Hailer is a cloud platform designed for process-driven business management and communication. The biggest unit in Hailer is a workspace. Typically, one customer has one Hailer workspace.
Activities
Activities are the most central part of Hailer, allowing the whole organization to work in a structured way. Activities can include things such as sales cases, tasks and projects. The activities run through workflows and datasets according to predefined workflows and data structures. In order to create an activity, a workflow or dataset must be created first.
Workflows are predefined processes, configured in the workflow editor. This allows the process owner to define which steps the workflow consists of in addition to what data is collected within the workflow. The phases of the workflow can be linked to each other in any order specified by the process owner.
Datasets are also configured in the workflow editor and have the same properties as workflows. In datasets, moving the activities between the phases, which we in this case call categories is disabled.
Configuring workflows and datasets in Hailer requires no coding skills and can easily be done by the workspace or process owner. When an activity reaches a particular phase, an automatic feed post can be generated for the workspace feed. Users following a phase can also be notified when new activities are inserted or moved into that particular phase.
Activities can contain any number of fields. The available field types are:
- Text
- Predefined Options
- Text Area
- Numeric
- Numeric Unit
- Date
- Date Range
- Time
- Time Range
- Date & Time
- Date & Time Range
- Country
- Activity - Link activity to any activity in any module
- User - Link activity to any user present in the workspace
- Team - Link activity to any team present in the workspace
- Linked activities - Shows the activities that are linked to this workflow or dataset in the first tab of the activity card. Read more about activity links here.
- Subheader - Header text field
In addition to these fields, any activity can have a location - specified with coordinates and visible on a map. Files can be attached to any activity. See Appendix 1 for a complete description of the product data structure.
All field types can also be made into function fields. In this case, the user can type in with JavaScript a set of rules according to which the function returns a certain value or result. The function fields are automatically sandboxed on a virtual server.
Any field in a workflow or dataset can be set as mandatory. It is also possible to specify which fields are visible in each phase/category. Visibility of workflows and datasets can be limited either on a user or a team level. One user can belong to one or many teams.
The activities also come with a PDF document generator. This can be configured to produce for instance the following documents based on the activity data:
- Offers
- Invoices and proforma invoices
- Packing lists and other logistics documents
- Order confirmations
- Certificates
- Reports
Contact Hailer sales for more information about the document templates.
Discussions
Another very central part of Hailer is the instant messaging functionality, allowing users to communicate directly with each other, either privately or in context. The discussions bring together all messaging channels of each Hailer user regardless of which Hailer workspace, which workflow or event the discussion channel is about.
There are four different types of discussions in Hailer:
Private discussions can take place between any users having at least one workspace in common. The discussion is private and not visible to other users in the workspace.
Group discussions can take place between multiple users having at least one workspace in common. Users can be added and removed from the discussion if needed. The discussion is private and not visible to users that aren't in the discussion.
Activity discussions are in-context discussions related to a specific task or activity in a workflow or dataset. The discussion is created automatically upon activity creation and the activity creator is added to the discussion automatically. Anyone with access to the activity can join the discussion and add more participants. This discussion type is typically used for discussing the particular topic of the activity, such as managing the project, task or sales case at hand.
Event discussions are in-context discussions related to a specific event in the event calendar. The discussion is created automatically when the event is created. All users invited to the event are automatically added to the discussion. Anyone with access to the event can join the discussion and add more participants. This discussion type is typically used for discussing practicalities regarding an event, such as selecting meeting rooms, arranging transportation, sharing meeting links etc.
All discussions support sending attachments, such as files, videos and documents. Discussions can also be starred, indicating that the particular discussion is e.g. important or unread. Messages can be replied to and users can react to messages. In addition, a user can edit and delete their own messages.
Feed
Every Hailer workspace comes with a feed, available for all workspace members. Feed posts are usually used for sharing information that concerns or is of interest for the whole organization.
Hailer can also produce feed posts automatically. When an activity reaches a significant point in any workflow or dataset, a feed post can be generated to announce the event on the workspace feed. This feature is typically triggered when e.g. a sales case is closed or a project starts.
Feed posts can be pinned, making them stay on the top of the feed until unpinned. Feed posts can also be liked and commented on, as well as edited by the author.
Calendar
In every Hailer workspace, one or many calendars can be created. It is possible to restrict the visibility of a calendar to a certain set of users or user groups. Any event can act as a discussion channel, i.e a group chat connected to the event. The channel is typically used to track participation in the event as well as for e.g. practical arrangements.
Hailer Apps (beta)
The Hailer Apps is a software development kit to build solutions for specific customer needs. We can create customized applications that use Hailer as an engine. Contact us for more info: info@hailer.com
Insights
Hailer Insights is built on Apps. With it, you can pull any data, clean it up for reporting purposes, and analyze it. Hailer Insights consists of four main components that work together:
- A low-code SQL query builder where you can select data sources and make the data ideal for analysis
- A pivot table where you can set up your data for visualization but also view it from different dimensions
- A visual chart element
- A table to view the selected data
The best part is that if you include activity IDs in the data, you can click on any activity in the table to open the activity card to update the data or jump into the activity discussion.
Users & Teams
Everyone can create a Hailer profile and this profile can be invited to one or multiple workspaces. The profile is private, secure and is identified with an email address as the username.
All members of a Hailer workspace can also be given attributes such as contact details, phone numbers or custom information that is unique to your business. All users in a workspace can be separated into different teams, allowing the workspace administrator to restrict the visibility of the workspace content to different teams.
Files
While Hailer is mainly designed for communication, in-context files make up an important part of collaboration and information sharing. Hailer, therefore, has an inbuilt file management system to make it easy to store, track, find and share files. All files and links posted in a discussion, are collected and made easily accessible by anyone participating in the discussion.
API
Hailer has an HTTP REST API which can be used by selected partners. All functions can be reached through the API. Authentication is done with a username and password, returning a user-specific key which then can be used when sending requests. The requests are sent in JSON format.
Platform support
The fully responsive Hailer web application is supported on Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge. Hailer works on all mobile devices.
Hailer also has an Android application that can be found at:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=hailer.com.hailer
Supported on iOS 13 and up, Hailer has a native iOS application equipped with central features, typically needed in field operations.
The application can be found at:
https://apps.apple.com/fi/app/hailer/id1239211971
Technology stack
The web frontend is currently built on Angular.
Our iOS application is a native application written in Swift, while our Android application in the Play Store is a web-based application, identical to our web application on app.hailer.com.
The backend runs on node.js and we use MongoDB for databases. Both the frontend and backend are written in TypeScript.
Our infrastructure runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Appendix 1: Product Data Structure
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