Hi all,
I'm a noob app developer trying to do it for the first time. I'm trying to create an event calendar app for company's internal purposes. So that everyone in the company (which uses a lot of android phones) can be updated on company events that are coming up.
My approach is to create a database with MySQL for events input, and to use PHP to connect the database which is in a server and to push it to the android devices that are used in the office as that's how I found it in a tutorial from HelloAndroid.
My questions are:
1. is this the best approach to create such app?
2. Can I use Android's default calendar to input these events? if not is there some kind of calendar template that I can use to display the information to the users.
Probably will have more questions as I progress, but please help if anyone is more experienced in these matters than I am.
Thank you very much, and really appreciate the inputs that I'm gonna get
A simple solution would be to use Google Calendar.
By using GC you can add/edit events either from a PC (work or home) or your Mobile anywhere in the World.
All that is required is for someone to first set up the calendar on Google and push it out to all those who you want to see it.
This way you are not isolating anyone who does not have an Android Phone.
that's a really good point. Especially in a closed environment like an office. I didn't think of that before. THank you very much.
However, if let's say I want to try to build an app for that for public use, not just confined to limited numbers of people in a company.
Would that be the best approach or if there's any better way to approach it. I may decide to build the app after all just to learn and gain experience in app development.
thanks again for the feedback, really appreciate it.
I can't really give you advice on developing an App sorry.
All I can say is the method I mention is the one which I use to keep all my Operational Team (Surgeons/Doctors/Nurses/Admin/etc) updated and advised.
There's nothing short in you developing your own Calendar App but you would have to ensure it would be available to all and that includes anyone anywhere regardless of the fact they are at work, home, holiday, with Android or not, have a Phone, PC, Mac, etc... etc...
For that there's already a stable tool by the name of Google Calendar.
If you do develop one I'd still be interested in seeing what ideas you could bring into practice that would have a benefit over GC.
I understand your point of view, and actually you got me thinking, maybe if I really want to do the apps, I can create an app that calls the Gcalendar events, and display it from the app. I can find out the API to do that, and that would be much simpler.
Thank you again for your input, really appreciate i
racdyn said:
I understand your point of view, and actually you got me thinking, maybe if I really want to do the apps, I can create an app that calls the Gcalendar events, and display it from the app. I can find out the API to do that, and that would be much simpler.
Thank you again for your input, really appreciate i
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No problem.... I wish you well on your venture.
Do please let us all know how you get on.. You never know, if it becomes that good I may even use it myself over the stock calendar App or any of the other's that already link to GC.
No matter if the app is free or paid, as a developer you want to offer a good support to the end users. Why? Because as long as they are happy they will continue to use your app and they will recommend it to others. So it is in your best interest to do your best and resolve issues that customers are reporting, implement requested features and solve as many bugs as possible.
To that end, you must ensure you provide easy to access means of communication between you as a developer and the end users. There are many ways you can achieve that and I will list a few I am using and the more you can provide the better so we can put together a list:
Create an email address or use one you already have (I prefer the former) and provide links on Google Play and inside the app. It is nice if you add an accessible menu item that says (Suggestions/Bug report/Support/Etc) that will start an intent chooser for sending emails to this email address
Use forums (XDA ) and post your app and frequently visit and answer suggestions/questions. There are a lot of helpful users there that will test the app and discover bugs, suggest new features and it is very good if you can keep the thread hot so you keep the interest up. Users like feedback and makes them feel important (which they are) so try to answer as many posts as possible even though you don't have a solution to the problem yet
Get social! Social networking is very helpful these days both for spreading the word about your app but also for customer support. Create profiles for the app on all major social networks (Facebook, Google +, Twitter, etc) and try to get as many users as possible. Post as many updates as possible and keep the users informed about changes to the app, answer to their comments and implement suggestions
Prioritization - build yourself a TODO list with priorities: for each update try to solve major bugs first that are heavily reported or that are causing big problems. Always find some room for improvements and user suggestions. Then fix small bugs and try to improve UI.
Localization is an important part of today's apps. Try to support as many languages as possible making easy for the users to understand the app and to better communicate their findings
Use the publish console to check for crash reports. Many users use this feature and send crash reports along with the stack trace and it is very helpful to keep track of major crashes and identify the root cause
Please reply with more tips so we can create a big list for everyone
Email is the number 1 way people ( from my experience ) contact the developer to ask questions, recommendations, etc. What I did in addition to all the things in the op was create a cheap 5 page website with Godaddy website tonight its like $100 bucks a year or something. They also auto optimize your site for mobile viewing!Then made a contact us page, were users can choose a reason for contacting us. This works really well and you can set up an auto responder to send them a message letting them know you got the email.
I always try to answer emails immediately (during business hours) but always within 24 hours. Having a great customer service program even if your a solo dev like I am will translate into 5 star ratings based solely on customer service!
Have a lax customer service program and you will see the negative 1 or 2 star ratings pop up again based solely on customer service. It shouldn't take anyone more than say 48 hours to re connect with someone and at least start the process of answering their concern.
You can see the contact us page here
Good policy will turn into good reviews and good downloads!
:good:
I've put a feedback page in all my apps.
You don't even need to create a new email address. Just use your personal email address and create an alias. That way it looks formal on the outside but messages go to same inbox as your personal one, only have to check one inbox everyday.
HMMMMMM!
FIRST OF ALLL EMAIL AND AFTER THAT XDA POSTS.........:victory:
email or the message box is very important. But it's also important to reply to their questions promptly.
Free Customer Service SDK
Replying promptly to customers is essentially the first step towards good customer service. If you are an iOS app developer, looking to impress your customers with excellent customer support, try out Freshdesk's Mobihelp SDK ( [freshdesk.com/mobihelp) you can snap-in to your app and start communicating with your customers from right within your app. I'm sure it will be of great help in your customer service efforts!
Thanks for the tips! Just a question: I have got one Crash report in google play console very early, but since then nothing. I have put email in the game and on the play store. But nobody used it. I do not have many installs, but I wonder what is the usual percentage of people who actually report bugs?
kulisgames said:
Thanks for the tips! Just a question: I have got one Crash report in google play console very early, but since then nothing. I have put email in the game and on the play store. But nobody used it. I do not have many installs, but I wonder what is the usual percentage of people who actually report bugs?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In my experience, if the app is something people desperately need (e.g. utility) or want (e.g. game) but it isn't working quite as they expected, they will be vocal. Not hearing anything from users is usually a warning sign that nobody was too excited about the app in the first place, or that not that many people downloaded the app in the first place.
If I see a crash on Google Play I assume that the same crash occured for 10 others who didn't bother reporting it. So I try to fix it ASAP.
You could use Google Analytics to report crashes without user prompt.
Regardless of the above, it sounds like you have a general marketing challange which is much more critical than that crash report, so you should investigate marketing and promotions in general.
kulisgames said:
Thanks for the tips! Just a question: I have got one Crash report in google play console very early, but since then nothing. I have put email in the game and on the play store. But nobody used it. I do not have many installs, but I wonder what is the usual percentage of people who actually report bugs?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Bad reviews on google play
slackydroid said:
No matter if the app is free or paid, as a developer you want to offer a good support to the end users. Why? Because as long as they are happy they will continue to use your app and they will recommend it to others. So it is in your best interest to do your best and resolve issues that customers are reporting, implement requested features and solve as many bugs as possible.
To that end, you must ensure you provide easy to access means of communication between you as a developer and the end users. There are many ways you can achieve that and I will list a few I am using and the more you can provide the better so we can put together a list:
Create an email address or use one you already have (I prefer the former) and provide links on Google Play and inside the app. It is nice if you add an accessible menu item that says (Suggestions/Bug report/Support/Etc) that will start an intent chooser for sending emails to this email address
Use forums (XDA ) and post your app and frequently visit and answer suggestions/questions. There are a lot of helpful users there that will test the app and discover bugs, suggest new features and it is very good if you can keep the thread hot so you keep the interest up. Users like feedback and makes them feel important (which they are) so try to answer as many posts as possible even though you don't have a solution to the problem yet
Get social! Social networking is very helpful these days both for spreading the word about your app but also for customer support. Create profiles for the app on all major social networks (Facebook, Google +, Twitter, etc) and try to get as many users as possible. Post as many updates as possible and keep the users informed about changes to the app, answer to their comments and implement suggestions
Prioritization - build yourself a TODO list with priorities: for each update try to solve major bugs first that are heavily reported or that are causing big problems. Always find some room for improvements and user suggestions. Then fix small bugs and try to improve UI.
Localization is an important part of today's apps. Try to support as many languages as possible making easy for the users to understand the app and to better communicate their findings
Use the publish console to check for crash reports. Many users use this feature and send crash reports along with the stack trace and it is very helpful to keep track of major crashes and identify the root cause
Please reply with more tips so we can create a big list for everyone
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
how can we deal with bad reviews on google play, reviews that comes from pepole that didn't understand the meaning of the app?
Thanks.
If you're looking for app support best practices, contact a big startup like Buffer or Squarespace and see how they respond to your question. Notice the friendly tone of voice, the detailed answers they try to give you, and the call for action at the end of every support ticket - whether it's to try and recreate the event that caused the bug or read a FAQ section. Do that a dozen times and you'll learn more about 'proper' support than any how-to article can teach you.
dimnikolov said:
If you're looking for app support best practices, contact a big startup like Buffer or Squarespace and see how they respond to your question. Notice the friendly tone of voice, the detailed answers they try to give you, and the call for action at the end of every support ticket - whether it's to try and recreate the event that caused the bug or read a FAQ section. Do that a dozen times and you'll learn more about 'proper' support than any how-to article can teach you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep makes sense in my experience - personalise as much as possible and reflect the tone of voice of your app. Users will really appreciate it. Stay social.
Why not have some kind of in-app help?
Having a suggestions/feedback menu item seems to be the common thread here to provide good customer support.
But wondering - why not some kind of in app help itself? Sort of a Whatsapp inside the app? I feel email being a separate channel breaks the context - help within the app itself and in context would be so much easier for the end user.
Thoughts?
I know it is an old thread but there are SDKs that help you integrate a support chat right within the app. I have seen zomato use one of these.
Thank you for a list!
Hello Friends,
My name is Ivaylo and I am new to the forum. I decided to make a registration, because I wanted to ask for some help from you guys. For the past few weeks, I have been looking for an app that can help me protect my personal information (Facebook, Phone gallery, Call logs, etc.) on my smartphone (currently using Samsung Galaxy S5). I have tried quite a few free apps from Google Play such as AppLock, Smart AppLock and the like. Among those, I came across this app called Privacy Ace. To be honest, I liked the design and interface of Privacy Ace. Both very pretty simple and user friendly. On the other hand the other apps I tried (i.e. Smart AppLock) offer more features (i.e. 'Observer' feature; if someone tries to access your phone and enters the wrong password a few times, the app takes a picture of that person and later on you can see who has tried to break into your phone). However Smart AppLock, for example, has kind of a clustered interface. It was really difficult for me to find out how to use the various features of the app. I really got frustrated while trying to figure out how to use it. I am not the most intelligent person, but I know how to use smartphones, if you know what I mean. Still I am looking for something that is simple to use and can get the job done.
So my question basically is: has anyone else tried Privacy Ace and is it any good? How is the app performance-wise? Should I give it a try? Feel free to suggest other apps of the same type too.
Thanks for the help in advance
Cheers
Ivaylo
http://forum.xda-developers.com/android/apps-games/attention-post-qa-troubleshooting-t3178095
Thread closed
Hello, I have been researching a little about an application which notifies the user when someone has visited your profile in whatsapp. I saw that there was an app called "wrevealer" for iphone(cydia) that did just this. My question is, are there any apps that currently do this for Android devices? If not, how hard would it be to make such an application? I know that there would be a huge demand for it, seeing as the majority would really like to see who and how many times someone visits your profile.
It would be appreciated if someone could answer even if such an app does not exist to just tell me if it is possible and how much of a challenge it would be building such an application.
Hi there
Since I have a Z5, I discovered an alternative app to Facebook, basically it does the same job, but with less autorisations.
I'm not here to advertise, but I just want to share this app with you because I guess everyone wants to use fb but not everyone wants to get hit by aimed ad or see there informations stolen from them.
Also I have just a little problem with this app and I wonder if someone can help me to solve it.
The problem is that I can't tag my friends on a publication, everything if pretty fine exept this.
If someone can help me on that it would be great also if you want to talk about the app or present other, you're totally free to do it