Case Study: National Women’s Help Line Application

Background:

Trigyn’s client was a national governmental organization with a mandate to help improve the status of women in the country. As part of this mandate, the client established a national help line aimed at ensuring the safety and well-being of women. The program provides a trustworthy resource where women could report incidents of harassment, abuse, and violence. The help line program is staffed by trained professionals and offers empathetic support, guidance, and assistance to women in distress.

The client program relied on an application developed on the PHP-based Laravel framework. Limitations of the legacy system posed several challenges that prevented the client achieving its program goals. These challenges included a lack of IVR and SMS capabilities, performance issues, limited scalability, and a high total cost of operation (TCO), amongst other issues.

Trigyn was selected for this project because of its expertise in revitalizing legacy systems through the utilization of open-source tools and technologies to minimize ongoing costs.

Trigyn Approach:

Trigyn’s services spanned the software development lifecycle and included requirement study, solution architecture & design, code construction & testing, implementation, and post implementation support.

A key consideration when designing the solution was total cost of ownership. Throughout the planning process, Trigyn sought to identify approaches which could achieve the client’s functionality and performance requirements, while minimizing ongoing expenses. To ensure enduring cost savings, Trigyn’s approach focussed on minimizing ongoing expenses such as license fees and maintenance costs.

The scope of the project included the following:

• Trigyn started the process with an initial discovery phase, wherein detailed requirements were outlined, and expectations were established in collaboration with the client team. The objective was to understand the challenges posed by the legacy system and the expectations for the new system.
• Trigyn’s team designed and built a comprehensive, state-of-the-art solution named with enhanced features and functionality addressing the client’s problems with the legacy system and fulfilling their requirements. The solution was built using PHP-based Laravel framework and MySQL.
• Trigyn implemented role-based logins for the client, including roles such admin, call attendant and counsellor. After logging in, call attendants can set their availability status as "available for calls," "not available for calls," or "busy on a call".
• Design and development of the application integrated with an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Calling API, to create an automated and efficient call management system. Help line callers number are greeted by the IVR system and can select from various menu options to quickly connect them to the services they require.
• The UI for the new application and the Laravel framework was created to match client design guidelines, including responsive capabilities to support usability via most mobile devices.
• Schedule follow-up calls by client staff with callers to ensure continuity of support services.
• Automated feedback calls to past callers to rate the service.
• Graphical dashboard which allows program managers to analyze all aspects of the program and services delivered. Extensive reports could be generated from the dashboard to analyze the types of calls received, inbound and outbound calling activity, the services provided and the feedback from callers.
• A shift management system for administrators wherein the administrators have the capability to create shifts for call attendants and counsellors.
• Additional features of the application included:
  • Web based solution with cross browser compatibility and platform independence including accessibility via most mobile devices
  • Login and registration functionality was implemented for role-based logins required by the client.
  • Password change and reset functionality.
  • IVR to enable automated and efficient call management.
  • Capability to connect callers to available councillors across a dispersed geography.
  • SOS feature to allow callers to access emergency support.
  • Call back scheduling system.
  • Feedback collection system using automated calls.
  • Call Monitoring, recording and archiving to cloud.
  • SMS messaging support.
  • Graphical dashboards and statistical reporting with filters.

Technology Stack

• Laravel 10.0
• PHP 8.1
• MySQL 8.0
• JavaScript, jQuery, Ajax
• Web Services API
• Linux, Apache, Tomcat Server
• Chart.js, Google Maps
• Visual Code Studio,
• GIT
• OpenForge

Outcome:

Trigyn delivered a reliable, scalable solution with low ongoing costs. By leveraging open-source tools, Trigyn eliminated any licensing fees and included design features to minimize ongoing maintenance requirement. The upgraded solution was able to scale enabling the service to handle demand peaks allowing them to serve more 180,000 callers since launch

Trigyn’s team is currently engaged with the client to incorporate the latest versions of the Laravel framework, and implement updates the technology stack such as PHP, MySQL, Tomcat, Apache etc.

For more information about Trigyn's Development and Maintenance Services, Contact Us.