AAPT case study

To give an example of some recent work, I just launched a for AAPT's logged-in area. It takes two web services from the back-end system and displays the customer's current account balance and whether or not the "Your messages" mailbox has any unread messages.

This solves two business problems AAPT experienced:

• Customers viewing their online bill were getting confused that it shows a snapshot, which means the total owed was at the point the bill was issued, not the balance right now. My dashboard cleary displays the current balance including any accepted payments, and draws attention to overdue balances in red.
• It was difficult to pass information to customers who have not set email as their preferred contact method, unless they check the "Your messages" area. This box now lets them know they have unread messages.

I specified the web services that deliver the live data to the dashboard from the back-end system. I then built the front-end user interface and JavaScript code to take that information and display it to customers in the logged-in part of the system.

Technical details

The dashboard code uses jQuery to load in two JSON web services. The account balance code has a few conditions that change the way information is displayed. If there is an overdue outstanding balance, it is highlighted in red. Future scheduled payments (direct debits) are indicated, so that customers with automatic payment are not concerned about outstanding balances.