programmer will produce about 100 lines of quality code per day we practically shaved seven days off our development time before we even started. The cycle of library building will continue and expand with JustRosters. Being one of our most Javascript heavy projects we are also writing a substantial amount of reusable Javascript code that can be combined into another library, or into jQuery plugins, that can be used by the development community as well as our future clients.

The process of conceptualizing, designing, and implementing web applications is a complex one. It requires both the client and the development company to come together and share enough domain knowledge to enable constructive communications about the project. To reduce the impact of mis-communicated ideas developers need to be agile, which involves being able to quickly confirm, implement, and get feedback on ideas. Therefore, any tool that helps us reduce the time required to implementing common functionality helps our clients greatly. It is with this in mind that Marvel Internet Group decided to standardize all projects on a development framework. That framework is CakePHP.

CakePHP is a framework started in 2005 that is compatible with PHP, a ubiquitous web development programming language that is used by more than 20 million websites, that follows the “model, view, controller” design pattern. CakePHP allows us to implement client-specific features using common functions that have been heavily tested and debugged by the entire CakePHP community. CakePHP offers polished database abstraction, templating, AJAX, caching, testing, and security features that can be implemented in client applications. Those pre-built features allows us to have a solid foundation from which we can quickly realize our clients’ vision in the form of a working prototype.

The productivity gains that comes with CakePHP would not be so great if a lot of time had to be invested in learning it. That is why CakePHP’s excellent documentation and active developer community means that we can quickly train programmers to become familiar with and productive with CakePHP in a matter weeks.

A real world case demonstrating the benefits of CakePHP comes from our experience with ICEF Online 2.0’s development. For this project we managed to take the version 1.0 program, which was developed without a framework, and re-code it from the ground up with 20+ additional core features in three months using one full time and one part time programmer. The part time programmer had never used CakePHP before and was able to implement our ordering system with less than one week training.

The product delivery time was a great improvement over version 1.0, which took well over six months using the same amount of human resources. We also saw improvement in the size of the code base, shrinking it from 137 megabytes to just under 50 megabytes. With all things being equal we have basically managed to half quoted times in our client application development and create a much higher quality application. This was possible because we were able to focus on what was important to the client, instead of worrying about the low level mechanics of the application.

With any web application there is usually a learning curved involved for the end users before they are familiar enough with the concepts and work flow to explore the application on their own. Especially when a new system is introduced to replace an existing one it can be very difficult for the end user to adjust. That is when support requests start flowing in.

In our experience support emails can become rather difficult when the user does not provide adequate detail about what they are doing, or who they are. The lack of information means a lot of time is spent waiting on user clarification. The time spent identifying the problem often takes longer than providing the solution. This is where investing the time needed to create a custom support form comes in.

In a custom support form that we implemented for ICEF Online (1,500+ people use it almost daily), the form auto-embed hidden values identifying the user’s account, the page they were on before they loaded the support form, as well as browser information and screen size; all of which help us diagnose problems far quicker than if we just relied on plain email, or even an ‘off the shelf’ support ticket system.

For common cases where the reply just requires usage instructions, a custom support form can completely eliminate the need to wait for a user to reply with details of what they were trying to achieve. For more complex scenarios we are able to completely re-create the user experience for testing by reproducing user results with the same browser, operating system, and input values. The limits of how much information your support staff have access to diminishes to almost zero once the basic system is put in place, which is a very low cost given the customer satisfaction returns that can be achieved.

Hi, I am Paul Chiu, lead programmer for Marvel Internet Group (MIG) and soon to be blogger for MIG as well. I look forward to posting interesting information on software development issues from our own experience, as well as commenting on interesting developments in the field of web applications programming.

My current programming focus is on developing and supporting two main client projects with one being a professional networking system and another an administrative system. Client privacy issues prevent me from writing too much about the specifics of those projects, however, I will do my best to cover tips and lessons learnt.

MIG is also working on an in-house project called JustRosters.com that will be the first pure MIG project to launch. I should be able to share more about our experiences and challenges faced in the project. We are currently in the design stages of project so I have not yet started implementing yet, but given the existing design challenges it should turn out to be quite interesting to develop!