Getting ready for the big day

What. A. Week.

Coming closer to the Beta release, the App is definitely taking form, but issues of course also sneak out to stab me in the back. That is all a part of software development, and I am ready for the fight to get this product out in time! Let's take a look at what I have been doing this last week...

This week's progress

Starting off where I left last week, with the finishing touches on the payment system, I had to make the automatic receipts, when someone makes a purchase. What's changed here is the facts that I've switched Billy with Stripe on this. I have also done some minor changes to the app, with some improvements to the editing tools, and bug fixes.

Finishing touches on payment

This is the third week in a row, I've talked about the payment system and I'm very glad to say that I will not have to deal with this again for the coming time. I jinxed it didn't I? With Billy not answering my email, and me finding out that there are an easier option, I decided to sending receipts with Stripe.

With Stripe offering a much better documentation for developers, and Stripe being able to deliver a much more seamless experience for me, it was a no brainer to make the switch. Making the switch actually wasn't that hard, I just had to delete all the lines of code I made for Billy, and then add a tiny bit of code to connect Stripe.

Using Stripe means that the only code I have in the app, is the code getting the "products" and prices. I can avoid creating receipts manually in the app (that's what i had to do with Billy), because Stripe allows me to attach an email to the payment intent. When the payment then goes through, Stripe will send the receipt directly to the customer. But that receipt Stripe sends to the customer, does not comply with the laws in Denmark. 1. because the company's CVR-number isn't present and 2. because the VAT. (moms) isn't displayed either. This means that I have to get Stripe to trigger another email service to send a predefined email, when someone makes a purchase.

Being as far as I am with this, I'm sure to be done with this by next friday. This is also something I can work on, without making changes to the app code.

Improvements to the editing tools

These are just minor improvements, but they should make the editing process much better. I have added Fast forward/backward buttons, for when you can listen to the audio. These buttons have a default setting of jumping three seconds, but in the settings you can change this to one through ten seconds. With these kind of tools I have a lot of smaller settings to do, like jumping back a couple of seconds when pausing and or pausing when jumping. These are all things I can improve when the app comes out, and I begin to get more feedback!

Introducing live syncing with the cloud

Mellonn Speak depends on backend from AWS as I've established in the earlier blog posts. When uploading an audio file, you're sending the file to cloud storage, where a Lambda function will create a transcription job with that file. But for the backend to communicate with the frontend, I'm using dynamoDB to have light database elements. These elements keeps light information, like title, description and date of the transcription. But they also contains information about wether the transcription job is done, and of course delivers this information to the user.

Until now I've used normal queries to update these elements, but this means that the user will have to manually reload the page with recordings. Now I've changed this to be synchronised live with the database. The database is using GraphQL which allows it to only synchronise when changes have been made, both to save money but also to save a lot of resources.

What's next?

Well, monday I will be putting the app up for review on the two app stores. This will mean that i have to finish up the store pages, which will be done roughly monday, but I will be fine tuning this during the next week. In this weekend we're going into now, I will also be working on final touches to the app before release. And all the changes I make next week to the app, will most likely come out as a day "day one" patch. Getting the app out, and doing this as smoothly and professionally as possible, will be the sole focus in the next week. This means that I will be working on making the help page for the app, which will provide info and guide on how to use the app. I will also be finishing up work on the terms and conditions. As concluded in last week's post, I'm not sure that Apple nor Google will approve my app for release, but in the next week I will be sending out updates on this matter on Twitter. You can find Mellonn's Twitter on this page's header.

Limitations

With the app coming out in (hopefully) a week, I feel like it's important for me to be transparent with what the app will be, and will not be. The app that comes out next week, will be a refined MVP (minimum viable product). This means that the app definitely isn't perfect, I have tested the app to the extend that I know it works when used correctly. But I have no idea how long this will hold up, it is just me working on this app. I have build the backend to be able to withstand thousand or even millions of users (this was easy thanks to AWS), but one thousand users using this app for 5 minutes each, will already have used the app more than I have. This means that there will be bugs, and this is just the way it is with Beta products. For the last one and a half month, I have worked on this app full time, this means having no income at all. This is also the reason that it will be full price from the get go, the app is free to download and you will only pay for what you use. Everyone also gets up to 15 minutes of totally free transcription without any limitations.

This does bring me back to what last week's post ended with, if you want to help me test the app, please do reach out to me! This means if you could use Mellonn Speak in the coming months and live in Denmark, you should absolutely contact me, I would love to hear from you.

Contact me: [email protected]

Please provide your name, email (the one you wish to use in the app), what you do and wish to use Mellonn Speak for and lastly, how much you wish to use Mellonn Speak.

See you all next week

That's it for this week's blog post, quite a neutral week has passed, but I'm looking very much forward to the next! But do be sure to follow me on Twitter, where there will be updates on wether the app will be out next friday!