Tyler Technologies: revolutionizing student transportation with My Ride K-12

Tyler Technologies is a provider of integrated software and technology services for the public sector. With over 45,000 installations across 13,000 locations, Tyler Technologies serves local, state, and federal government entities, helping them operate efficiently and transparently. In the K-12 Student Transportation market, Tyler Technologies serves more than 2,600 school districts and 5 out of the top 6 school bus contractors as customers. Their technology is used to transport 11 million of the 26 million student riders in North America.

The My Ride K-12 app is designed to provide parents and students with secure data for bus stop location, route, and pickup time, reducing parent calls to the school’s transportation department. When integrated with Tyler’s telematic solutions, the app can also share real-time bus ETAs and notify the parents or guardians when the student gets on or off the bus. This helps reduce time spent waiting at the stop and helps ensure students never miss the bus again.

Innovative Technology Choices

Tyler Technologies has always been at the forefront of leveraging cutting-edge technology to enhance their services. For the My Ride K-12 app, they chose to build their stack using .NET, specifically leveraging Blazor and .NET MAUI to create a unified UI for both web and mobile platforms. This decision to use a hybrid development approach allowed them to maximize code sharing across different platforms, significantly reducing development time and ensuring a consistent user experience. Being able to build their UI in Razor and use it in both Blazor and .NET MAUI applications gave their relatively small team of engineers the ability to implement updates across all web and mobile devices at the same time, significantly reducing development and testing costs while increasing time to market.

"On day one, we supported web browsers, tablets, and phones. Every update goes to all platforms. For our QA people, it's just one UI to test. They verify that it works correctly on each platform, but it's the same logic and 99% the same UI across the board. The project has been an overwhelming success for us."

The back-end services for My Ride K-12 are built using ASP.NET Core, which provides secure APIs to the application. This robust backend infrastructure ensures the app can handle the high volume of data and user interactions efficiently. One of the standout features of the My Ride K-12 app is its ability to provide real-time bus information to parents. To achieve this, Tyler Technologies integrated SignalR, which allows for real-time updates on bus locations, notifications and other real-time information. Azure Notification Hub is used to manage device native push notifications, ensuring that parents receive timely updates about their child's bus schedule.

Overcoming Challenges and Achieving Success

The use of .NET and Azure services brought numerous benefits to Tyler Technologies. By sharing code between platforms, they were able to shorten the feature and bug cycle significantly. This means new features can be developed and deployed quickly, and any bugs can be fixed promptly. The app's performance has also been enhanced, providing a seamless experience for users.

However, like any development project it was not without its challenges. Integrating authentication between Blazor and MAUI can be a complex task. The team wrote custom code to ensure the authentication process worked seamlessly across both platforms. Additionally, scaling SignalR for real-time updates was another challenge they overcame. Ensuring that the system could handle the high volume of real-time data without any performance issues required careful planning and execution.

Nathan Westfall, Senior Manager of Software Engineering at Tyler Technologies, identified authentication as one of the most important and complex development tasks for their app, he says: “Authentication is pivotal to our goal of safeguarding parent and student data, ensuring their information remains private and secure.”.

Reflecting on the experience, he highlighted “the ease of using .NET technologies and its documentation made this process much smoother.” He added, “by leveraging Blazor Hybrid, we were able to maximize code sharing between the web and mobile applications while having the ability to handle platform specifics where needed. This streamlined the development process, and we expect this to reduce longer-term maintenance overhead.”

Enhancing Developer Productivity with GitHub Copilot

GitHub Copilot played a crucial role in improving developer productivity and code quality. By providing intelligent code suggestions and automating repetitive coding tasks, Copilot allowed the development team to focus on more complex and creative aspects of the project. This not only sped up the development process but also ensured the codebase was clean and well-documented.

"GitHub Copilot has been a game-changer for our development team. It has significantly improved our productivity by automating repetitive tasks such as code formatting and boilerplate generation and providing intelligent code suggestions that help us write more efficient and error-free code."

Positive impact and future enhancements

The My Ride K-12 app has had a significant impact on the user experience. In the app store, reviews and direct feedback are shared with Tyler Technologies. My Ride K-12 has received high ratings and positive feedback, with many parents praising the app for its reliability and ease of use. The ability to provide real-time bus information has been particularly appreciated, as it helps parents plan their day more effectively and helps to ensure students never miss the bus.

Clients of this project are equally happy with this solution: “The use of My Ride K-12 at West Ada School District has made communication with parents simple and effective. Parents can observe the expected arrival of their bus, be notified when their student gets on or off, and receive messages from dispatch for any changes that may occur.” – RD Huntley (West Ada School District, ID) (source: 5 Ways Large Districts Can Improve Transportation Operations with Technology)

Looking ahead, Tyler Technologies plans to continue leveraging .NET and AI to further enhance the app. They are exploring new features and improvements that will make the app even more valuable to users. By staying at the forefront of technology, Tyler Technologies is committed to providing the best possible experience for parents and students alike.

Nathan Westfall expressed his excitement for the future, saying, “We are constantly exploring new features and improvements to make the My Ride K-12 app even more valuable to our users. Our commitment to leveraging the latest technology ensures we provide the best possible experience for parents and students. We are confident that with .NET technology and AI, we will continue to achieve great success in the future.”