ABOUT PROJECT
Life Sherpa extends a diverse array of financial and credit services catering to its members and users of its online platform. Offering guidance and support to Australian residents aged 18 and above, this finance marketplace platform presents an assortment of products ranging from deposit offerings, bonds, and life insurance to managed investment funds, shares, superannuation, and more. With a focus on empowering individuals to navigate their financial journey effectively, Life Sherpa serves as a comprehensive resource for achieving financial freedom.
Embracing a digital-first approach, Life Sherpa stands as a dynamic P2P investment marketplace designed to equip users with the necessary tools and insights to optimize their financial well-being. Boasting a 100% online financial advisory service, Life Sherpa seamlessly integrates its acclaimed website resources with personalized assistance from knowledgeable professionals who empathize with the unique requirements of today’s Australians. Founded by Vince Scully, a seasoned finance expert with over three decades of experience, Life Sherpa prides itself on its independent Australian ownership and dedication to dispelling prevalent money misconceptions through initiatives like ‘The Latte Fallacy (and other money myths)’.
Key Challenges
Building Life Sherpa, a marketplace for financial services posed several key challenges, particularly in ensuring robust security measures were implemented at every level. Addressing these challenges required meticulous planning and execution to safeguard sensitive user information and uphold the platform’s integrity. One of the foremost moments involved establishing comprehensive security protocols to protect user data. This necessitated stringent measures such as employing robust hosting provider firewalls to shield against potential threats and breaches. Additionally, implementing strong encryption algorithms to safeguard traffic between users and Life Sherpa servers was imperative to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive information.
Furthermore, the storage and handling of sensitive data demanded heightened security measures. Industry-leading encryption algorithms were utilized to encrypt sensitive information stored in the database, ensuring an additional layer of protection against data breaches. Moreover, the storage facility itself was equipped to store data on encrypted disks, bolstering security measures to safeguard against unauthorized access.
TECHNOLOGY STACK
Solution Highlights
The backbone of the financial advisor application is the Ruby on Rails framework (version 4.1 at the time of writing). As the HTTP server, Apache is installed. Together with Phusion Passenger, it serves user requests. As a backend storage, we used the MySQL 5 server with the InnoDB engine. The choice of MySQL allows us to use the full power of the relational database storage engine and to keep the resource footprint to run a storage engine to a minimum. To manage the asynchronous back-end long-running tasks, we currently use the DelayedJob ActiveRecord Backend library.
As a testing framework to implement the unit, functional, and integration tests, we use MiniTest. For the initial test data generation, we utilize FactoryGirl and Faker gem. To add more useful methods and assertions, we added up Capybara and Shoulda gems. For service integration testing, we utilize Webmock and VCR gems. Also, for acceptance testing, we use headless and selenium web driver gems. Before the functions are going live, we provide performance testing with SoapUI test automation framework.
The process
01
Initial functional requirements gathering: Although the initial requirements gathering process was organized by the customer and mainly done at their side we have participated in the requirements refinement and polishing process to make them complete enough for the implementation phase of this financial service platform. To make the functional requirements as complete as possible before the implementation starts, we have closely cooperated with the Life Sherpa founders, the user experience engineer, and the designer. Also, we communicated closely with SalesForce & Pardot integration engineers to fulfill SalesForce integration requirements in the best possible way.
02
Static layouts slicing: The approved designs for the financial planning platform are further sliced using SASS and SLIM languages. Usage of SASS and SLIM at the slicing stage allows quick integration of the designs to the project, no matter whether it is a newly designed subsystem or just a small change to the existing layout. Our slicers are making modifications right in the project sources, which streamlines the development process and eliminates the necessity of the additional phase to integrate the static slicing into the existing project. Also, during the slicing stage, the front-end JavaScript pieces are added. We have extensively used jQuery and jQuery UI to implement the highly interactive and agile user interface for Life Sherpa.
03
Front and back-end implementation: Static layouts were sliced to partials, CSS Styles, and JavaScript files were integrated into the Ruby on Rails asset pipeline. The functional requirements which were gathered during the initial stage were further used to data models and for business logic implementation. Each feature for the online financial platform was made with the GIT branch, the code was cross-reviewed and then merged with the main branch for the QA phase. Also, the unit, functional, and integration tests were provided. The admin interface was based on the ActiveAdmin framework to give the admins and moderators the ability to manage the project functioning at all levels and give them an unparalleled view of the inner workings of the system.
04
Infrastructure: Our infrastructure includes 3 types of servers. The first one is development servers, where our developers and slicers initially interact to implement the functionality and make it ready for QA Staging servers, where QA is performed and where the functionality is demonstrated to the customer. These servers are set up to match the configuration of the production servers, where the live application is running and where the changes become visible to the audience of the application
05
Testing and quality assurance: This financial service platform development features the use of automated tests, which are produced during the implementation phase. The automated tests are further used during the deployment to development, staging, and production servers. Before the QA phase starts, the implementation is deployed to the staging server, where the main QA activities are performed. After QA activities are over and the customer approves the functionality on the staging server, it is deployed to production and tested there.
06
Deployment: To ensure the project’s efficiency, stability, and security, Amazon AWS was chosen as a hosting provider to hold the live application. Our installation features an EC2 instance used to run the application processes, an S3 instance to store the assets, and an RDS to run the database. Our DevOps engineer makes the deployment process using Capistrano. The latter allows us to make the deployment procedure accessible with a single command. Once triggered, the Capistrano script performs all the necessary plumbing to shut down/startup the application processes, deploy to master/slave servers, run the database migrations, and more.
Main Features
Cross-device accessibility
Life Sherpa ensures seamless accessibility across both desktop and mobile devices, acknowledging the diverse preferences and lifestyles of its users.
Browser compatibility
To facilitate widespread accessibility, Life Sherpa supports the most recent versions of popular desktop browsers, including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Edge.
Multi-level authentication
Authentication mechanisms provide multiple levels of protection for different user types, including subscribers, moderators, sherpas, and admins, ensuring stringent access controls and safeguarding sensitive functionalities.
Unrecoverable user passwords
User passwords are implemented in such a way that they are not recoverable, even by Life Sherpa owners, ensuring enhanced confidentiality and security of user accounts.
Social network integration
Integration with major social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) and Google Analytics installation facilitates efficient communication and user engagement, enhancing the platform’s accessibility and reach.
RESULTS
The collaboration between Roobykon and Life Sherpa commenced in late 2013 with the ambitious goal of creating a highly suitable and properly performing platform to serve the financial needs of users in Australia and New Zealand. Over the course of 2 years, our teams dedicated themselves to the meticulous development and refinement of the Life Sherpa marketplace, striving to deliver an unparalleled user experience. Throughout the development process, our focus remained steadfast on achieving optimal performance and usability.
Lessons from Life Sherpa
During our journey with Life Sherpa, we’ve learned invaluable lessons from the challenges we’ve faced throughout. One of the most significant lessons we learned was the importance of prioritizing security measures. Early on, we encountered vulnerabilities that highlighted the critical need for robust protection systems. Through meticulous attention to detail and continuous improvement, we transformed these challenges into opportunities to fortify our platform’s defenses. Implementing industry-leading encryption algorithms, stringent authentication protocols, and proactive monitoring mechanisms, we elevated Life Sherpa’s security posture to safeguard user data with utmost diligence.
Another pivotal lesson stemmed from our commitment to cross-device accessibility. Recognizing the diverse preferences and lifestyles of our target audience, we embarked on the challenge of ensuring seamless usability across desktop and mobile devices. This endeavor required meticulous attention to detail, from optimizing user interfaces to testing compatibility with various browsers. Through iterative refinement, we gained a deeper understanding of user experience principles and accessibility standards, enhancing our ability to deliver intuitive and user-friendly solutions.
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