DingDong is a new application developed by Jin Wei and Surraj two research and development assistants in CTI. It was first released in September 2019 as a pilot project with minimal production load. The application was only in use by a few staff during the pilot project. Then, it was released in February 2020 to be used by more authorized staff. The app is updated daily for bug fixes and smoother use. “It was very challenging to develop DingDong! we still update the app on a daily basis. Surraj and I faced a lot of challenges while architecting the app.” – Jin Wei
DingDong can broadcast push notifications to APSpace and external users by sending emails to students and staff as well as sent vs delivered vs read report. It also gives users the option to choose between different categories of push notifications to be displayed to recipients. for example, a student wants to receive notifications about events and not receive any notifications about new features in APSpace. That was designed to protect the user’s rights to control what they want to see!
The old notification system used to send notifications via e-mail and SMS which was costing more money without such comprehensive reporting and analysis. DingDong costs less money and gives both parties more functionalities.