The Northside Business Association (NBA) is a 107 year old non-profit organization dedicated to improving our neighborhood. As part of that mission, they own and operate 5 public parking lots to support the businesses that help make Northside the great neighborhood that it is. The NBA has been managing their parking lots manually, with pencil and paper records, since they began operation. It is easy to see that there has to be a better way. When the NBA approached Ellanet to see if we could help, we were glad to accept the challenge. As part of the pro bono work that we see as part of our mission, helping neighborhood non-profits is something that Ellanet has done consistently since our founding in 1997.

Ellanet realized that the NBA needed a solution that would allow multiple users to enter violations and see the violation history of any given vehicle both from desktop and laptop computers and from mobile devices while actually in the parking lots, which are spread throughout the Northside Historic Business District. In order to do this, Ellanet constructed a flexible back end using php and MySQL and an API (using JSON) to access that back end securely. Our first step, to allow the NBA to start using this system right away, was to build a web app using the Bootstrap framework. This app will be accessible from any device that can access the web, and can be used to search for violations, enter new violations, and clear violations in the instance where a fine has been paid. Our next step will be to build native Android and iOS apps that will be suitable for managing not just the NBA's parking lots, but any parking lot anywhere. Our iOS app will be the first iOS app that will be written completely in Swift, which we are excited about! Back to blog news...