Happy New Year, and what's up for 2019
We wish all of our customers and followers and happy new year. It's going to be an exiting year, and this is some of what we're working on.
Mobile app
Our mobile app for iOS and Android phones and tablets is undergoing a full re-development. Until now, we have relied on a hybrid solution based on Cordova/Phonegap, which has served us well. However, looking into the future and what we want to build, nothing beats native apps, although we have not gone completely native.
In December 2018 we began developing our app from scratch, with NativeScript as the "under-the-hood" engine. We did a lot of research and considered different paths, like going completely native, or selecting one of the "almost native" paths like React Native and NativeScript.
We decided not to go completely native, because in our opinion, the disadvantages would outweigh the advantages. Going completely native would cause slower and more costly app development because we would have to maintain two different codebases (different languages). And with both React Native and NativeScript, we would be able to develop an app with all that we needed and wanted, with very little or no performance loss.
Why we decided to use NativeScript instead of React Native was both a matter of taste, but also because NativeScript seemed more mature and well thought through to us.
We are currently about half way in developing our new app up to the point where our current app is, featurewise. But we want to add a few more features as well before we release it. So far it seems to be a very quick and responsive app, and we're happy with our technology choice. We hope to release the new app within February.
Priorities for the first quarter of 2019
Permissions is a core feature we have been working on since November, and will be an important feature, especially for the mobile app. It enables user administrators to differentiate what functionality each user has access to. In example, most users should only be able to check out/in items, change location etc., while some users should also be able to add, edit and delete items as well. With permissions, you will be able to customize the access for each user.
Notifications is also a core feature we're working on. We had a limited notification feature in our previous, pre-2018 version of Itefy, but it was very limited and only worked in the web app. The new notification feature will be device independent, and will work both in the web app as well as in the mobile app, with push notifications.
Our wesite had a major facelift in November, and we have received lots of positive feedback. We are constantly working on improvments and new content, and will be releasing a pricing calculator shortly. We're also working on a learning center, with tutorials/how to's.
In addition, we have a long list of minor improvements, features and bug fixes that will be release consecutively.