Here is a case study on a Knack database app build that I'm currently doing. You know Honor Flights? ... It's in the USA where veterans get to fly to Washington DC to view all the war monuments. It's quite a thing. Usually there are a couple hundred folks on a chartered plane, and it takes a lot of organization to prep, confirm, some people have to pay, a lot of work, which before was done with spreadsheets. Knack solved that. Check it out!
You can view another Knack case study post here: www.knackbuilders.com/post/case-study-event-check-in-app
Interested in my Knack database app services? ... Book a call with me here: https://calendly.com/daveparrish/callwithdave
Full Transcript
00:00 Okay, let's jump into this case study and an honor flight management system I'm gonna call this up Yeah, move that Hopefully you can see this while I may zoom in when I'm editing some of this but there's a lot of information But I'm gonna show you the back end real quick.
00:19 I'm not gonna spend much time I'm don't worry about all these different tables down here. They were here when I got the app.
00:27 We only to do this whole thing, we only need a few. We need a veteran and veteran can only go on these once.
00:32 And we didn't make a veteran sign in as a user role.. Because the organization said a lot of them can't deal with full on login stuff.
00:46 So we made them here. Then there's what's called a participant and that's anyone else. That could be that guardian I'm talking about.
00:52 It could be an EMT. It could be a press people or other folks that are going on. And so we have them as a user role.
00:59 They will login. They can handle that and they can go more than once. An EMT might go multiple times. So in that data structure, you always got to think of this.
01:10 Okay, if their participant is going more than once, well, the participant itself isn't going more than once. Data structure, an instance of that participant is going more than once.
01:21 We have the flight itself. All these people have to be divvied up on buses for transport. And then I have something called video where I do instructional videos for the user of this.
01:33 And then we have some notes. You can take notes as you work in this. But let's get into this. Here's the main part of the app.
01:41 They can add a flight, so they got a new flight coming up. These are all test stuff by the way right now, so they add a flight.
01:51 Once they do it, there's a cost too by the way. Veterans don't have to pay, but their guardians do have to pay.
02:01 600 bucks and that can change so that it's a variable for each flight But here's the main thing so they have the flight then they have the veterans Here's a whole bunch of veterans and they're all in the system and they're picked based on age solely So the any vet that's available, meaning they still
02:27 want to go, they haven't been on another one and they haven't something hasn't happened to them to not allow them to go anymore.
02:33 There's some weird age stuff in here don't worry about that we're just playing with stuff. So they can add a veteran themselves, but the way most veterans get into the system is they there's a portal Here's it just a form that ask a bunch of questions.
02:50 This is the vet applying To be on a flight and this is gonna end up being embedded in their own website.
02:57 So it's gonna look better But basically they're collecting bunch of pertinent information about all kinds of stuff and there's some some waver stuff on this first part but once once they're in the system the admins here are gonna be stuff comes in waves I don't know how many they do a year three or
03:18 four a year so they're looking and they can filter this by folks that haven't already or still need to go on a flight, all kinds of different stuff.
03:28 But when it's time for them to pick, and what they do in this case is pick 88. There's 88 vets that meets their criteria, they can pick whatever flight they want to go on and they add them to that.
03:49 Not sure if this is going to generate an email or not at this point. We're still figuring out the communication.
03:54 There's a lot of communications with this stuff. But they go through this. They work this list of vets and they add them all.
03:59 And the show different. We're going to sort this out. Anyone who's already been on a vet or on a flight would probably be in a past table here and only ones that are eligible to go on the next flight.
04:12 Then they'll just start adding all of them. And then those now these vets are assigned to a flight. Let's just go to one of these.
04:21 Now here's a bunch of flights. Let me go to this one. We can count counting how many are on there, how many buses there are, whatever.
04:30 Then they go to the flight and here's all the flight information and then here's a list of all those vets.
04:42 This isn't native, I put some code for sticky headers here. So here's all the people that are ready to go.
04:51 And down beneath are a list of the different participants. Ambassadors, whatever that is, EMT, medical people, and the Guardians are the main folks.
05:02 Now what happens here, the Guardian, through communication via the organization and through the Vet also, the Guardian has to go sign up.
05:16 Now we have the Guardians create an account. Actually have to pay so we have some e-commerce involved. I'll get that in a second.
05:26 But once they're in here what we're looking for is to assign each vet to a guardian and we do that by clicking here.
05:35 They have to go find the guardian for this vet. We're probably gonna put something It's possible someone, two people could have the same name, we'll have some distinguished here like an email or something.
05:49 But then they submit it and they assign this participant who's role this time as a guardian to this. When they do that NAC automatically creates an instance.
06:03 Of this Guardian down here. So what the they have this thing called E-Team. These are a group of people from the organization that are assigned to work this flight and when I say work the flight to make sure that all of that's are assigned to a Guardian that waivers have been signed that And they also
06:24 , once they're done with each person, okay, we have all this person in order, they can check, yes, I'm done, so they don't have to worry about that.
06:33 They can filter it out, so the list keeps getting smaller and smaller. We got this aspect here called contact. So as they're getting, this could be by email, by phone, however they're gonna be dealing with getting.
06:43 And all this stuff in order for each individual and their corresponding guardian. They can click Contact. We have everyone who's involved with this.
06:53 Their phone numbers, they can do what they do with communications. They can create a note right here also and keep a history of notes.
07:03 So then we're going to add onto this, does this note require a follow-up and whether the follow-up completed or not.
07:09 And then there'll be some indication here, like under contact if there's a red explanation point for example. That means there's something still to be done.
07:17 And all this helps in the process of working this list and getting. Stuff done. So that's how that happens. Another thing, once the vet is assigned to a flight, he has to go sign some specific waivers for that flight.
07:39 It's have a password we didn't do a full login for this VET because the organization didn't want it, didn't think they can handle it.
07:52 So I approach this and it makes it a little simpler. When a VET is assigned or when they're created, when they apply the system system automatically generates a random number and I did some text form stuff to make it whatever.
08:13 Here's, to each get a sign, this is called their access code and it's what, they only need this to be able to get into the system and do what they have.
08:23 Have to do and I'm going to show you that right now. This other screen here, that's the application I showed you.
08:34 This is the access code. This again will be embedded, look a lot prettier. But this is a search function that only shows results of the matching.
08:43 In this case, it's It's the access code. So either verbally at times or via email, the vet's gonna say, hey, or they're gonna get a communication, say, hey, go to this URL, enter your code and it'll be listed right there in the email.
08:57 And then you have to do something. I'll just show you. So here's a test vet. This is very simple. Make this prettier but what they have to do is sign this waiver that's the most important thing they can update information about their email or whatever but so they have this waiver stuff they got to check
09:16 all this stuff off and then sign it and then submit it once that done them say waiver complete and I'll go back to the playing list let's go to this one so every time they're doing it just saying hey is the waiver done yes or no it can go look at that so the people who are assigned to manage this whole
09:42 system no okay this is done but maybe they still have to do something else. I don't know, whatever it is.
09:48 Confirm a wheelchair. So, and when they are sure this person is done, then they can go knock them off there.
09:56 Now, from the guardian standpoint, here's the guardian. This person is assigned to this vet. There's a similar process. Remember, the Guardians have to log in.
10:10 One of the reasons they have to log in is they have to pay. Again, they can be on more than one flight, so we have a history of the flights they were on.
10:17 But here's what the Guardians see. They've already created an account. They have whatever password. An email they set up for themselves.
10:27 And they're communicated that we'll be doing broadcast emails throughout this process at certain milestones to prompt people to do something.
10:34 But in this case, Guardian logs in and this Guardian says hey you're assigned to this vet on this date for this flight.
10:44 You need to, the order they have to do this by the way, the organization wanted it. They don't want them to be able to sign the waivers until they've made the payment.
10:58 So we'll have instructions for this, but right here there's a payment thing. I'm not going to go through it for time, but this is, right now on Stripe, Test Mode, Nax, E-commerce.
11:09 They make the payment, in this case it's 650. Once they make the payment, then they're prompted to sign the waivers and then they're done with that part for them.
11:21 And then back on the list of, Let's go to this. The participants right here it's going to show have they signed and paid yet so we can keep knowing we're going to skinny down this list until we got it all right then once it's all set up there's a number of things one All these things up here, based
11:46 on all this information, they're assigned to buses over here. It automatically generates all kinds of reporting. I'm gonna make my head a little smaller here if I can.
12:00 So this shows all four buses. It shows How many vets, how many guardians? And these are some quality control checkpoints to hear.
12:09 There should always be an equal number of vets and guardians. Right here it says 21, 22. Well, something's up. People working and listening to go back and check stuff out.
12:20 And then you can go to each bus and see, okay, who's on each bus and have all their information. Also, they create name tags for each of these.
12:31 What they do is give information to a printer who sets it up. Well that printer needs to have a CSV generated in a very specific format for how they do stuff.
12:41 This system automatically does it all. You just click on name tags. It has all information right here. All they have to do is export it.
12:50 Before if you can imagine they're manually importing or manually creating their name tag spreadsheet. Okay it's not all linked together.
12:59 They're probably doing one at a time. This just does it automatically now. They have something else called TSA, so this is gonna be the flying government stuff.
13:11 They need this list in this order with these columns, even though they're blank, they need to be handed this list.
13:20 This automatically creates it. And then what else do we have? But then there's a main plane list. Which they would this is a wide or how wide is this?
13:31 No it's this wide they'll end up this is what they'll end up exporting and putting on a clipboard so they will need it they're not going to do everything on a mobile phone especially with these many phones So there'll be several of these probably different people have That's exported printed out landscape
13:54 I'm sure and on a Clipboard that people the bus leads or the plane leads. I think they have all those have this stuff Ready available to them.
14:05 That's pretty shit. I think again this is all done with native NAC functionality. I, this is a long one I'm sorry but there's a lot to do here.
14:19 Phase two to this we'll probably use some other non-native functionality. One of them I can imagine this could be in some check box functionality.
14:30 So we can do multiple things at the same time. Like for example, the vet, you can assign a whole bunch of them at once to a flight instead of one at a time.
14:42 And then also there's some real clever. Communication stuff you can do. Instead of me just having that note function, you can have this via make and Twilio and some other, I've done it on some other apps.
14:56 It puts all the communication right in here. You're not going back out to your own email interface and doing stuff.
15:05 It can be generated. Right through here in history and all kinds of things tracked automatically or at some point you want to do broadcast emails and you can do it right from here instead of having to do it from someplace else.
15:15 That's what I got folks. I appreciate it. Thanks.