🥁Introduction:
- With the utilization of APIs by Hello Sign, we are now able to get the documents signed digitally, eliminating the hassle of getting them signed manually. Keeping this feature in mind we had the idea to consume the APIs and utilize this feature for the College Hostels and to put an end to the use of the traditional Pass Book method of Applying For Leaves or submitting Applications and keeping a track of them. Our Goal through Sign Ease is to "Ease" the signing of Leaves and Applications for the students and for the Authority Members, and ultimately to digitalize the traditional method used so far.
💡Inspiration:
- College Hostels are one of those authorities that still adhere to the old-fashioned Pass Book system, requiring students to maintain track of the type of Leaves and Applications they are requesting in their respective Passbooks. The students are also required to draft the application and get those signed manually in the Passbooks by the respective authority member in order to get approval.
- This traditional process of getting the Leaves/ Applications signed manually has a lot of drawbacks,
which includes:
- Hassle for the student to Write and Get the Applications signed manually.
- In the case of Application For Night Pass, the student has to get the application approved both by the Hostel's Warden and Parent/ Guardian, which increases the time for getting the approval.
- If a large number of Applications are received by the Hostel's Warden, it becomes difficult for them to Manage, Review and Sign the Applications.
- Keeping all these issues in mind, we came up with the concept to Digitalize this approach by building Sign Ease, an Android application that has integrated APIs by Hello Sign and assists the students in getting their Leaves and Applications signed Digitally by the respective Authority Member. Also, it helps the Wardens/ Authority Members to keep track of all the applications that they've signed.
💬 What it does:
- User chooses the Application or a Leave (Duty Leave, Day Pass, or Night Pass) that they want to get signed.
- After the input of Dates (Leave Start, Leave End) and a Reason for the Leave, the user can review the application and can click confirm.
- The backend automatically sends an email with the document to the signers, who are by default Mapped (along with their emails) with the type of Role and the application selected. The user can wait till the documents get signed digitally and can download the signed documents or delete their pending requests (if they wish to).
🛠 How we built it
- Hello Sign, Kotlin (MVVM, NavGraphs, Coroutines, Retrofit), XML, Postman, Firebase (Authentication, Firestore, Storage, Crashlytics, Analytics), APIs, Figma.
❗Challenges we ran into:
- Integrating and Loading PDFs in a WebView within a Bottom Sheet Dialog.
- Handling crashes due to a lag in the Processing Time of API calls.
- Managing the Fragment Stack and its Lifecycle because of multiple Navigations.
🏆 Accomplishments that we're proud of:
- Eliminating the Manual Job for both Students and Authorities to get their Docs signed.
- Implemented Bottom Sheets and WebView successfully.
- Segregated different blocks of code and efficiently handled its operation, thus following a clean code architecture (MVVM).
📙 What we learned:
- Usage and working of Hello-Sign APIs and how they benefit society.
- Learned using NavGraphs and Logging Interceptor for Networking Calls.
- Improved our Application Architecture by writing more Efficient Code.
❓ What's next for Sign Ease
- Able to embed logs of Leaves and the Applications on the identity cards of students.
- Adding more Templates and Signers across the spectrum of a College.
- Build a cross-platform service that can work on multiple Operating Systems.
- Build another Portal for the Authorities to sign the documents then and there instead of opening the e-mails again and again. All by keeping Hello Sign as the backbone.