Monthly recap for june 2024

Published on July 1, 2024

In June, we prioritized the work required to release our first service: Dédale. We created documentation, updated the site, and integrated user management by connecting the product to our centralized platform: Heimdall.

Summary of work done for the month of june 2024

End of development for the Dédale project release

During June we finalized and prepared the release of the Dédale project: the online editor to help developers create e-mail templates in their browser.

We focused our efforts on perfecting the tool, resolving residual bugs and preparing all the extras, such as:

• a first version of the documentation,
• a landing page,
• setting up a waiting list,
• communication and channels to share our work.

To find out more about Dédale you can read our last month's recap, or go to landing page.

Work related to product design and development

Product focus of the month: Dédale

Product tasks completed during the month

bireme.io website update:

• Addition of the landing page dedicated to Dédale
• Light interface redesign (home page, article page)
• Update of privacy policies

Creation of documentation:

• Creation of visuals to illustrate documentation elements

UX/UI:

• Conversion elements to encourage users to create an account
• Testing and updating of interface design:
  • touching up font sizes,
  • color touch-ups,
  • modification of style to be applied according to user interaction.

Appendices:

• Creation of e-mail templates for transactional communication with waiting list registration on Dédale
• Configuration of waiting list automations on Dédale

Focus on: creating our documentation

To simplify understanding and use of Dédale, we've decided to accompany the product release with documentation.

We thought of this documentation as a place to find all the information concerning each product in the Bireme Lab ecosystem, as well as useful resources such as :

• Our roadmap,
• A changelog for each product,
• Frequently asked questions.

As part of Dédale we have created an entire section to provide as much information as possible and help users to :

• understand the interface,
• get an overview of the concept and a more detailed explanation of each feature,
• a list of use cases for which an e-mail template may be relevant,
• all the steps required to understand and use Dédale (creating a template, editing code, using the variable system, etc.).

Documentation is available at docs.bireme.io.

The technology used to create our documentation

To develop our documentation we used the subscription-based service Mintlify. Mintlify makes it possible to quickly obtain a professional and visually beautiful rendering with an optimal user experience.

We discovered this service thanks to the companies in the Y Combinator network that we follow on social networks.

Here's some initial feedback on using Mintlify:

Positive points:

• quick to set up,
• high-quality visual results out of the box,
• a generous free plan.

Negative points:

• paid plans quickly become costly,
• no integrated translation management,
• impossible to store code on a Github organization without a paid plan to facilitate collaboration.

Some negative points were blocking us, such as the lack of translation management, and we thought long and hard about creating a second documentation to translate into French and deal with technical SEO constraints with home-made DIY (such as generating a sitemap on a separate sub-domain to integrate hreflang information, for example).

We hesitated to use Docusaurus but in the end preferred the speed of implementation with Mintlify to concentrate on content.

Development work

Tech focus of the month: Dédale

Tech tasks completed during the month

• Set up authentication on Daedalus
• Email templates stored on server
• Implementation of continuous deployment
• Translation of our applications into English
• Improved login interface
• Creation of a variable generator to preview e-mail templates
• Possibility of exporting a template in HTML format
• Added a button to send a test e-mail with Resend

Focus on: our method for authenticating users on our applications

In our first March roundup, we presented Heimdall, our user management application and the common base for our future applications.

As a reminder, the functionalities of Heimdall are :

• user authentication,
• member management,
• team management,
• subscription management and billing parameters.

All this is made available :

• with a graphical interface accessible at heimdall.bireme.io. It enables users to easily manage team members and their authorizations,
• with a GraphQL API enabling all our applications to :
  • authenticate user requests,
  • check the functionalities available to each user (based on their subscriptions and rights).

Avoid duplicating the work done on our user management platform for each product

With the creation of Heimdall, our ambition was to centralize user management and authentication to achieve the following benefits:

• we only need to maintain a single code base to manage user login, enabling us to create new products requiring authentication more quickly,
• we can interconnect our different applications invisibly, in much the same way as Google automatically adds an event to Calendar when an invitation is accepted in Gmail.
• a single authentication process to use all our applications without having to log in again, guaranteeing a smooth and pleasant user experience.

Based on this premise, rather than develop a new login page for Dédale, we decided to redirect the user to our authentication platform.

How does our platform authenticate users on our products?

When a user wishes to create an account or log in, they are redirected to heimdall.bireme.io/signin?from_app=dedale&redirect_to={{ app_url }}.

• the ?from_app=dedale part allows us to display a personalized login page.
• and redirect_to={{ app_url }} allows us to automatically redirect the user to Daedalus once they've logged in.

Once the user has logged in, a cookie² containing the user's login details is saved. This cookie is accessible for all .bireme.io subdomains.

For example, a cookie registered from heimdall.bireme.io can be accessed from any of the applications available in the *.bireme.io subdomains (app1.bireme.io, app2.bireme.io etc.).

Once the authentication token has been registered, the user's requests can be authenticated by our servers, enabling them to retrieve their e-mail templates.

¹ : A landing page is a web page designed to convert visitors into customers. Used in marketing campaigns, it encourages specific actions such as filling in a form or making a purchase. It focuses on a single objective, with elements such as calls to action and testimonials.
¹ : A cookie is a small piece of data sent by a website and saved in the user's browser. It enables the site to remember information such as language preferences or login details.