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ABSTRACT
A majority of unpleasant issues faced by landlords and tenants seem to grow due to lack of communication. Late rent payments turns into an eviction. A non-functional AC or a broken window becomes a reason to break a lease. Fortunately, building a positive relationship doesn't take much effort and it all starts with one basic idea: communication. Rental Property Management app provides the solution by offering the ability to share issues between tenants and landlords which leads to rapid issue resolution and fewer misunderstanding. The goal of the app is to create a better relationship between tenants and landlord. The Rental Property Management app is designed to support both tenants and landlords by enabling them to document and communicate repair issues, send automatic rent reminders, package notifications and emergency information. It helps the tenant with making Payments and it also helps the Landlord to keep track of issues posted by tenants. Effectively resolving the apartment issues is important to the tenant's long- term future and the Rental Property Management app will be an important tool for creating rental housing stability by helping tenants speak with greater credibility through initiating and documenting communications and building productive relationships with landlords.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................... iii
- 1 Background and Rationale........................................................................................... LIST OF FIGURES vi
- 1.1 Introduction
- 1.2 Android Studio
- 1.3 Parse
- 1.4 Existing App
- 1.5 Proposed App
- 2 NARRATIVE
- 2.1 Problem Statement
- 2.2 Motivation
- 2.3 Product Description
- 2.4 Product Scope
- 3 Product Design
- 3.1 Product Design and Architecture
- 3.2 Use Case Diagram
- 3.3 Class Diagram
- 3.4 Sequence Diagram..............................................................................................
- 3.4.1 Report an Issue............................................................................................
- 3.4.2 Rent Tab iv
- 3.4.3 Package Tab
- 3.4.4 Utilities........................................................................................................
- 3.4.5 Emergency Information
- 3.4.6 Documents
- 3.4.7 Logout
- 3.4.8 Add Apartment............................................................................................
- 4 SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION...............................................................................
- 4.1 Rental Property Management
- 4.2 Landlord
- 4.2.1 Update Apartment
- 4.2.2 Navigation Drawer (landlord)
- 4.3 Tenant
- 4.3.1 Navigation Drawer (tenant)
- 4.3.2 Report an issue form
- 4.3.3 Rent Payments
- 4.4 Push Notification
- 4.5 Cloud Server
- 4.6 Cloud Code
- 5 EVALUATION AND TESTING
- 5.1 Registration
- 5.2 Login
- 5.3 Forgot Password
- 5.4 Floating Icon in Issues Page
- 5.5 Add Apartment
- 5.6 Apartments List v
- 5.7 Apartment Details
- 5.8 Package List
- 5.9 Delete Issue
- 5.10 Update Status......................................................................................................
- 5.11 Zoom
- 5.12 List View
- 5.13 Rent Update
- 5.14 Package Notification
- 5.15 Utilities Update
- 5.16 Emergency info
- 5.17 Store Documents
- 5.18 Tenant Login and Home Screen
- 5.19 Escalate Issue
- 5.20 Describe the Issue...............................................................................................
- 5.21 View Rent
- 5.22 View Packages
- 5.23 View Utilities
- 5.24 Emergency Info
- 5.25 View Documents
- 5.26 Payments
- 5.27 Push Notifications
- 6 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
- REFERENCES
- QR CODE vi
- Figure 1.1 Intelligent Code Editor LIST OF FIGURES
- Figure 1.2 Multiple screen app development
- Figure 3.1 Rental property management Architecture
- Figure 3.2 Use case Diagram
- Figure 3.3 Class diagram
- Figure 3.4 Sequence diagram for reporting issue
- Figure 3.5 Sequence Diagram for Rent Payment..............................................................
- Figure 3.6 Sequence Diagram for Package Notifications
- Figure 3.7 Sequence Diagram for Utilities
- Figure 3.8 Sequence Diagram for Emergency Information
- Figure 3.9 Sequence Diagram for Documents
- Figure 3.10 Sequence Diagram for Logout.......................................................................
- Figure 3.11 Sequence Diagram for Apartment
- Figure 4.1 Login and Registration
- Figure 4.2 Landlord Home Screen
- Figure 4.3 Landlord Home Screen (sorted list)
- Figure 4.4 Update Apartment & List view
- Figure 4.5 Navigation Drawer
- Figure 4.6 Tenant Home Screen
- Figure 4.7 List view in Navigation Drawer vii
- Figure 4.8 Report an issue form
- Figure 4.9 Payments..........................................................................................................
- Figure 4.10 Push Notification
- Figure 4.11 Snippet to connect with parse database
- Figure 4.12 Snippet to send Push Notifications
- Figure 5.1 User Sign up Page
- Figure 5.2 User Login Page
- Figure 5.3 Reset Password
- Figure 5.4 Password link to inbox
- Figure 5.5 Floating Icon
- Figure 5.6 Sort Issues
- Figure 5.7 Add Apartment
- Figure 5.8 List of Apartments
- Figure 5.9 Sort List of Apartments
- Figure 5.10 Apartment Details
- Figure 5.11 Package List...................................................................................................
- Figure 5.12 Issue Details...................................................................................................
- Figure 5.13 Update Status
- Figure 5.14 Zoom Picture
- Figure 5.15 This month Rent
- Figure 5.16 Update Rent
- Figure 5.17 Package Notifications
- Figure 5.18 Utilities bill
- Figure 5.19 Emergency Info viii
- Figure 5.20 Documents
- Figure 5.21 Tenant Home Screen (List of issues).............................................................
- Figure 5.22 Escalate Issue.................................................................................................
- Figure 5.23 Describe Problem
- Figure 5.24 Tenant reporting an issue...............................................................................
- Figure 5.25 View Rent
- Figure 5.26 View Packages...............................................................................................
- Figure 5.27 View Utilities.................................................................................................
- Figure 5.28 Emergency Info and Documents
- Figure 5.29 Documents
- Figure 5.30 Payments........................................................................................................
- Figure 5.31 Push Notifications
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1 Background and Rationale
1.1 Introduction
Mobile Application Software have emerged in the past and are a hot trend in the market. The most common mobile operating systems are: Android from Google, iOS from Apple, Blackberry and Windows Phone from Microsoft. Android is free and open source mobile platform based on Linux kernel for developing apps from Google. Android is primarily designed for touch screens mobile devices. Android 5.0 "Lollipop" is the latest version of android operating system which features design changes in user interface built around a design language called material design. Following are a list of Android Operating System releases:
- Cupcake (1.5)
- Donut (1.6)
- Éclair (2.0)
- Frozen Yogurt (Froyo) (2.2)
- Ginger Bread (2.3)
- Honeycomb (3.0)
- Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0)
- Jelly Bean (4.1,2,3)
- Kit Kat (4.4)
- Lollipop (5.1)
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The tenants can report repair or maintenance issues. They also have an option to take a picture of the issue and upload, which creates a visual record accessible to the landlord instantly. The tenants can pay the bill through the app. The tenants can keep track of all the notifications from the landlord as rent reminders, package notifications, and emergency info. The landlord can send package notifications, emergency info, rent reminders, utilities bill and documents to tenants. The app provides landlord/tenant to store important documents.
Advantages of proposed app
Communication is through in-app messages. It can send push notifications It is convenient and easy to use. The mobile app will help the landlord and tenant to overcome hassles and manage tasks and issues easily in a more convenient way.
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2 NARRATIVE
2.1 Problem Statement
In our day-to-day life, tenant’s face a lot of issues related to household such as reporting an issue, tracking package in leasing office and receiving emergency information instantly etc.., and similarly landlord’s also deal with issues such as keeping track of issues in apartments, notifying that a package has arrived, sending emergency information quickly etc. Currently there is no app which focuses on to resolve this particular issue. The existing web app Squared away as discussed in section 1.4 does help to solve the issue but not in an effective manner and is only limited to Chicago city. To help overcome the problems faced by tenants and landlords, a new app is developed. This app focuses on to build a better relationship between tenant and landlord by simplifying many tasks such as sending automatic rent reminders, package notifications, utilities bill, emergency info, documents and sharing issues.
2.2 Motivation
The tenant may not be able to visit or call the leasing office every time when an issue arises and at times it will be hard for the user to even clearly communicate the problem. Maintaining a record of issues from tenants is also a tedious process for the Landlord. Since most users use mobile phones now-a-days, an app is developed which makes this process simple by allowing the tenant to report the problem through the app. The app requires the tenant to fill out the form, take a picture and send it to the landlord.
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The data exchange between landlord and tenant is achieved through parse database and the application data stored on parse cloud. The parse cloud server acts as an intermediate for the interaction between the landlord and tenant's.
3.2 Use Case Diagram
In the use case diagram shown in Figure 3.2, the use cases represent the functionalities of the landlord and tenant. Apart from registration, login and storing documents which is common between tenant and landlord, landlord will be updating rent, utilities, emergency info which is presented on the tenant's user interface. Tenant will have functionalities such as reporting issue's and bill payment which is displayed on landlord's screen.
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Figure 3.3 Class diagram
3.4 Sequence Diagram
A Sequence diagram describes how the communication happens between the user, application, and cloud data. Figure 3.4 describes the user sequence of handling a user request for reporting an issue. The application processes the user request and makes a request to the Parse server to get the data from the cloud database.
3.4.1 Report an Issue
Figure 3.4 is a sequence diagram for reporting issues which shows the functionality of tenant reporting an issue, which gets updated in parse cloud database and gives a view of the data to the landlord.
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Figure 3.4 Sequence diagram for reporting issue
3.4.2 Rent Tab
The Figure 3.5 is a sequence diagram for Rent Payment which shows the functionality of landlord updating the rent, which gets updated in parse cloud database and gives a view of the data to the tenant. The tenant can pay the rent which is then notified to landlord.
