
## The question

As a political party, your members are your most important tool for growth - they are your campaginers.
An important part of their activities, is going door-to-door.
They need a route, where are they going to ring the bell?
Which areas require most attention, which have the most potential?
And above all - what do they do with the results?
GLAPP was developed for this purpose.

## Our solution

We developed the GLAPP, the Green Left App.
This web application makes it easy for volunteers to join the campaign and for campaign managers to make sure everything goes smooth.

## Processing results

Results of the conversations volunteers have while going door-to-door are entered into the GLAPP.
This updates the potential in that neighborhood, so other volunteers know in which areas they have most impact.
The data is always converted to an average on street level, so no personal data is stored.

## Privacy first

For our client, privacy is a major concern.
That's why we kept privacy in our mind during every step of the development.
Filtering our logs, limiting access to data from certain areas, two factor authentication, aggregating results instead of storing it per address: everything to make sure no personal data is ever stored or shown to and unauthorized user.

## Multilevel dashboards

We created multiple dashboard so different people with different roles can access the data they need.
The data can be filtered and exported to fit all uses.

## Gamification

Doing repetitive tasks can be exhausting.
That's why we made the app not only as easy to use as possible, but also fun to use! Both campaign managers and volunteers are encouraged to continue their efforts by showing cheerful texts and granting badges for their hard work.

<BigImage image="cases/glapp_body.png" />

## Gemaakt met

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A web application for Groenlinks, modernizing its online and offline campaigns.

The GLAPP


## Our democracy and the Internet

Two of our favorite inventions.
Too bad they don't work so well together yet.
There are two problems we need to solve:

### 1. The internet can play a better role in our democracy

There are millions of us living in a country, but all the big decisions are made by small groups in old wooden rooms.
Countless valuable insights and ideas are skipped because of this.
With the Internet, people could share their ideas, think along and give their opinions from all sorts of places.

### 2. Social media are not designed for solving problems

Social media are mostly designed for people to look at ads, not to solve problems together, or to get a nuanced view of something.
Online discussions are often cluttered, terse, and thus not very useful.
Understandably, then, many organizations are afraid to use the Internet.

<BigImage image="cases/argu_abstract_en.png" />

## Our solution

So we set to work to build an online democracy / community platform.
Designed to make it as easy as possible for citizens to participate, and for civil servants to ask questions in the best possible way.
We launched Argu in 2015, and have now completed over 150 participation projects.
We have built in numerous [functionalities](https://argu.co/info/functionaliteiten), such as digital voting, responding, dynamic forms, questionnaires, map views, notifications, rights management, groups, custom domain names, export capabilities, custom theming, and much more.

<BigImage image="cases/argu_body.png" />

## Technology

Argu is by far our biggest project, and a major source of our revenue.
It is a SAAS solution that we have been developing and keeping live for several clients for years.
Developing Argu has taught us to create web applications that are maintainable, flexible and scalable.

Argu's stack consists of several services, two of which are particularly relevant:

### Back-end: Apex

The foundation of our back-end of Argu is built based on [Ruby on Rails](/en/tech/ruby-on-rails).
Given that we had the desire to make the data available as [Linked Data](/enl/blog/what-is-linked-data), we wrote an Open Source library for this: [Linked_Rails](https://github.com/ontola/linked_rails).
This gives Apex a number of unique qualities:

- **Everything is linked data**. Even the buttons, forms, and actions are described as data. This gives us great flexibility, so we can use the same source code for very different use cases.
- **The API is the same as the website**. If you can view a page, you can retrieve the data from that page using the same URL. Actually incredibly logical (see our [article on API design](/blog/api-design)), but oddly enough quite rare.

### Front-end: Libro

Libro is a web application written in [React](/en/tech/react) + [Typescript](/en/tech/typescript).
Libro stands for _linked data browser_.
This is what makes Libro unique: at its core it is not a regular app, but a _data browser_.
Under the hood, libro works with the [Link libraries](https://github.com/rescribet/link-redux), developed by our CTO Thom van Kalkeren.
Libro communicates exclusively with Apex by exchanging linked data (RDF).
We are one of the first SAAS companies to put linked data so far into its stack.
That has given us [some unique challenges](/blog/full-stack-linked-data/), such as a performance bottleneck for which we developed a [new RDF serialization format](https://github.com/ontola/hextuples).

## Created with

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## Source code available

The Argu project is entirely Open Source and free to use.
Check out our [Gitlab repository](https://gitlab.com/ontola/argu/) for instructions to host an Argu server.


An open source e-democracy and community platform, to help organizations reach their constituencies.

Argu


Ruby on Rails is one of the most widely used Frameworks to write web applications with.
It is written in the Ruby programming language - a language that is very easy to read.

## Why use Rails

- **Many available libraries**. Thousands of libraries have been written for Ruby (and Rails), giving you a quick solution to many problems.
- **Fast development**. With Rails, you can build large, relatively complex applications in a short time.
- **Reliable**. Rails is used by many large software companies and has therefore proven itself considerably.
- Suitable for APIs**. You can create both full websites and APIs with Rails.

## Combine with...

Rails is primarily a server application, and thus (often) needs a front-end to display the data.
We recommend developing the front-end with [React](/enl/tech/reactjs).

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## Looking for a Ruby on Rails development team?

Ontola is a full-service development agency that can help you develop a Ruby on Rails application.


What is Ruby on Rails, and when should you use it?

Developing SAAS services with Ruby on Rails

Why use Rails

Combine with...

Looking for a Ruby on Rails development team?

Cases

The GLAPP

Argu