Cleanagents

Android gig app for cleaners across Germany & Austria

built by Redwerk and acquired by Helpling.de
×
Where do you want us to send our Cleanagents product development case study?
Please enter your business email

CleanAgents is a platform where you book cleaning services on demand. The platform gives technical possibility to accept orders from consumers registered on the platform and on the other side cleaners can recieve these orders independently with esatablished deals.

All Customers

Product Development

Being a one-stop shop for software development, Redwerk has implemented the app for Cleanagents from the ground up. We went through every phase here: requirements analysis and discovery, UI/UX design, development, testing, submitting to Google Play, maintenance, and support.

Learn more

Startups & Innovation

Various digital start-ups trusted our professional team to build and develop their entire technology from scratch.

Learn more

Challenge

In the always-on, always-connected Smart Age, more and more services are offered online and through app platforms: Taxis can be hailed via smartphone apps, pizzas can be ordered with one tap, etc., but some more traditional services have so far lagged behind and not really caught up with the digital age. Such is the case with cleaning services, which rely on a strict word-of-mouth system and classifieds lists. Cleanagents.com has the aim of making this whole process much, much easier for its clients. It allows users to order cleaning services easily online, with a simple, quick, and reliable system. So far, the services are available via web in select cities in Germany and Austria. While useful for the customer, it is also a chance for professional cleaners to find work. Cleaners can register online, view, and accept jobs via the online platform, while administrator have the ability to view and manage orders and users through the backend.

The online platform and the software were already in place, but in today`s tech age, mobile apps are the be-all and end-all to a company`s success. In view of this, Redwerk was contracted to develop a simple app that would allow cleaners to preview and accept jobs directly from their Android phones. After downloading the app (sign-in was required), the app had to be designed to push new notifications to users whenever new jobs became available in the area near the agent. Agents had to be given the opportunity to preview jobs and accept them. The job`s location had to be shown on a map, giving the user also the chance to display routing options to get there as quickly as possible. In addition, there had to be an option to save the job to an agent`s calendar (in iCal format).

Options also had to be given to agents to call clients directly and in an easy manner from the app if they were running late or if they needed to coordinate detailed aspects of the job with the end customer.

Solution

Backend

The backend for this was set up by our engineers using Ruby on Rails, providing a communication interface for the Android app. An interesting fact is that the supported device types were selected based on a list of the most used devices of the actual website users.

The existing backend did not provide any APIs or web services, so our expert software engineers had to figure out how to establish an interface with it, before they could do anything else. Several API methods were created to this end. The good news for our engineers was that Ruby on Rails makes the task of implementing RESTful APIs quite easy and smooth. First of all the geographical coordinates for the received orders had to be added. We decided to stick with the geocoder gem to do this. Already a delayed job gem was used in the project so it was an easy task to move the coordinates into a background process. Thanks to the high level of expressiveness of Ruby on Rails, it took only a few lines of code to implement asynchronous coordinates resolving for the creation of orders.

As a developer, you are only as good as the existing code you have to work with, and since the quality of the backend code was quite high it was easy for us to develop several API methods for our application and to integrate it with the Google Cloud Messaging platform.

A lot of attention was paid to the fact that only orders with successfully processed payments had to be displayed. Recurring orders (e.g. cleaning tasks once a week) were also an interesting part of the app to handle. In order to implement geographical routing to the job`s location, we used Google Maps, which worked very well.

User Interface

Our engineers managed to create a simple UI/UX for the mobile app, and all screens were designed by us and approved by Cleanagents.com. In order to ensure a consistent design and branding, the same icons and color schemes were used as on the existing website. As for the distance calculations and routing functions of the app, this part of the project was rather more fun to test, as it allowed us to walk out of the office with our devices and take a breather after a long day of coding.

Android

As far as Android-specific programming is concerned, we used the GreenDAO library to automatically generate all entities and DAO’s. The interaction with the newly created APIs of the backend was handled by a Retrofit library, which automatically builds appropriate request/response processing methods according to the API descriptions provided. We also used the EventBus library to decouple application components as much as possible. Those solutions allowed us to develop the required application in about two weeks and the whole project needed less than 2500 lines of Java code. Which is good news, because less code usually means fewer bugs!

Result

As mobile applications are becoming a fundamental part of all aspects of our lives, finding new niches for app development projects gets harder and harder. The sector of professional cleaning services had so far been overlooked, and this meant that in the case of this project, a lot of good things came together at just the right time. An innovative idea found the right executor, and as a result, finding and contracting cleaning services online is now much easier in a lot of European cities, and the project will no doubt be expanded to more and more locations very soon. Also for the agents, life has just become a little bit easier. Offers for cleaning jobs can now be viewed and accepted with one simple gesture.

This practical use of technology was met with great enthusiasm by our development team, and as a result, the resulting app is something we are truly proud of!

Result

Exit: Acquisition

Cleanagents was bought by Helpling.de in March 2012 Cleanagents was bought by Helpling.de in March 2012 Read More

In Press

In the end, it's about being innovative.

Welt is one of the top deutsch news media providers.
Absolutely worth any time and money. I have been working on an Android app for my start-up CleanAgents.com and Redwerk was able to deliver quickly a reliable solution with all testing and expected value. Would recommend for projects of any size and level of difficulty.
Sergiej Rewiakin
Sergiej Rewiakin, Co-Founder at CleanAgents.com

Looking to add mobile to your product?

Contact Us

Technologies

Ruby
Rails
GreenDAO
Google Cloud Messaging
JavaAndroid
2developers worked on the project
2QA engineers
1month to deliver
4,093lines of code

Redwerk Team Comment

Maksim

Maksim
Java Developer

To develop Cleanagents app we decided to use GreenDao and Retrofit technologies. It helped us to optimize its work with REST API and the database. Also it was intresting to use Google Cloud Messags technology. It allows to receive messages even when the app is closed to save mobile device resources.

Media
Media
Media
Media
Media
Media
Media
Media
Media
Media
Media
Media

Related in Blog

CleanAgents: One Of Our Clients Gets Acquired By Helpling.de

CleanAgents: One Of Our Clients Gets Acquired By Helpling.de

You might be familiar with one of our featured projects and clients – CleanAgents, the technology startup from Berlin. Just recently, it was purchased by The Rocket Startup Helpling – a German-based global online marketplace for household services. Helpling is an absolute leader ...

Read More
How Long Does it Take to Build an App?

How Long Does it Take to Build an App?

Mobile applications have already overtaken desktop and web apps, so nowadays businesses are becoming more interested in building their own mobile apps as the primary way to interact with customers. Having a mobile app in addition to a web presence any business can improve its acc...

Read More
Typical Mistakes When Working with a Database in Ruby on Rails

Typical Mistakes When Working with a Database in Ruby on Rails

When we hear “Ruby”, we frequently associate it with “Ruby on Rails”. Rails is a very functional and popular framework that is widely used for building APIs and web-applications. Rails consists of independent gems and ActiveRecord is one of them. This powerful gem simplifies oper...

Read More
Specification In Software Development And Project Estimation

Specification In Software Development And Project Estimation

  It’s important for your software development team to have as much information as possible about your future product in order to provide accurate estimates. Sometimes a feature that seems minor and insignificant can have a huge impact on your budget and timeline. That’s w...

Read More

Impressed?

Hire us

Other Case Studies

Adfectious

Adfectious

Romania

Developed mobile advertising system inspired by Google’s AdMob and used on popular Romanian media like meteoromania.ro

PageFreezer

PageFreezer

Canada

Developed website and social media archiving SaaS shortlisted as Red Herring Top 100 Global Finalist