Google has a very intensive pace on changing their APIs, especially for services regarding maps, device storage, advertisements, purchasing, etc… We have used them in many of the applications released – Trip Log, Fuel Log, DVIR reports and are still updating, as I write this post. We mentioned in a different post the tiers of the mobile apps – free/paid/enterprise – and the differences among them. Basically, the paid apps allow to migrate your data from one device to another and the mobile ads are removed. The enterprise apps have the communication layer with our back-end and the users have a central point for storage, management and reporting.
Some of the apps, especially the free tier were not updated because we have to earn our bread by supporting the paying customers. This post is about laying the plan on what we intend to do with the existent apps.
- Support for geo-coding and map services from different providers. Google/Bing or other map service providers don’t allow for incidental GIS services and we decided to migrate that functionality to other providers, more friendly for start-ups
- Since we deployed our apps, there were at least three major upgrades for back-up/restore API in Google cloud. We decided to redirect the backup/restore to more mature platforms – Dropbox.
- We see the trend of using mobile software integrated with block boxes/hardware devices especially for the trucking industry. That created the impetus to connect our apps to external devices and collect information on demand or at specified intervals.
- The goal is that all our applications will be able to use a third party device (for GPS, sensors, real-time notifications) and communicate on the back-end the collected data.
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