Enhancement and further development of the property management platform

ManageCasa is a web application that helps DIY property owners and property managers complete their everyday tasks with ease and convenience in an office or on the go.

The solution successfully combines all aspects of property management in one comprehensive platform.

Aspiring to improve the platform’s performance and keep up-to-date with the latest technology trends, the company turned to EffectiveSoft. Our team had to:

• automate the testing process,
• develop a website builder tool for the client’s customers,
• incorporate an effective error-monitoring system,
• add new functionality for different user roles.

The property management web application is a fully responsive and all-encompassing solution. The engineers at EffectiveSoft have been gradually refactoring the platform’s components (modules) to improve and extend them.

Access to these modules and features available within them depend on user roles:

• property managers (accounting, collecting rent, generating and sharing financial reports, collecting management fees, etc.),
• tenants (digital lease agreements, payment notifications, creating and resolving maintenance tickets, etc.),
• vendors (billing and getting payments through the platform),
• contractors, such as landscapers, painters, roofers, repairers, and other service pros (tracking maintenance tickets and resolving issues),
• homeowners (viewing reports and gaining a deeper understanding of how their property is managed).

As the platform is evolving, we are also adding new components. The ones we created from scratch include:

• Websites builder module (to create and customize customer-facing marketing websites),
• Messages module (to talk over issues that arise around the property),
• Property Management Terms module (to automatically create management fee transactions in the accounting module and charge a homeowner),
• Company Account module (to track all the activities and bookkeeping entries related to a specific company’s account),
• Reports module (to gain useful insights into the rental and property management business processes),
• Files module (to store and organize all of the property-related files and documents).

End-to-end (E2E) and system testing automation

To increase the effectiveness, efficiency, and coverage of software testing, our engineers developed automated testing tools using Protractor and Jasmine.

The automated tests:

• check the software features and functionalities (system/unit testing),
• simulate the real user scenario,
• validate the system and its components,
• for integration with other interfaces and sub-systems.

The platform is massive and complex, so automated testing is a must to expedite software development and save time while testing repetitive scenarios.

Application monitoring and crash reporting

In addition to the traditional logging intended to capture the entirety of the data from the platform, our team has incorporated an error-monitoring system (Sentry) into the platform. It helps discover, triage, and prioritize errors in real-time, providing cross-stack visibility and deep context about errors. Sentry allows the client to keep track of all issues and resolve them promptly.

E-payment services integration

The team integrated Stripe (a payment processing solution) and Plaid (a data transfer network allowing users to interact with their bank accounts from a connected app) to facilitate and secure e-payments made through the platform.

Customer marketing website builder

This tool helps property managers promote their business and rentals. It allows creating a website connected with the platform and modifying its content. Such a site helps get in touch with potential clients and tenants around the clock. The best part of the tool is that the property manager doesn’t need any prior knowledge of HTML or web design.

Our cooperation with ManageCasa is underway, and the team keeps refactoring and advancing the platform. We update the Angular framework each time the new version is released. Such an approach, coupled with a lazy loading technique, allows us to extend functionality while preserving the high level of performance. These days the number of users is growing, so is the number of fabulous new features which help them succeed in their work.