The South-African app used by companies and schools to put names to faces has been rebuilt by Bluegrass Digital using Facebook's React Native, a Javascript code library which allows for a single cross-platform codebase.
The Names and Faces app is a private directory of pictures of people in an organisation with their names listed underneath. It was initially developed for schools, but evolved to broader industries, and is aimed at helping people remember the names of people they interact with daily.
Management of the photos and names is done by an administrator, the company says it has plans in the future to allow users to manage and update their own profile.
The app is currently used by Ogilvy, KingJames, Michael House and Old Mutual, among others.
Bluegrass Digital was approached to rebuild the app last year when the company needed to rebuild their initial native iOS app. Bluegrass says it chose to use React Native, a Javascript code library which had just recently been made open source by Facebook.
React Native is explained by TechWorld as a library that helps developers reuse code across the Web and on mobile: "Engineers won't have to build the same app for iOS and for Android from scratch - reusing the code across each operating system."
Bluegrass says the technology was still in Beta when they started using it. "However, the benefits soon became clear with excellent performance (as good as any native built app) as well as having a single code-base to maintain for cross-platform, rather than the cost of developing a iOS Objective C built app or a native Java Android built app," explained the company.
The single codebase in the rebuilt Name and Faces app allows for lower ongoing cost of ownership, integration with the cloud database, as well as filtering tools and more powerful search functionality.
The Names and Faces app is available to download from the Apple App and Google Play stores.
There are different pricing models based on the size of the company.
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