Australia Post

Australia Post: Windows Phone 7 Application

The Situation

Australia Post offers its iPhone customers a hybrid application providing some of the key services from its corporate website. Customers are able to calculate postage for domestic or international letters and parcels, track consignments, lookup post code or suburb information, pay bills and also find Australia Post outlets.

With a long term mobile strategy of creating opportunities for Australia Post customers to access these services, coupled with the recent launch of Windows Phone 7 in Australia, Australia Post engaged Readify (in conjunction with Microsoft Australia) to architect and develop a native Windows Phone 7 application utilising Australia Posts back-end APIs.

In addition to providing the same core features, some of the key requirements were to provide a consistent look and feel to the rest of the Windows Phone 7 application ecosystem, as well as provide a personalised experienced for users - for example, providing a history of previous postage calculations or tracked consignments.

The Solution

Readify developed a fully native Windows Phone 7 Application bringing together the key areas of Australia Post's corporate website.  There were various hurdles and challenges in developing the Windows Phone 7 application. Unlike the existing hybrid solution, the native Windows Phone 7 application was to be low on network utilisation but provide a rich client user-interface with effects, branding and gestures. Navigation around the application had to be natural and consistent with other applications and accessible to a wide audience. Readify developed the Windows Phone 7 application adhering to the Metro UX guidelines and used a Panoramic view of all the major functional parts of the application. The user flicks through to select a service they wish to use. Subtle unobtrusive effects were also added to provide an enjoyable user experience.

Another challenge was to manage the services offered (securely) by Australia Post for third parties. They vary from RESTful services to SOAP Web Services. Each of these have their own security authentication methods; either passing in a Key as a query-string or using a client certificate. They also return a variety of data - some of which may not be relevant or beneficial for use in a mobile application and may handle errors differently.

In order to have a cohesive method of accessing these services catered for mobile devices, Readify developed a proxy web-service using WCF which delegates requests to the relevant Australia Post API. This also alleviated the need to store security information on the device for accessing these services and provide the ability to post-process the data returned from the API prior to being returned to the client. Clients require a single key to access a host of other services - which can be controlled by the service.

One of the key requirements was to ensure successful solution delivery prior to the launch of Windows Phone 7 in Australia.  It was necessary to review and refine the proposed solution and by drawing in expertise from Readify, the team was able to deliver a solution which caters for Australia Post's customers. Within a month, the team had created a market place ready application for Australia Post.

"The Readify team worked extremely hard to meet tight deadlines, delivering a solution that meets the needs of Australia Post and its customers. The application reinforces Australia Post's focus on new and upcoming technologies that deliver a richer customer experience." Richard Denver, Online Channel Manager, Digital & Contact Centres, Australia Post

The Methodologies and Technologies

The solution was developed using Microsoft Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 using a custom developed mobile-friendly Restful WCF Web Service and hosted in Windows Azure, leveraging existing Australia Post APIs. Bing Maps was used for displaying geospatial data for suburbs providing a rich interface for panning & zooming.

Readify utilised Visual Studio ALM to manage the development process of the solution based around the Scrum methodology.

The Benefits

In developing the Australia Post Windows Phone 7 Application, customers are able to instantly receive information across several key areas of the business - postage calculation, tracking of consignments and looking up postcode/suburb information. They are able to retain history of previous searches or calculations and obtain useful and relevant information from Australia Post. This also provides ways for Australia Post to interact with customers via social network integration such as Twitter, or displaying news from the corporate RSS feeds and promotions.

The WCF service developed in conjunction with the Windows Phone 7 application can be utilised by other mobile projects, cutting the cost of having to learn the intricate details of implementing different APIs. New services can be added and exposed easily and securely. For instance, an Android client can reuse the service developed without having to manage multiple security authentication methods. Hosting on Azure has ensured that costs associated with the service are minimal, scalable as customer demand grows, and provide reliable uptime.

By encouraging customers to utilise the mobile offerings, Australia Post cuts a significant number of enquiries to their call centre by phone, email and web saving both time and money for Australia Post and its customers.

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For More Information

For more information about Readify services, call +61 3 9600 2339 or 1300 666 274 (within Australia) or visit the website at http://www.readify.net/.