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Alpha Anywhere Helps Australian Government Recover from Major Storm


Alpha Software

Every once in a while we come across a way in which the Alpha Anywhere mobile platform was used that's so unique we feel we need to tell the world about it. This is one of those times:

It's a story of how a system built rapidly in Alpha Anywhere helped  the city of Sydney, Australia recover from a major storm.

Australian-based IT consultant Peter Caspari was approached by the Australian government and Australian insurance companies to build a system to handle emergency damage work caused by weather events. The clients needed a system for coordinating the the make-safe work following storms, for doing things such as repairing glass and handling downed trees. The system would have to allocate jobs to various trades, track the workflow in the field, and handle quality assurance, key performance indicators, and more. A mobile client was also needed to serve the trades doing the make-safe work.

To build it, Caspari turned to Alpha Anywhere. The system uses approximately 150 grid and UX components and is load-balanced across multiple Alpha Anywhere application servers. A call center takes calls about homes or businesses who require emergency make-safe work. That information is input into a Web-based application, which in turn allocates and schedules the work for various trades, who go out, assess the damage, and perform the make-safe work.

The contractors take the mobile app with information about the work that needs to be done into the field with them. Using the app they take before-and-after photos of the damage and the cleanup. The app automatically logs when the work was started and finished. The information from the app is then synced back to the database that powers the Web application. The system is a complete end-to-end solution, and includes invoicing as well.

The system was put to the test when a powerful storm hit Sydney and surrounding areas in October of 2014. Tens of thousands of homes were without power, there was severe flooding, and many trees and tree branches were knocked down. The system had to handle at least a 300 percent increase in its normal workload.

"I anticipated this kind of event, which is why I built the load-balancing system with Alpha Anywhere," Caspari says. "I just cranked it up, and the system worked fine, without a hitch. It really raised the bar on how professionally the emergency event was handled."

Caspari says that he would not have been able to build a sophisticated system as quickly or in as an organic a manner without Alpha Anywhere.

"I don't know of any other product that would allow me to build a system this quickly, or in as flexible way as Alpha Anywhere," he says. "It allowed me to constantly adapt to the changing needs of the system as they developed."

To read more about how Caspari built the system, read the full case study here.

Learn more about Alpha Software government apps.

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About Author

Dion McCormick
Dion McCormick

Dion McCormick, Lead Solutions Engineer at Alpha Software, is a recognized expert on agile application development. He helps enterprise development teams around the world transition from slow legacy approaches to high-performance mobile, web, and desktop development using the Alpha Anywhere platform.

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The Alpha platform is the only unified mobile and web app development and deployment environment with distinct “no-code” and “low-code” components. Using the Alpha TransForm no-code product, business users and developers can take full advantage of all the capabilities of the smartphone to turn any form into a mobile app in minutes, and power users can add advanced app functionality with Alpha TransForm's built-in programming language. IT developers can use the Alpha Anywhere low-code environment to develop complex web or mobile business apps from scratch, integrate data with existing systems of record and workflows (including data collected via Alpha TransForm), and add additional security or authentication requirements to protect corporate data.

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