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IBM-MIL / IBM-Ready-App-for-Telecommunications

An Android Ready App that allows users to dynamically manage their data/talk/text plans while utilizing material design, MVP architecture, and reactive programming.
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IBM Ready App for Telecommunications

Overview

IBM Ready App for Telecommunications demonstrates a new genre of mobile service provider where plans are controlled by the end user and not limited to a few choices. These dynamic service providers are starting to emerge all around the world. The app empowers the customer to control their mobile voice, text, and data plan while empowering the service provider to provide the right offers at the right time. Please visit this blog for details on the business case.

IBM Products

IBM Ready App for Telecommunication is made great via

Getting Started

The user can browse through the application by logging in using credentials where username and password are same (For ex john/john). The app has multiple tabs, one each for - data plan, text plan, message plan and talk plan. Customer can upgrade any of these plans individually. Also there is a quick recharge option available on each of these screens. Hotspot feature is available on the home screen of the app. This lists the 10 nearby hotspots of the Telco provider, and this data is retrieved using Cloudant Geospatial queries. Throughout the app analytics data is collected, which can be monitored by configuring IBM Cloud Mobile Analytics Service.

Setup Instructions

  1. HotSpot feature: The app retrieves hotspot entries from a Cloudant db using Mobilefirst adapter - 'CloudantGeoAdapter' and shows in the map. For this feature to work, please do the following setup.

    • Create a database by name 'telco' in a Cloudant service instance.
    • Upload JSON documents given in the file CloudantGeoAdapter/hotspots.json into 'telco' db

    • Create the following design document (index)

      { "_id": "_design/geodd", "_rev": "1-951ce177f5894819fa5a70da5f7e7920", "st_indexes": { "geoidx": { "index": "function(doc) {if (doc.geometry && doc.geometry.coordinates) {st_index(doc.geometry);}}" } } }

  2. Download the adapters -

    • UserLoginAdapter - Validates the user credentials
    • TelcoUserAdapter - Sends the telco plan update details to the backend server(dummy backend)
    • CloudantGeoAdapter - Uses Cloudant geospatial query to display the hotspots.

  3. In adapter.xml of CloudantGeoAdapter configure the Cloudant service details like account name and credentials.

  4. Build the adapters and deploy to server. For more details on building adapter please refer to this link

  5. Register the application TelcoReadyAppAndroid in Mobilefirst admin console using the following details

    Application Name : TelcoReadyAppAndroid

    Package : com.ibm.mil.readyapps.telco

    version : 1.0

  6. Download the application TelcoReadyAppAndroid and import in Android Studio. Edit the mfpclient.properties and update wlServerHost and wlServerPort values to point to the MFP server

  7. For the hotspot functionality to work,

    • Get an API key by following the steps here and update the same in the AndroidManifest.xml

  8. Build and run the app on the device.

  9. On the login screen, please enter the username and password same for example john/john for the authentication to work.

  10. The app shows up the base plan and the additional packs that are available as add-on.

  11. As the add-ons are selected by the user, the base plan is updated and the same information is sent to the backend by the TelcoUserAdaper.

  12. CloudantGeoAdapter fetches the hotspot details from Cloudant DB and displays on the map.

  13. Analytics data is captured throughout the app. So, if analytics service is configured for the MFP server, custom charts can be drawn to showcase the customer usage patterns. For example, the mobile analytics custom chart below shows the number of hits on the different application pages

Known Issues

  1. If you receive "Error:com.android.builder.internal.aapt.AaptException: Failed to crunch file" when building the app on android studio on windows, this might be because of the 240 character limitation. Please try moving the project up the project file path.

  2. If the hotspot map does not come up, check if GPS is 'ON', current location is marked in Google Maps, if the app permission request was accepted.

License

IBM Ready App for Telecommunications is available under the IBM Ready Apps License Agreement. See the License file for more details.