Personal Project Ballpark It

Public Estimates

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Every estimate you create can be viewed publicly (meaning no account is required). If you notice, the heading and everything that you seen inside the application is stripped. It focuses only on the estimate itself, which is what people really care about in the end.

A couple of interesting things happen when you create a new estimate:

1) A random 40 character token identifier is generated for each estimate. The token is used to identify the estimate when in public view. This is a little extra security so that someone can’t just enter a single number to view estimates not belonging to them. It uses SHA1 encryption behind the scenes.

2) A short URL (using the http://is.gd API) is generated. The idea behind the short URL is so when sending an estimate to a client, you aren’t required to give them this massive URL (with the 40 character token appended to it). Instead, you can provide this short URL, which works well for email, chat, and mobile phones.

by Ryan Heath Last updated 2 months ago

This portfolio is a Formed Function. Formed Function LLC | @formedfunction

Details About This Project

Start Date 05 Jan 2009 (9 months ago)
Timeline 3-4 weeks
URL http://github.com/rpheath/ballparkit
Responsibilities CSS, XHTML, jQuery, Ruby, Rails, Database

Ballpark It is an application that solves a single problem: creating project estimates for potential clients.

It’s essentially a tool that allows you to organize a group of project tasks, where each task has “hours” and “rate” associated with it. The tasks are tallied up as you type, so you can get a feel for how your estimate is coming.

There are several convenient things that make creating estimates a breeze. For instance, you can specify a default rate in your settings to be used for all new estimates. In addition to that, you can specify default tasks, either on the fly or in the settings.

Probably the most beneficial part of this tiny application is the ability to show an estimate to anyone, regardless of whether or not they have an account. Just send them the public URL to your estimate!

Personal Project Ballpark It

Details About This Project

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