Case Study Online Mobile Topup and Internet Recharge System for US Military Personnel www.brainvire.com 2016 Brainvire Infotech Pvt. Ltd Page 1 of 1
Client Requirement The client is a leading global IP telecommunication service company offering highly reliable, end-to-end communication services and solutions to military segment, government entities, ISPs, NGOs, Oil & Gas companies and commercial businesses operating in grim areas around the world. With establishments in Africa, Europe, Middle East, West Asia and North America, client has a well-defined global presence to take up diverse programs from large multi-national networks to battlefield deployments. The client has a wide network of distributors and various channels through which it sells topups offline to its customers. Hence, the client required a responsive website through which their users can subscribe for the internet plans or recharge their mobile phone credit online. The client wanted to develop special system to provide mobile topup and internet recharge plans and solutions to the US military based in Afghanistan. They required to integrate reliable online payment methods into their system like PayPal and credit card, but their main focus was on integrating the Milstar payment method that is widely used by military personnel. This system allows the US army man to go for easy mobile recharge through various service providers especially ROSHAN. Client expected the following functionalities to be added to the system: Front-End Requirements: Automatic feature to recharge mobile phone credit online Pin less mobile recharge User can pay through various online payment modes like PayPal, Credit Card and mainly Milstar US Military soldier identification by DEER authentication Responsive and fast loading website development Adding and management of multiple phone numbers for a single user in Phonebook Verification of number in Phonebook using Twilio (API to send SMS) Availability of the system in spite of the low bandwidth User account update and management Admin Side Requirements: Management of service providers and top up denomination Feature rich dashboard for quick overview of the system Currency conversation matrices for each providers Centralized sales reporting Setting the user restrictions by restricting access by IP range Allowing admin to assign rules to the sub users Promotional email campaign to registered users Determining user s current location based on IP address Audit log Ability to create multiple admins by a super admin Specific user purchase history search based on various parameters like user, provider, transaction ID etc. www.brainvire.com 2016 Brainvire Infotech Pvt. Ltd Page 2 of 2
Project Challenges Team faced the following challenges: Implementation of common APIs to provide support for all service providers Improperly documented APIs from service providers and payment gateways Integration with ROSHAN and ETISALAT Automated discount calculation Implementation of DEERS authentication system for US military soldier identification Periodical checking of the third-party server APIs for maximum success ratio of recharge Milstar payment gateway integration Developing a website that can work in spite of low bandwidth Mapping currency of the user with currency in the system (rate conversion ratio) Technologies Used Operating System & Server Management Development Tools & Environments Database Red Hat Linux OS, Multi-Server Architecture with Staging & Production Environment through Version Controlling releases, Server Optimization, Security & SSL Implementation, Scheduler for Backups, Alert Monitoring System Integration, Server Performance Tuning at regular intervals, Software Firewall Configuration & Maintenance PHP5+, Apache Web Server, Symfony 2.3 Framework, AJAX, Java Script, HTML5, CSS3 etc. MYSQL Database Server, DB Clustering, DB Optimization Manpower Project Leader 1 Developers 2 Designers 1 Quality Assurance Testers 2 www.brainvire.com 2016 Brainvire Infotech Pvt. Ltd Page 3 of 3
Planning Our developers planned to implement the MVC approach in order to make this project scalable and easy to update with further changes. The model-view-controller design pattern separates the logic part of the system from its front end or design. Hence, it is easy making changes to such project thereby making it more scalable and adaptive to the future changes. In MVC architecture Model represents the data layer that comprises of the components responsible for data storage and management. View represents the presentation layer that encapsulates the components responsible for managing user interaction. Controller or application layer that is responsible for managing the actual business logic. The actual computations are carried out here. In order to provide online recharge service in Afghanistan only to the US military, our developers planned to integrate DEERS authentication system so that the access of the topup portal can be restricted only for the US military personnel. We planned to integrate the Milstar payment method which most popular modes of online payment for military personnel. Our client wanted to provide popular mobile topup plans and recharge services and hence we implemented a special mechanism in our system that allowed the military men to go for Roshan prepaid online recharge in Afghanistan. Architecture The project was successfully executed on the basis of Symfony MVC architecture as shown below. www.brainvire.com 2016 Brainvire Infotech Pvt. Ltd Page 4 of 4
Development Highlights Our developers did a great job to understand and implement the APIs that were poorly documented. It was tedious and time consuming job that required more of the trial and error work to carry out, but in spite of that our developers did a good job to implement these APIs properly for the effective functioning of the system. We had a requirement of developing a mobile recharge website for providing easy online recharge services in Afghanistan, a warzone and hence, we developed it in such way that it could work well even when there is low bandwidth internet availability. While doing online recharge there is possibility of recharge failure as well so portal need to provide that money back to client as well. Apart from this developer made a system by which they keep checking out the availability of the server and if it founds that server is down then it will stop providing recharge for that service providers and alert the admin for the same. A few other important highlights in our work are as follows Milstar payment gateway integration Circle based mapping of recharge Integration with Roshan and Etisalat Verification of Phonebook number using Twilio API Rate conversion www.brainvire.com 2016 Brainvire Infotech Pvt. Ltd Page 5 of 5