It’s been a busy few months for the mobile engineers at Evernym, and we wanted to take a minute to share a little about what we’ve been working on.
A new and improved UI
After months of user testing and gathering customer feedback, we’re excited to announce that we are making Connect.Me easier and more intuitive to use.
After months of user testing and gathering customer feedback, we’re excited to announce that we are making Connect.Me easier and more intuitive to use.
These improvements include simpler and more user-friendly verbiage and imagery to hide some of the complexity associated with verifiable credential management, while still giving users the confidence in knowing that they are in full control of their personal data. Some of the more visible changes include:
- Showing the credential offer in full-screen, with the issuer logo front and center and the name of the credential made more prominent, allowing users to clearly see exactly what they’re getting and giving them the opportunity to scroll through the credential for additional detail.
- Making it clearer when a user is being offered data as a digital credential versus when they are being asked to share data as a proof request, to avoid potential confusion around these novel concepts.
- Displaying issued credentials in a card-like manner, borrowing from the familiarity of the physical credentials that we are used to carrying on our person.
- Replacing the list view of connections with tiles that allow the logo images to be larger and make connections easier to find at a glance.
These changes will be made available to the public in phases over the next two releases of the Connect.Me app. If you are eager to try them out, you can do so before the public release by joining the Connect.Me beta program (see below). All members of the program will get the new release as soon as it is ready. Expect to see several more updates shipping in the coming months.
Preview upcoming releases through our Connect.Me Beta Program
We’re continually making Connect.Me more powerful and easier to use, both for our customers and for their users. As part of this effort, we are always looking for feedback and ideas. By signing up for our Connect.Me beta program, you can:
- Preview upcoming features before most users see them, which will allow you to be prepared to answer questions from your colleagues or end-users.
- Provide feedback and help shape future developments of the app to meet your needs.
Customer feedback has already driven several major updates for Connect.Me, as well as the creation of our embedded Mobile SDK product and our white label app offering. Note that while we may still make some minor tweaks before they make it to prime time, any public beta release of Connect.Me is still intended for production use and has undergone full testing by our expert team.
To join the beta program on iOS, tap this link from your iOS device and follow the prompts: https://testflight.apple.com/join/bmbX21Kq
To join the beta program on Android, tap this link from your Android phone: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/me.connect
Push Notifications in our Mobile SDK
We’re proud to say our Mobile SDK now supports push notifications. You can instruct our Consumer Agency Service (the backend infrastructure which powers the Mobile SDK) to forward notifications to your push notification provider so that your app can proactively notify your users of credential offers and requests.
Mobile SDK Provisioning
On November 3, 2020, all new installations of a mobile application built with Evernym’s Mobile SDK will require an access token to provision with Evernym’s cloud services.
The Evernym Mobile SDK already supports registering for this access token. Mobile applications using the Evernym Mobile SDK must follow the new provisioning protocol by November 3, or new app installations will fail. Instructions for following this provisioning process are documented in the private Mobile SDK GitHub repo, to which current SDK users have been invited. If you are unsure about what this means for your application, please get in touch.
Once this change is in effect, we will be able to simplify the distribution of the Mobile SDK so that it doesn’t require a private GitHub repository and is easier for you to use. The Mobile SDK will exit private beta testing in the next few weeks, after multiple successful customer launches with beta testers. Please reach out to us if you would like to join the wait list.
Distribution of Mobile SDK Artifacts
In order to make it easier to consume the libraries needed to build with the Mobile SDK, we will be publishing them through public repositories suitable for integrating into an automated build pipeline. Before the end of the year, iOS developers will be able to find our CocoaPods at http://cocoapod.org and Android developers will be able to find the AAR libraries at Maven.org.
Thank you
We sincerely thank each of you for your feedback and encouragement. It’s our mission to bring a better mobile experience to you, your teams, and your end-users, and your continued feedback makes this possible.
Thank you for being a core part of shaping the future of digital identity.
