When John and I first sat down to embark on the Paycycle journey, one of the first issues to resolve was the choice of technology. After a fair amount of debate, consideration and research, we settled on Microsoft’s Silverlight platform with a touch of the PRISM framework and Entity Framework thrown in for good measure.
There were quite a few reasons for these choices and I’ve touched on them before but in order of weight they were
1. Rapidity to market. That is to say the quickest way for us to get to our target launch date.
2. Our strong Microsoft capability.
3. Rapidity to market.
4. Microsoft’s then commitment to Silverlight.
5. Rapidity to market.
The first few weeks were interesting to say the least. It turned out that Silverlight wasn’t anywhere near as mature as we were led to believe, which led to a great deal of development that we thought wouldn’t need to be done. For instance, one ridiculous aspect is the lack of a default button on a page.
We engaged a highly reputable consultant who provided the UI that you see today, but we had our ups and downs with that relationship as well. There has been some conjecture (here and here) about our choice, even internally, but I still believe it was the right one to take. It filled all of the objectives that we set out to achieve, like those above, and it has proven to be an excellent “first cut” of the product.
As we approach 500+ (paying) customers and nearly 2,000 registered customers, we start thinking really hard about where we want to take both Paycycle the Company and Paycycle the Product. The feedback generally, has been positive (see below), but there is always more to be done. We listen intently to our customers and talk often and extensively with our partners who use Paycycle with multiple clients on a frequent basis. All this fuels our innovation roadmap and drives us towards our vision, of making Paycycle the best online payroll system.
It doesn’t make sense that upcoming enhancements like employee portal (including leave request, approval and associated workflow, leave scheduling, timesheet operation and integration, access to payslips, etc) should require an employee to download and install the Silverlight plugin. Hence, we decided to build the employee portal component of the product in HTML (or NHibernate, MVC3, Razor and JQuery for those more technically minded).
Besides that, the increasing amount of devices like smartphones or iPads, and their inability to run Silverlight were growing rapidly in our wishlist from customers. It only stands to reason therefore, that we would build the rest of the product in HTML so that Paycycle is once and for all “entirely flexible”: anytime, anywhere, from any device. You might also be aware that it is our intention to move into the UK market, and we’ve decided to build that product, as part of the same code base as Australia, in HTML. It might turn out that we release the core HTML product in the UK first; we certainly won’t be releasing anything in Australia between June 15 and July 15!
All these things will play out over the coming months but there are a few certainties for Australia already;
- Our employee portal will be released in HTML in Australia sometime in May, while the Silverlight product will stay more or less the same. It’s just when employees log in to Paycycle they will receive the HTML version.
- The HTML version will have a different look to the Silverlight version. However, the process will not change, it’s just that we are going “whiter”… more on this in another blogpost.
- The core HTML product will be released in Australia in parallel with the Silverlight product for at least a few months, if not longer. It will be up to you to change from the old product to the new product.
- Beyond automatic super payments, there will be no major functionality release in the Silverlight product. All development efforts will be going in to the HTML version.
- There will be no pricing changes.
Again, for those more technically minded, we've stuck with the Microsoft technology stack, but tried to use some of the latest developments. We're implementing NHibernate, MVC3, Razor View Engine, JQuery and some Telerik components which ultimately will enable us to be very flexible in the way we deliver our product roadmap. We don’t plan on “upgrading” our technology stack again any time soon, so we’re setting a long term path in terms of both design and technology structure that should serve us and you, our loved customers, well into the future.
As we approach our 12 month anniversary, our aim is to move in to the next stage of growth with a dynamic technology stack enabling fast product development and the ability to take advantage of new markets and provide a broader product to existing customers.