Maplegrove Partners (MGP) is a small company that develops, hosts, and operates its own hosting platform. It provides reliable, high-speed, and customizable web hosting services at a smaller scale, making it perfect for smaller business and online communities. The company's products include domains, hosting, and mail hosting.
MGP uses several open-source dependencies to operate their hosting service.
An online product hosting and billing service that help companies create easy checkout systems for their products.
A mail delivery server that as the name suggests, handles the sending and receiving of mail through registered domains.
A webutility that allows an owner of a mail domain that uses postfix to log in as an admin and make changes to that domain.
A mail storage server with robust security features to authenticate incoming requests.
Mainly worked on the backend of our project with Postfix, PostfixAdmin, and keycloak. Conmmunicates a lot within and outside of the group for a better understanding of the client's needs.
More of a follow-the-lead kind of member, and initiates work when nobody else does sometimes. Worked on the team charter, part of the aceptence test section of the proposal, and this cover webpage.
Responsible for conmmunicating with our mentor and the professor for client's needs and the requirements of the project and setting up meetings for the group to better conmmunicate about the project. Also worked on part of the proposal.
Team member who supports both frontend and backend work. They help around and picks up work when other team members are not available. Contributed the aceptence test section of the proposal as well.
More of a team leader kind of person, initiates and distrebutes most of the work, conmmunicates within the team a lot. Mainly worked on the frontend of our project with FOSSBilling.
A supporter in the background kind of member. Worked on the team charter, and some visulization part of the proposal.
Project champion, or mentor of the project, as well as the client the team is working for. Regularly meets with the team, conmmunicates with the team about the project goals and details, and provides help when the team has difficulty working through something.
Professor of the course and the deadline setter. Introduces the team to the client, provides regular meetings, follows up with the progress of the project and offers suggestions and help along the way.
Our project has focused on improving the user experience of MGP's mail hosting service. Previously, when a customer purchased a mail domain, the domain was added to a server and configured manually by MGP employees. The customer then received a link to a PostfixAdmin page, as well as a second set of credentials (different from the first set they created to make the purchase.) From there, the customer could configure their email domain's preferences as an administrator.
By improving the communication between FOSSBilling and Postfix, we made this process considerably more user-friendly. Now, when a user purchases a mail domain, the domain is automatically configured through Postfix, reducing reliance on employees and improving wait times for customers. Additionally, viewing their purchase on MGP's website gives them a link to the PostfixAdmin page, halving the number of sites a customer has to keep track of. Finally, MGP's site and the PostfixAdmin page now use the same credentials and the same login session, so if a customer logs into MGP to view their purchase, they are already logged in as an admin for their email domain. These improvements have streamlined the user experience, reduced the strain on MGP's employees, and contributed to MGP's brand as a great choice for web hosting.