Cloud Builder Series #1: How the Public Sector is Using AWS

This will be the first in what DLT intends to be an ongoing series of posts highlighting what our partners are building for the Public Sector using AWS. 

The Challenge
A Global Service provider wanted a way to develop a messaging solution, to augment, marketing and sales teams for promoting events using a standard Calendar Invite.

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After designing for internal use, the customer wanted to offer the product as a service to customers as a SAAS offering using AWS.   

Design Requirement
Use the Calendar Client, as the “CREATE” interface, with no web based create tool to have to log into to make the event. Must support Google Calendar and Outlook, across Web Clients and traditional Clients for event creation.

Headless Concept
So, using the no login requirement, and using the customers Calendar Client, the partner designed the service using the person’s email address as the “organizer”.  The event is sent to a Simple email Service (SES), mailbox address, and that starts the communication to the event organizer. Each Calendar event a person creates off of their Calendar client that they copy to the SES designated mailbox address, receives an event ID and is kept in DynamoDB. 

VUE Front End and AWS Backend

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In this example, xyz@agencydomain.com would be email address for the event to be copied to off the user’s calendar client, and the user would receive a notification, in the email inbox, with a Single Page Application (SPA) click thru, that would display the event with CTA RSVP button code and Web Page RSVP Landing modal.  In addition, there is a SPA, for SES calendar invite reporting on a per event and all events for organizer.

Reporting
This is an example of a VUE Reporting App used for gathering the Calendar Client data from invitees, and displaying for each channel.  The app is communicating with API Gateway and serving up the per event data to the browser client using one of the API’s developed and managed for the application.

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Organizer All Events
In this data view, the API call is for all organizer events, for the organizer to sort, view and navigation to Single Page Application Interface to get specific single event analytic information.

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AWS Catalog Usage Details

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Server Less Design
Lambda was configured for use with the Python SDK. Python is used for developing the Extended regular expressions to ETL - Extract, Transform and Load the data back into S3 and then store it DynamoDB for event management.  When a Calendar Invite is sent, the request is called to build the calendar invite for each independent event ID and then tracks RSVP replies in the SES messaging pipeline with SNS & SQS.

Sample of Application Workflow for Across Channels

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The processed event off the customer calendar client, can be used across channels to send calendar invitations using the SES service for communication directly to calendar clients for RSVP management.

Big Data for the OEM 
The customer is working with several OEM’s that are interested in communicating with customers via the calendar client to send updates, edits and event deletes directly to Google and Outlook calendar clients. This is the master view of the granulated data for all events for domain wide analytics processing of the calendar client meta data for one of the Public Sector Accounts.

The customer experimenting with system monitoring using Athena, Quick Sight and S3 for backend solution monitoring. Currently they are using CloudWatch with Cloud Trail.

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Future Designs
Currently under review is AWS AppSync (GraphQL), Amplify with Aurora DB vs Dynamo DB.   

Current Costs
Dependent up SES messaging and AWS catalog use

Total Build Time in AWS Back End and VUE Front End Application Development
3,000 HRS

Total R&D in Testing with Global Customers
10,000 HRs+

If you would like to find out more about building AWS applications and how DLT can help find the right builder to help you with your transformation project, feel free to peruse our Resource page and contact us today! Interested in becoming an Authorized AWS builder?  DLT is part of the AWS community of guiding and helping those SI’s focused on the Public Sector.  Would you like to know more? Email us at: cloudsolutions@dlt.com