The Background
Global peace ambassador Prem Rawat has been traveling the world his entire life to deliver a single message: “Peace is possible.” He has addressed over 40 million people worldwide at live events, on TV, and radio with this message. The launch of the TimelessToday.tv web platform on his 50th anniversary made the audio, reading materials, and videos of Prem Rawat available to everyone online. The platform offers content about the human potential for peace and wellbeing and is complemented by iOS and Android mobile apps.
The Challenge
TimelessToday quickly gained popularity in more than 140 countries. Both the web platform and mobile applications were a huge success with their accessible and beautiful content of various formats. However, the system couldn’t cope with the rapidly growing number of visitors while hosting live events with many attendees.
Strategic Partnership
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Phase I.
The client appreciated our transparent business model and hands-on experience, so they asked our experts to re-architect the Azure Cloud infrastructure of the system to improve responsiveness under load. Our architect examined the performance of the back-end/database layer to identify the cases of abnormally slow performance when the load is high and fixed the performance issues using Microsoft Azure SQL Database. Within a week, the issues that had been neglected for months were resolved.
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Phase II.
After that, we developed an API to support one of the mobile app’s new features related to organizing video lessons into chapters. Seeing the value of cooperation with us, the client asked the team to renovate the back-end API and develop data integration on the front end of the web platform and mobile apps. During the busiest periods, the team consisted of four .NET developers, a DevOps expert, and two alternating project managers working on our side.
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Phase III.
The client asked us to handle their mobile applications, and a mobile development team was set up. It was responsible for fixing bugs, delivering test builds, releasing apps, and more. At this stage, we also took over the client’s web solution development. The team included an iOS developer, an Android developer, and a .NET developer. Our team redesigned and redeveloped the integration with payment systems and added two-factor authentication and redesigned several services to make the system more stable.
The Results
We helped to improve and re-engineer the TimelessToday web platform and mobile applications. Now, users can be connected with their favorite platform at all times, follow recent news from Prem Rawat and the related events going on around the world.
System re-engineering:
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Improved the responsiveness under load
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Developed a new database layer to persist information about the already watched and remaining content
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Packaged and deployed an API solution in the Kubernetes infrastructure on Azure
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Improved the admin module to tailor content for end-users
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Upgraded Swift and XCode, Universal App (iPad+iPhone), Chromecast, and iOS auto-renewable subscription to the latest versions
The team created the following modules for mobile applications:
Content management:
- Improved streaming video content
- Improved push notifications about new videos and live events
- Organizing video lessons into chapters
- Implementing and improving different types of Login/Creating Account methods (through Google and phone number)
- Improving and supporting the PEAK module with chapters (videos organized in a particular order) and user surveys
Subscriptions and payment:
- Special subscriptions for instant access to live streams and replays, interviews, full-length events and more
- Premium and classic packages of subscriptions, gifts depending on user subscription
- Redesigned and redeveloped payment systems for subscriptions: Apple in-app purchases, Google in-app purchases, Stripe
Support and feedback:
- Supporting Hindi, English, Italian, French, Spanish localizations
- Bug fixing
- Optimizing the stability of the Android app and its size (by 74%, from 25 megabytes to 6.5 megabytes)
