The next best thing since sliced bread will be our brand new Susan Cloud and the mobile app. Susan has so far focused on developing desktop software, where the cloud is just a central location to store data. A web application built on top of the cloud data is now coming, providing the same functionality as a desktop application.
Offline and online collaboration
The main challenge for online and offline data collaboration is the sharing of user credentials between the two different systems. Because the offline system only stores the credentials of users in one company, in the online system, the credentials may overlap with the other company's users. This can lead to a situation where the user has access to company data to which they should not have access.
To prevent this, Susan Cloud needs additional confirmation of user authenticity.
Email address as a user identification
The solution to this problem is to use email as a user ID through which the user can authenticate or be verified by recognized and trusted third parties.
Susan Cloud offers the following authentication methods:
- Email OTP - enables you to authenticate using the one-time password (OTP) that is sent to the user's email address
- OAuth (Open Authorization) - authentication provider where the user has previously successfully authenticated with, grants application access but without giving the passwords
Both authentication methods ensure that the user has access to their email and can therefore be considered authenticated. There are several authentication providers available like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc, all the major providers will be implemented in Susan Cloud.
Initially planned functionality
In the first phase, we plan to offer Susan Cloud and the mobile application to all Susan Desktop users as an additional way to organize their data.
The main focus is on collecting payroll data from mobile devices and enabling users to perform payroll operations without necessarily using the Susan Desktop application.
- employee management
- recording of employee working hours
- registration of absences and tardies
- payroll
These are the primary operations that can be performed with the Susan mobile app.
Summary
We are going to add more features to Susan's mobile app, and the end goal could be a solution where all the main accounting operations can be done with the mobile. The mobile application is currently under active development and we will announce its release on this website.
In the meantime, we recommend using email as a user ID when adding users to Susan, which will allow those users to authenticate with their mobile devices later.