TaskAssure

SaaS API and Mobile App Task Monitoring “TaskAssure”

Summary

TaskAssure’s mission was to improve transparency of remote service coordination. At the time this concept was unique, but today can be seen in similar implementations in other products (e.g. TaskRabbit, Thumbtack).

This was a bootstrapped venture, although we appreciated help in the form of initial angel funding. The product was adopted early by two property management businesses, one in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the other in Spain. The venture was unable to reach financial viability.

Awarded “Today’s Caregiver Friendly Award” by caregiver.com.

Role

TaskAssure was founded by MataiNet CEO, Shawn ODonnell to pursue a vision inspired by experience working with those that help care for elderly and people with disabilities. We prototyped the concept, defined product backlog, evaluated potential value of features, and refined down to a core ‘MVP’ set. MataiNet's consultants were the sole development/delivery team. 

Outcomes and Innovations

  • Perhaps first implementation of mobile app for coordination and tracking of remote workforce
  • Focuses on a ‘trust, but verify’ value proposition, not yet replicated in other products
  • Continually tracks status and location during task, detecting and reporting outages
  • SaaS API provides extensive task event notification via email, text, or EDI support
  • AI computer vision algorithms detect and collect face images for biometric recognition

Example Artifacts

Processes

Followed Agile Scrum and DevOps processes for development and operational efforts. Rally used for user story backlog management. Releases were deployed directly to Heroku cloud from Github repository. Github also used for issue management and work coordination. Android and iOS app code also stored in Github for controlled release to app marketplaces. Operation configurations were defined by code for continuous and responsive deployment.

Platform/Tools

  • Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Bootstrap
  • Xcode, Objective C for iOS native app
  • Eclipse, Java for Android native app
  • OpenCV for facial recognition and training
  • DotNetNuke for marketing website
  • Heroku & AWS cloud services, API, and browser app, Stripe payment processing
  • Rally, Git, Google Analytics
  • New Relic APM, Logentries, Postmark
  • MS Visio, Powerpoint, Excel