The Client and Their Brief
Plans Together came to us after identifying a gap in the market for a powerful but easy-to-use event management software. This needed to be built with wedding planning in mind to allow the Plans Together team to use the tool in-house. However, as their future plans included selling the software as a white-label product, care had to be taken to ensure that the tools were industry agnostic. The ideal software needed to have a simple but professional interface which was both attractive and intuitive for new users. The client knew how difficult it could be to plan a successful wedding when there were multiple parties involved, so the platform had to allow multiple parties to collaborate in real time. Additionally, to ensure that white-labelling remained an option, the software needed to be scalable to businesses of any size and required branding options built into the software.
What We Did
Plans Together was built using the React framework to ensure that the software was lean and fast across all devices. The back-end was written in PHP using the Laravel framework which proved to be an extremely robust and surprisingly fast solution. The platform was hosted using Amazon EC2 scalable cloud hosting to ensure that the site could be scaled up and down to match user demand.
Plan Builder
We created a drag and drop interface that allowed users to create and structure their plans. This interface allowed users to create guest lists, catering notes and meal options as well as interactive checklists, timelines and cost calculations. All of which could be used by multiple users in real time. Great care was taken to ensure that the feature set was industry agnostic, ensuring that each component could be customised to suit the situation. To ensure easy collaboration, each section contained features to help users work together. For instance, we allowed the owner of the plan to limit the visibility of specific sections to certain users, we implemented the ability for users to leave and reply to comments for each section and also allowed users to sign-off on specific sections when complete. A copy of the plan could be downloaded at any time so that it could be sent digitally or printed.
Real time updates
In order to handle real-time updates between users, we created a WebSocket to handle communications between the front-end and back-end systems. In doing so, we were able to immediately capture any information entered by a user and transmit it to others. This meant that users could sit back and watch the plan get updated without needing to refresh the page, it would simply update itself. To ensure that users didn’t conflict with each other, we imposed a temporary lock on any components that were being worked on by others. Additionally, we used the WebSockets to notify users when they received a notification, making the whole process as seamless and streamlined as possible.
White Label Functionality
We included a branding section to allow businesses to personalise the software’s colours and logos to match their company. This ensured that Plans Together had the option to white-label their software, allowing them to sell the software on, as well as using it as an in-house tool. By splitting the system up in this way we gave the client the flexibility to create additional client applications in the future. Furthermore, we provided a fully documented REST API so that third party systems would also be able to interface with the Plans Together system if the need arose.
Subscriptions & User Access
In order for a user to access the platform, they first had to register an account. The platform would allow any user to register, however only those paying for a premium membership were able to create plans. To become a member, users had to pay a monthly subscription. To handle this, we integrated Stripe as it offers a robust payment gateway, recurring monthly payments and automated invoicing. Once the user had subscribed they could create as many plans as desired and invite other users to collaborate. The list of invited users then appeared in a contacts list within the system, from here they could assign which plans they had access to and their access permissions.
The Result
Plans Together is perfect for planning and managing events, regardless of their size or purpose. The scalable AWS EC2 hosting ensures that Plans Together never pay more than is required for their hosting. Additionally, it ensures that any white-label clients can rest assured that they will never run out of bandwidth or server space. The Stripe subscriptions system allows Plans Together to take regular secure payments without requiring any personal input. This allows their team to focus on their own wedding planning business whilst the white-label software acts as an automatic revenue stream running silently in the background.
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<p>Get In Touch</p>
<p>Thank you for your interest in our business. If you have any questions about our services, a project you’d like us to help with, or if you just want to say hello, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We look forward to hearing from you!</p>
