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proposals/members_products_and_reviews_database.md

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+# Proposal for: Members, Products and Reviews database + User UI (forms)
+
+## Technical challenges and solutions:
+
+### Modelling the data
+
+As mentioned during our call on Monday we recommend using [PostgreSQL](https://www.postgresql.org/)
+as a database backend with [Django](https://www.postgresql.org/) as framework on top of the database.
+
+### Inputing/viewing/editing data as staff member
+
+The first phase after modeling the data structure in PostgreSQL will be to generate admin interfaces
+for all the data models. At this stage we will be able to validate most of the data models, groups
+and permissions.
+
+During this stage, we will also define filters, search fields and "group actions" that should be
+performed from the admin.
+
+We will then move to modeling model flows (like the assignation/delivery of test products to your
+users).
+We will also be able to validate most of those flows at this stage
+
+### Customer-facing interfaces
+
+This step will happen in 2 parts.
+
+1. Creating those interfaces as Django Admin screens to once again be able to quickly validating the
+data structure as well as the associated flows. I have already given you a quik tour of the Django
+admin so I won't get into too much details here.
+
+2. Creation of the actual user-facing interface using [EmberJS](http://emberjs.com/) and [Django
+REST Framework](http://www.django-rest-framework.org/) in collaboration with your designer.
+We chose EmberJS for it's library [ember-data](https://github.com/emberjs/data) which is a great
+tool for form/data validation as well as its abaility to use separate templates and css files for
+each component, allowing easy graphical alterations by designers.
+An alternative to EmberJS is [Angular](https://angularjs.org/) which will however require more
+boiler-plate code to setup.
+
+### Integration with external services
+
+1. Social-media authentication: using
+[django-allauth](http://www.intenct.nl/projects/django-allauth/) we will be able to create
+`application accounts` on various social media plateforms like Facebook, Google or Amazon to
+activate authentications through those services
+
+2. Phone authentication (user inputs a phone number, receives a text message with a confirmation
+code which they then input back on the website): we recommend using
+[Twilio](https://www.twilio.com/) for that purpose.
+Twilio integrates really well with Django
+
+3. **Mailchimp** integration: The Mailchimp API has a Pyhton (the programming language of Django)
+binding library which we will be able to use to connect your site to your Mailchimp account. This
+API will allow us to retrieve various types of information from Mailchimp. Creation of data on
+Mailchimp will be limited though
+
+4. **Intercom** integration: Like Mailchimp, Intercom has a Python binding which will allow us to
+retrive data from Intercom
+
+### Reporting
+
+As far as reporting is concerned, we have several possible choices.
+
+- The [relatorio](http://relatorio.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) python library allows you to create
+report templates in [LibreOffice](https://www.libreoffice.org/) (formerly known as OpenOffice) with
+placeholders.
+Data from your database is then fed "on demand" to any custom report you've created to produce a
+live snapshot report from your data. Those templates can range from simple text documents to complex
+spreadsheets with graphs and pivot-tables. You can create those templates yourself and use as many
+as you like.
+This solution being based on LibreOffice, report can be exported to `.xlsx`, `.docx`,  `.pdf` or any
+other format supported by LibreOffice
+
+- The [C3](http://c3js.org/) library which integrates very well with EmberJS and Django can also be
+used to create dynamic charts directly on your website. Using this solution, you can also have
+"real-time" updating charts. You will however not be able to create those reports/charts yourself.
+
+- As alternatives to C3, there are various proprietary (paying) libraries that we can use. Those
+libraries are available for a fee but depending on what you want to do, this might cut down on the
+development time.
+
+### Hosting/Continuous deployment and testing
+
+As mentioned during our call, the website will most likely be hosted on a [Digital
+Ocean](https://www.digitalocean.com/) instance. Providing you give us access to that instance we
+will gladly use our **continuous deployment** infrastructure to deploy every new feature to that
+server. Our infrastructure also provides **continuous testing** which means that if a bug is
+detected in a new feature it will not get deployed and we will be warned about the problem
+
+## Action plan
+
+You mentioned a 3 months time-span to bring this project to life we would therefore rather not rush
+the project and recommend an initial planning of about 10 weeks with a budget of 1500€ per week.
+
+- Weeks 1 & 2: Project setup, data modelisation in Django and Postgres + basic admin
+- Week 3: Refining the admin interface with filters, searches, actions and flows
+- Weeks 4, 5 & 6: integration with external providers
+- Weeks 7 & 8: customer-facing interfaces
+- Weeks 9 & 10: Reporting system and polishing
+
+This action-plan is provided as a starting-point and may evolve from week to week depending on the
+outcome of our weekly demos and the eventual changes in the requirements.
+
+As a side-note, as your requirements document was quite technical, we were not affraid to make a
+technical proposal. Feel free to ask for more extra information or clarification if you need any.
+
+Also you might have noticed this proposal mentions a lot of libraries and tools; our phylosophy is
+that by using existing robust tools to solve know problems we will be able to spend more time on
+the issues that will add valuable unique features to your project.
+
+
+## Development process
+
+Our development process is based on weekly iterations. Each iteration ends with a demo.
+
+Budget for the iteration has to be [booked in Squads](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17uPOmgFFo4)
+before the team can start working.
+
+During the demo we will be showing the progress to all stakeholders.
+
+After the demo we will plan the next iteration according to the feature set and the feedback
+collected. You can stop or change your mind at any time. This is not a fixed price quote.