PowerSDK wins a 2005 MAX "Finalist" for "Crisis Coach"

DIGG IT!     0 Comments Published Thursday, October 06, 2005 at 10:15 PM .

PowerSDK spent 4 months providing Flex consulting services to WorkLife Media and Cynergy Systems on the deeper client side aspects of CrisisCoach. Congratulations to the teams! CrisisCoach / LifeCoach are mental health services using Flex.

MAX Finalists
Crisis Coach Gallery

CrisisCoach / LifeCoach provides a comprehensive service assisting in areas of mental health. It allows you to take an mental health assessment, identify problem areas, and receive contextual training based on your personalized results. The service also provides customer support from mental health professionals. The LifeCoach application is currently being used as an extranet for several large companies with more in the sales pipeline. Given the public stigma associated with mental health in the workplace, CrisisCoach / LifeCoach provide anonymous assistance to employees and people in need.

Lets get technical...

I wrote the client-side of the assessment engine in Flex, the server side was written by a team at Cynergy Systems. As you take the assessment and answer questions, the test will change based on your answers in real-time. The test is created on the server-side and Flex is used as a presentation layer. As Flex sends answers, it receives new questions until the assessment is complete. Given the real-time scoring, you can exit the assessment at any time and see your current score in easy to understand graph and meters. It would have been nearly impossible to have all the question screens compiled into a Flex application so Flex renders the forms to screen in an interpreted manner at runtime. The engine uses parts of the FLOW Renderer and this application is one of the first to use the toolset under Flex. I call it the "Browser Pattern" but it really just implies a light renderer presenting end user information from external data. As forms are completed, more data is retrieved and rendered. Ideally the model is perfect for Flex given the rich component set and the API's to render content on the fly from data.

I also wrote a series of CrisisCoach / LifeCoach forms for customer service. We utilized the Atlassain JIRA bug tracking engine and Web Services to turn customer service inquiries into issues so they can be tracked and processed by a large support staff. Using the bug tracking engine for customer service was a brilliant choice as a CrisisCoach / LifeCoach customer service representatives can easily triage support requests. The application has real humans working round the clock behind it and tracking support requests was essential. JIRA ships with a Web Service API that allowed Flex to create bugs of all types in the backend.

I also worked with on the training application in CrisisCoach / LifeCoach. The system allows an end user to navigate through a large body of Flash based content, answer short quizzes on the material, and take notes. We added a persistence layer into the application so that a user’s progress is stored in their user account. You can login, take 50% of the CBT and on your next visit you will see your progress and all prior answers. Even if you switch machines, the training maintains your progress.

The combined teams covered so much ground in solving the core development problems with large scale applications in Flex. Working on this project was an extremely rewarding experience. The teams at WorkLife Media and Cynergy System are simply amazing. I am especially proud of PowerSDK's work on the project. The fact that the project is a MAX Finalist, is just icing on the cake.

Congratulations to the long list of developers and contributors to CrisisCoach / LifeCoach on MAX Finalist!

It is also rewarding to know that CrisisCoach / LifeCoach is being used to help the people of Louisiana and Texas recover from the recent hurricanes.

Cheers,

Theodore Patrick
PowerSDK Founder and CEO

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