house sitting srs

House Sitting Specifications

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Functional and Technical Specifications

Document for House Sitting Site Project


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Project Code:

Project Name: House Sitting Australia

Account: Comtech Media

Vertical: House Sitting

Location: Sydney, NSW, Australia

Customer Name: Comtech Media

Program Manager/ Email ID:

Atrijit Dasgupta

Project Manager / Email ID:

Clint Mario Cleetus

Aisha Deeb

Bhaskar Eswaran

Customer Contact Information:

Document to be Approved By

Aisha Deeb / Bhaskar Eswaran


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Revision History

Version Date of Revision

Prepared / Updated By

Reviewed By Reason for Change

Affected Sections

Rev 1.0 18th July 2008

Atrijit Dasgupta Atrijit Dasgupta Admin section discussed and added

New section added

Rev 2.0 22nd July 2008

Atrijit Dasgupta Atrijit Dasgupta Comments from ComtechMedia

Reporting section removed from Admin part and added separately with two additional reports listed and a reporting mechanism identified.

Rev 3.0 31st July 2008

Atrijit Dasgupta Atrijit Dasgupta Discussions with ComtechMedia

Sections added on Pet Sale and Pet Give Away


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Table of Contents

Introduction......................................................................................................................... 6 Scope............................................................................................................................... 6

Functional Requirements .................................................................................................... 6 User Role Mapping......................................................................................................... 6 Functional Areas ............................................................................................................. 7

Basic Functional Areas ............................................................................................... 7 Information Access ..................................................................................................... 8

Transaction Use Case Stories.............................................................................................. 9 Register as House Owner................................................................................................ 9 Login ............................................................................................................................. 10

Login ......................................................................................................................... 10 Forgot Password........................................................................................................ 10 Change Password ...................................................................................................... 11

Create House Ads ......................................................................................................... 11 Upload Photos........................................................................................................... 12

Search for Sitters........................................................................................................... 12 Rate Sitters .................................................................................................................... 13 Register as House Sitter ................................................................................................ 14

Verification Process .................................................................................................. 15 Search for Houses / Pets ............................................................................................... 16 Renew Subscription ...................................................................................................... 16 Access House Gallery................................................................................................... 17 Get Paid for Someone to Look after your House.......................................................... 18

House Owner Registration........................................................................................ 18 House Sitter Registration .......................................................................................... 18

Email Marketing ........................................................................................................... 19 Tie in between Site, House Owner and House Sitter.................................................... 19

No payment to House Owner - Sitter chooses Owner .............................................. 20 No payment to House Owner – Owner chooses Sitter ............................................. 21 Payment to House Owner – Sitter chooses Owner ................................................... 21 Payment to House Owner – Owner chooses Sitter ................................................... 22

Pet Special Use Cases ....................................................................................................... 23 Upload Pet Profiles ....................................................................................................... 23

Access Point 1........................................................................................................... 23 Access point 2 ........................................................................................................... 24

Payment Flow and Options........................................................................................... 24 Information Use Case Stories ........................................................................................... 25

Feedback from House Owners...................................................................................... 25 Interface for Feedback .............................................................................................. 25 View feedback during Search ................................................................................... 25 Public viewable page ................................................................................................ 25

Terms and Conditions................................................................................................... 25 Note on static content.................................................................................................... 26 Disclaimer ..................................................................................................................... 26


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Resources / Advice ....................................................................................................... 26 View Testimonials ........................................................................................................ 26 What Minders Say......................................................................................................... 26 FAQs............................................................................................................................. 27 Confidentiality .............................................................................................................. 27 What Owners Expect .................................................................................................... 27 Saving Rent................................................................................................................... 27 Service Costs................................................................................................................. 27 Proforma Agreement..................................................................................................... 27 Contact Us..................................................................................................................... 27 Site Map........................................................................................................................ 27 Events and Promotions ................................................................................................. 27

Site Administration ........................................................................................................... 27 Reports .............................................................................................................................. 28

Reporting Mechanism................................................................................................... 29


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Introduction The envisaged House Sitting (HS) portal would cater to one of the fastest growing trends

in the world today – House Sitting. The proposed site would provide the most

comprehensive information available on House Sitting, and guide people through the

process of matching homeowners with sitters.

Privacy would be one of the keystones of the service provided.

The above service would be implemented on LAMP – Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP

suite of open source technologies.

The solution would be highly configuration driven in all possible aspects.

Scope This document captures the following requirements for HS portal.

• House Owner Registration

• House Sitter Registration

• Search functions

• Photo Gallery

• Information related pages

• Special Services

The requirements are stated using use-case model.

Functional Requirements

User Role Mapping This section captures the User role mapping requirements for the HS portal. The Role

mapping is stated using use-case model. The following groups have been identified:

• House Owners

• Pet Owners

• House and Pet Owners

• House Sitters

• Pet Sitters

• House and Pet Sitters

• House Swappers

• Internal Administrative Users


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Functional Areas The functional areas of the system are broadly mapped here in relation to the different

kinds of users who would be making use of them.

Basic Functional Areas This diagram covers the role-mapped functional areas except that for Guest users. The access

rights for Guest users are covered in the next area.


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Information Access Information Access

House Owner

Pet Owner

House and Pet Owner

House Sitter

Pet Sitter

House and Pet Sitter

House Swapper

Admin User

Guest User

Feedback Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Terms and Conditions

Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

Disclaimer Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Resources / Advice

Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

View Testimonials

Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

What Minders Say

Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

FAQs Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Confidentiality Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y What Owners Expect

Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

Saving Rent Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Service Costs Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Proforma Agreement

Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

Contact Us Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y SiteMap Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Events and Promotions

Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

Gallery N N N Y Y Y Y Y N Site Administration

N N N N N N N Y N

The access rights as discussed here are for guidance in setting up the site, but should

fundamentally be configurable through the database, so that changes can be made easily.

Also, for full / restricted views, what a particular role / a guest user see from a logically

single block of information – such as profile details – would be configurable. This is

applicable for House Owner profiles and Sitter profiles, mostly.


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Transaction Use Case Stories

Register as House Owner This function allows a user to register as House/Pet Owner or as a House swapper.

• User clicks on Link to register as house /pet owner and place free house adverts.

• User is presented with a web form.

• User can opt as to whether he wants to be a House Swapper. This would require

him to provide more information that the usual Owner. Basically, this would

mean certain information that pertains to house sitters would need to be filled up

by him as well.

• User inputs following basic data: Full name, email id etc.( Refer the page

http://www.aussiehousesitters.com.au/pg_regho.php)

• User opts between only House Adverts, only Pet Adverts, House and Pet adverts.

• If opting for pet, user has to mention whether he wants pet to be taken to sitter’s

premises for care taking.

• User can add multiple houses for which he wants to place adverts. Uploading a

photo is an option.

• For a general description for the advert, a user has the option of looking at some

sample adverts, copy them and make changes.

• Once done the user has to indicate that he has seen the Terms and Conditions

and agrees with it. We have the T & C on a link, and the user selects a radio

button to indicate whether he agrees to it.

• It is possible to skip the advert portion and complete the registration process.

• A message would be displayed on page that says “An email has been sent to the

email id you supplied with a confirmation link. Please click on the link to confirm

your registration within the next 3 days.”

• An email would be sent to the email id and on clicking the link the user

registration would be confirmed, and the page would show a confirmation

message and a link to the homepage, logging the user in as per his role.

• If confirmation is not done within 3 days the user account would be deleted.


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• On confirmation, if the user has not uploaded a single house detail, an email

reminder would be sent to him periodically reminding him to place the house

adverts. If the user does not place a house advert within one month of

registration, his account would be deleted after one final notification e-mail.

Login This function allows users with varying roles to access relevant sections of the site. This

part has some sub-sections as well.

Login

• The user is presented with a uniform login page that is the same for all user roles.

• The user keys in his email id as the user id and password assigned to him during

registration.

• If the user id and password match but the user has not performed the

confirmation process (refer Registration process above) a message is shown to

him that says “A mail has been sent you with a confirmation link.” This part is

handled same as the registration process henceforth.

• If the user id is a mismatch i.e. such a user id is not registered an appropriate

message is shown.

• If the user id is exists but the password does not match, an appropriate message

is shown.

• If user id and password both match, the user is taken to the Home Page, and his

name is shown on the top of the page as a welcome message. He can access those

parts of the site which his role allows him to.

Forgot Password

• In case the user forgets his password, he can click on “Forgot password” link.

• He is taken to a page where he answers a security question opted by him during

sign up.

• If successful, his password is e-mailed to the email-id provided by him during

registration.


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Change Password

• The user can opt to change his password from this page. This is only available for

a logged in user.

• The user has to submit his old password once more for verification, and then his

new password twice. If the twice entered new passwords match each other the

user can submit the page for password change request.

• If the entered old password matches the existing old password, then his password

is changed to the entered new password, and a notification also sent to his email

id.

• The user can continue with other sections of the site without logging in again for

that session.

Create House Ads • This process is optionally part of the House Owner / Pet Owner registration

process. However, the user has the option to do this / update the entered

information / delete existing information for his profile.

• In the user profile section, a user can see a link for the house profiles he has

uploaded.

• On click a page loads that would show the already loaded house / pet profiles. If

there is none, the user would be shown a message “You have not uploaded any

house / pet profiles yet. Please create a profile.”

• For existing house / pet profiles, a user can choose to delete / update the same.

This includes updating the location information, general description, deleting

already existing images and uploading new images, etc. Please also see section on

Pet Sale / Give away.

• When creating a new advert, the user gets to choose from among the following

options: House, Pet, and House n Pet together.

• One can create multiple House ads and multiple Pet ads.

• For Pet ads alone, one has to indicate whether the pets are to be cared for at the

sitter’s premises, or the sitter needs to come and attend to them. This may not

necessarily mean that the sitter minds the house.


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• When opting for a house and pet together, one can create multiple pet profiles

and associate them with one house.

• If a user deletes all uploaded adverts, the system accepts that, but would send

reminder e-mails to him about uploading new adverts.

• A house owner shall have the option of temporarily disabling the uploaded

adverts. In this case no reminders are sent.

Upload Photos

• This functionality is provided within Creating House / pet Ads, but also available

elsewhere, for example house sitters can upload profile photos and scanned

copies of testimonials and police verification documents.

• We can have a simple form for uploading photos, where we can upload at the

most 5 photos at a time. To each photo we should be able to give a title and a

description if needed. This can be a process that is done after the basic photo is

uploaded.

• During photo upload, following points to be kept in mind:

• Each house can have multiple photos.

• Each pet can have multiple photos.

• An owner can have multiple houses, each house having multiple photos. The

same applies for pets as well.

• Conflicting names of photos should not cause an issue.

Search for Sitters • This section allows registered House Owners to look at available sitters / search

for sitters according to some criteria and locate them.

• A user can opt for either of the two above options.

o The option to look at available sitters would have the option of narrowing

down your search by opting for a geographical location – states in

Australia / New Zealand / Tasmania to begin with – and location / post

code. However, none of this is mandatory.


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o Additionally we can opt for House sitters / Pet Sitters / House and Pet

Sitters.

o Once this is done and the “Locate Sitters” button is pressed, a page would

display the first 10 sitters, with navigation between successive pages

enabled.

o If the user is logged in a registered House owner, contact details would be

shown. If a guest, contact details are hidden. The access level differences

in individual pages would be covered in a separate matrix at the end of the

document.

• The other option is to go for a more complex search. In this case, the user can

perform a search by one or more of the following options: Country, State, Post

Code, Suburb, and House Type, any keyword in the advertisement text of the

House sitter, Smoker/non-Smoker etc and check out profiles. The complex

search is not available to Guest Users.

Rate Sitters • This feature is available to registered users who have availed the services of one

or more sitters registered with the site.

• When doing a sitter search / browsing sitter profiles, if the sitter and house

owner have had transactions in the past, a “Rate Me!” link would come up.

• On clicking the link, a page would come up.

• In future, based on whether the sitter has offered house sitting / pet sitting /

both, we can allow different rating options. For present, we would keep this

simple and allow rating against a number of standard options that can cover all

scenarios.

• We would also have a field where the person rating the sitter can type in some

comments.

• The ratings received thus would show up against the profiles of sitters who have

been rated. This can be seen in a separate page, as the weighted average of the

total rating received, in terms of number rating against a total of 10 in each trend.


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Register as House Sitter • This feature is available from the Home Page through a “Register as House Sitter”

link.

• A person can opt for house sitting alone, pet sitting alone or both together.

• He needs to fill up certain personal details such as full name, alias, email id etc.

Please refer http://www.aussiehousesitters.com.au/pg_regsit.php

• He has the option of uploading his personal photo, and also scanned copies of

any testimonials that he may have. He can also load up any police verification

certificates that he may have.

• It is also possible for him to load up a scanned copy of his driving license as an

additional verification.

• The personal photo upload is a mandatory process. The rest of it is optional.

• The person can opt for a verification process by the House Sitters site as this gives

him / her better chance to get selected. This needs a separate fee to be paid over

the registration fee.

• Once the basic data has been filled in, the user is taken to a payment page where

he can select from a host of options for payment. These are:

o Credit card payment over a payment gateway

o Payment through Pay Pal

o Sending a cheques or demand draft to a postal address

o Paying through a fixed fee 1900 line. Here the user has to make a call to

pay.

(Note: For all these integrations refer Annexure I).

• The user selects one of these and completes the process.

• The user account is activated on confirmation of payment. In case of cheques /

draft payment a manual process has to be used to activate the user account, and a

email would get generated and sent then. This would be an Administrative action.

• For the other payment modes, on confirmation of payment from the different

options the account gets activated.


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• The total amount to be paid can vary based on multiple options. These can be:

• Geographic location of sitter.

• Age group of sitter.

• Target households of sitter.

• Whether the sitter has also opted for verification.

Verification Process

• The sitter verification process is a sub-process of the sitter registration process.

• If the sitter has opted for verification, he has to submit following details as

mandatory:

• Contact details

• Address details

• A copy of a certificate verifying his address details, such as driver’s license. He

can either scan and upload it, or opt to fax it to a number.

• If the user decides to fax it, his profile would be considered incomplete till the fax

is received.

• Once the fax is received the Admin can activate his account manually.

• If there is any issue with the verification, the registration fee is re-funded to the

prospective sitter.

• The Site would not currently have any admin interface to refund the money; this

would be done offline and later added as an online facility.

• If verification fails, the sitter’s profile would be deleted from the site. The

registration fees are retained.


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Search for Houses / Pets • A user would have the option of looking at available houses / do a detailed search

on houses.

• If the first option is selected, the user is still given an option to narrow his search

down.

• The user can search for houses within a country and state – for example

Australia, New South Wales – and look at them. If no options are selected the

houses are listed in the order of their addition to the site.

• A registered house sitter gets to see complete house profile, along with photos etc.

• A guest would see some descriptions of the houses and basic location, but no

specific location details and no photographs.

• The detailed search is not available to Guest Users.

• In the detailed search, a registered house sitter can perform a search by various

options:

o Location (Country, State, Post Code, Suburb)

o Duration

o Nature of tasks

o Keywords

• In either of the two options, matching house details would come up, 10 per page,

with pagination so searchers can move from page to page easily.

Renew Subscription • A house sitter’s account would come up for annual renewal based on his / her

date of subscription.

• A scheduler would track this and send the sitter a reminder e-mail 2 weeks before

the expiry of the account.

• The mail would have a link for the sitter to click on and directly arrive at the page

to make a payment after going through the usual login process.


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• Alternately the users can pick the “Renew your subscription” link and opt to pay.

The payment option would not be active till 2 weeks before the expiry.

• For the 2 weeks and afterwards, the total dues would be displayed on the renewal

page.

• If payment is made before or on expiry date, or on a pre-set grace period after the

expiry date, the account would get extended automatically.

• If payment is not made in time, an email reminder would be sent to the user. The

user account would get locked, so that the user can log in and renew the

subscription, but cannot access any other details that are available on login.

• On payment of calculated dues the account would get activated. “Calculated dues”

mean the total subscription renewal fees due to the site calculated on the basis of

the user’s registration date and last payment made. The same would be displayed

on the page.

• The payment options for renewal would be very similar to the first time payment

options. In case someone chooses to renew his / her account by sending in a

cheques / draft payment after expiry of due payment date, the Admin user can re-

active the account should it have been locked due to delay in payment.

Access House Gallery This feature is available to registered House Sitters only unless otherwise configured.

This feature show cases the uploaded images of the houses, with titles and descriptions,

and on clicking the images one can view the contact details of the house owners, location

details and such others.

This section does not necessarily offer all the houses on view. The better pictures are

presented through this section. Hence we need an admin interface for editing House ads,

where it is possible to check a box to indicate that the house should appear in the Gallery

section.

For more details check the Administrative section.


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Get Paid for Someone to Look after your House This is a new business model developed on a pseudo rental option, but one that can be

built as an adjunct to the current House Sitting model with little change.

This document addresses this as a set of changes to the already discussed functional

areas above, to make it clearer.

House Owner Registration

• During this registration process, the user needs to opt for one of the following:

o I want to be paid for letting someone look after my house.

o I don’t need to be paid for letting someone look after my house.

• If the house owner wants to get paid, he would have to enter the minimum

amount that he expects to be paid per month in the web form.

• Depending on the chosen option, the system would behave in one of the following

manners:

o Only allow matches between this owner and a sitter who is willing to pay

and stay in. In this case it has to pay the requisite amount to the house

owner.

o Allow matches between the owner and any sitter. In this case there is no payment to the owner involved.

House Sitter Registration

• During this registration process, the sitter needs to opt for one of the following:

o I am OK with paying an amount as rent to the prospective House Owner,

because I understand that this increases my chances of getting a house

o I don’t want to pay someone for looking after his / her house.

• If the sitter agrees to pay, and locates a house where the owner has asked for a

payment, then a prospective match is made.

• If the sitter agrees to pay, but locates a house where the owner is not particular

about payment, it is treated as a case where there is no payment to the owner

involved.


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• In the case of where there is a rental to be paid, the sitter has to make a payment

against his credit card for the period covered in the sitting offer, for the total

amount of rent involved, plus the percentage applicable as a realtor fee to the

portal. The amount shall be calculated and shown to the user at the time of

payment.

Email Marketing One form of viral marketing is supported in the site by providing a page to all registered

house owners / sitters where the user can upload his / her email contacts from as many

email services such as Yahoo! G Mail / MSN etc as possible, and the application would

send a standard email message to all of the contacts.

This should be presented as an option during registration itself, though the user should

have the means to skip this process. Subsequently we can have a “Share” link on the

pages. On clicking this link, the above page would come up again.

We can also have the option of presenting this option at pre-defined transaction nodes –

for example on selecting a house / selecting a sitter a person is requested to recommend

the service to his / her contacts.

Note that such email ids should not be stored in the system. The user would have the

option of selecting as many as he wants, preview the standard message being sent and

add a personal note to it and send it across.

The list of users should come as entirely pre-selected, and the user can toggle that to

have all un-selected and then select as many he wants manually, or unselect the ones he

wants unselected.

Tie in between Site, House Owner and House Sitter • This section covers issues to be handled for tie-in among the three agencies

involved in the transaction, namely the House Sitting site, the House Owner and

the House Sitter.

• The Site provides a platform where House owners can place their adverts, and

search for Sitters.

• The Site also provides a platform where House Sitters can register and search for

Houses.


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• This applies to Pets as well.

• Thus there must be a tracking system to indicate which House Owner chose

which Sitter, or which Sitter is currently assigned to which House Owner. This

serves two purposes:

o Helps preserve a history of transactions that in turn can be used to

validate / verify claims / testimonials in the future or to provide

references, and also to enable full tracking.

o In the case where the House Owner wants to be paid, and the Sitter agrees

to this, this system can enable smooth collection of payments, and require

minimum intervention.

The proposed mechanism is as follows:

No payment to House Owner - Sitter chooses Owner

• The Sitter can locate the House he wants to sit through one of many search

channels.

• If the House is already allocated to a Sitter, it would not appear in the list.

• The Sitter can see image of house basic location details such as City, Suburb but

not location details such as House Number and street, and contact e-mail and

telephone details. The page would also have availability details in terms of time.

• He can click on a button to indicate his choice. This would send an e-mail to the

Owner with a link that the owner can click on to open a page.

• This page needs the owner to log in, and shows the details of the sitter. The owner

can approve or reject this choice.

• On rejection the sitter would get an e-mail notification.

• On approval, the sitter would get an e-mail notification. This email has a link

which he needs to click on to confirm the choice.

• At this point a transaction is logged, and the full contact details of each party are

e-mailed to each other.


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• Care to be taken that there is no lock-in to other applications etc, because the

sitter can apply to multiple owners at the same time. The different applications

need to be logged, and their status tracked and released when due.

No payment to House Owner – Owner chooses Sitter

• The Owner may locate a sitter through a search. The sitter’s contact details are

not visible, though the owner can see his personal profile, photograph, police

verification if present etc. Driver license, if present, would not be shown.

However if the site has verified the sitter, that information would be shown.

• The Owner can click on a button to indicate his choice. This sends off an e-mail to

the sitter.

• The sitter can click on a link in the e-mail to open a page to see house details, and

confirm or reject the choice.

• On rejection a notice is sent to the owner via e-mail.

• On approval, a transaction is logged, and full contact details of both parties are e-

mailed to the each.


owner can apply to multiple sitters at the same time. The different applications


Payment to House Owner – Sitter chooses Owner

• The Sitter can locate the House he wants to sit through one of many search

channels.

• If the House is already allocated to a Sitter, it would not appear in the list.

• The Sitter can see image of house basic location details such as City, Suburb but

not location details such as House Number and street, and contact e-mail and

telephone details. The page would also have availability details in terms of time.

• He can click on a button to indicate his choice. This would send an e-mail to the

Owner with a link that the owner can click on to open a page.

• This page needs the owner to log in, and shows the details of the sitter. The owner

can approve or reject this choice.


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• On rejection the sitter would get an e-mail notification.

• On approval, the sitter would get an e-mail notification. This email has a link

which he needs to click on to confirm the choice.

• At this point he would be taken to a page where he is shown the amount he has to

pay the site as rental fees plus realtor fees. He can pay using one of the standard

payment options.

• On successful payment a transaction is logged, and the full contact details of each

party are e-mailed to each other.


sitter can apply to multiple owners at the same time. The different applications


• In this case, there is to be a way for the site to pay the owner his due. This can be

an offline process. The application would send a reminder to the site owner about

this once payment is through, with periodic follow-ups till the payment is made

and a status updated against the transaction number.

Payment to House Owner – Owner chooses Sitter

• The Owner may locate a sitter through a search. The sitter’s contact details are

not visible, though the owner can see his personal profile, photograph, police

verification if present etc. Driver license, if present, would not be shown.

However if the site has verified the sitter, that information would be shown.

• The Owner can click on a button to indicate his choice. This sends off an e-mail to

the sitter.

• The sitter can click on a link in the e-mail to open a page to see house details, and

confirm or reject the choice.

• On rejection a notice is sent to the owner via e-mail.

• On approval the sitter he would be taken to a page where he is shown the amount

he has to pay the site as rental fees plus realtor fees. He can pay using one of the

standard payment options.


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• On successful payment, a transaction is logged, and full contact details of both

parties are e-mailed to the each.


owner can apply to multiple sitters at the same time. The different applications


• In this case, there is to be a way for the site to pay the owner his due. This can be

an offline process. The application would send a reminder to the site owner about

this once payment is through, with periodic follow-ups till the payment is made

and a status updated against the transaction number.

Pet Special Use Cases The cases where pet profiles can be uploaded on the site for sale / give away are treated

separately here. The pet give away service is offered as a pet service initially to increase

traffic on the site.

Upload Pet Profiles This shall be available from two places:

Access Point 1 When uploading pet profile as part of usual House registration process. The additional

option available would ask the registered user whether:

• He wants to offer the pet for sale.

• He wants to offer the pet for giveaway.

In case the pet is offered for sale, the following action would need to be performed:

Name a minimum price for the pet.

In either case, as for all other cases, full contact information can be hidden from any one

wishing to get in touch to collect a pet, unless the only transaction that the user wants to

perform is to offer his / her pet as a free give away.

Standard information about pet would be collected as usual, including species, breed of

pet, photo etc. Also, a user should be able to upload multiple pet profiles.


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Access point 2 Since this is to be advertised to be a sub feature of the site, the same functionality can be

accessed through a sub menu. In this case, a user can register as a pet owner and offer

pet(s) for sale / giveaway.

The functionality can be a sub set of the overall “Register as House/Pet Owner”

functionality. It should be possible for such a user to upgrade to become a House Owner.

Payment Flow and Options Payment options are involved when some one sales a pet.

A user can search for Pets that are available for Sale / Give Away, in addition to for

keeping. This would list out the appropriate pets for the user’s consideration.

The payment is controlled as discussed for “Get Paid for someone to look after your

house” option, so that the payment happens through the site, and the site can collect its

due for making the deal possible. Till the payment is confirmed, full contact details

would not be exposed to the end buyer.

In this case, the site would not control the entire payment process. The actual payment

for the pets can be made directly to the pet owner by the buyer. However, to unlock the

full information certain cut / fixed sum would have to be paid to the site. On

confirmation of this payment the contact information would be unlocked.

The exceptions to this are as follows:

If the pet owner has registered only for pet give away. In this case full contact details can

be shown. There is always a chance that, though, that such a owner may later upgrade to

something else, so there is a risk involved here. Hence whether full contact details can be

exposed in such a case should be made configurable at a macro level.

If the pet owner who wants to sale his / her pet(s) has also registered for another item

which can lead to further payment to the site (As for now only “Get paid for someone to

look after your House”). In such a case, exposing the contact details on payment of the

fixed sum for pet sale due to the site is again a risk, as the buyer and seller can get in

touch for other transactions. Hence whether full contact details can be exposed in such a

case should be made configurable at a macro level.


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Information Use Case Stories

Feedback from House Owners This has got several parts:

• There would be an interface where a house owner can provide feedback about a

Sitter who has taken care of his house. This is available to registered house

owners, and they can only provide feedback about sitters whose services they

have availed in the past.

• There would be a page where during a search an owner can view any past

feedback about a particular Sitter. This would be available as a link against the

Sitter profile. This is visible to registered Owners.

• There would be a generally viewable page where some positive feedback provided

about sitters registered with the site is uploaded for public viewing.

Interface for Feedback This has been covered in the “Rate Sitters” area above.

View feedback during Search This has been covered in the “Rate Sitters” area above.

Public viewable page

• Here some of the latest ratings can be put on view. The selection of rating to be

shown on this page would be an Admin function.

• There would be a maximum cap on number of ratings that can be shown, around

10.

• Whenever a new rating is added the Admin gets a notification. The Admin can

open the latest rating and decide whether it can be published to the public page.

• On doing that, the oldest rating on the public page is retired.

Terms and Conditions This would be a static page that follows a standard presentation template.


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Note on static content Generally, for static pages we don’t want to invite complexity by having the content

stored in the database. However, we can look at having a separation between content and

presentation layer by doing the following:

The page has a standard menu – header – footer, in frames or otherwise.

The actual content is loaded from a text file, with paragraph divisions in the text file

corresponding to paragraph divisions in the web page.

For each static content page, follow a naming convention that makes it easy for a non

technical editor, with some little training, to create multiple pages with contents (text

and images) and add them to menu.

This is just a suggestion, and we can explore better ways of doing it.

Similarly, if a static page has download links, we need to come up with a folder structure

and an easy way for a non-technical editor to add resources to the pages or alter these.

Disclaimer This would be a static page that follows a standard presentation template.

Resources / Advice This would be a static page that follows a standard presentation template.

View Testimonials Testimonials are uploaded by Sitters as scanned images during their registration or

subsequent profile updates.

These can generally viewed during search on Sitter profiles by registered House Owners.

Apart from that, like feedbacks, testimonials can be viewed publicly over a page. The

mechanism would be like that for feedback / ratings.

What Minders Say Registered House / Pet Sitters can provide their general feedback through a form

accessible to them in their profile. This form is not accessible to house owners unless

they are house swappers.


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Some of these can be viewed over a public page. The mechanism would be like that for

feedback / ratings.

FAQs This would be a static page that follows a standard presentation template. This can be

divided into two sections – for Sitters and Owners, and further into separate sections for

Houses and Pets.

Confidentiality This would be a static page that follows a standard presentation template.

What Owners Expect This would be a static page that follows a standard presentation template.

Saving Rent This would be a static page that follows a standard presentation template.

Service Costs This would be a static page that follows a standard presentation template.

Proforma Agreement This would be a static page that follows a standard presentation template. Additionally,

there can be a downloadable PDF document / documents with a standardized agreement

between Sitter and Owner that can be used as a template.

Contact Us This would be a static page that follows a standard presentation template.

Site Map This would be a static page that follows a standard presentation template.

Events and Promotions This would be a static page that follows a standard presentation template.

Site Administration The aim is to make the site as much dynamically configurable as possible. This means:

1. Avoid hard coding wherever possible.

2. Load configuration from database so that on changing the data from admin UI,

the set of configuration values gets re-loaded dynamically.


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The functionality would determine the available Administrative options. A full definition

is not attempted here. However, as a general guideline the following points are

mentioned:

1. Role to Access Mapping -> can be configuration driven and changeable. However,

this is not likely to change immediately after launch, so not a top priority.

2. Information pages – Control of who accesses how much information in terms of

Guest users vs. registered users and thus resulting Access Restrictions should be

made Admin configurable. However, this is not likely to change immediately after

launch, so not a top priority. .

3. Configuration of all items like days after something should expire, periodicity of

reminders, time for which a house owner account can be held without advert,

time for which a sitter profile can be held without payment, allowed confirmation

period before links expire etc so that these can be easily changed at admin level

through interface rather than hack into properties files.

4. Definition of billing classifications and billing rates – in case we end up with a

case where we have to make distinctions between billing rates for people from

different countries and states, this should be made configurable.

5. Definition of ratings for rating sitters - to be made in to Admin configurable.

These are criteria based on which sitters get rated.

6. Admin interface for reviewing gallery pictures / testimonials etc and promoting

the ones that should go in to the public pages.

7. Admin interface for defining standard texts for emails, with links being

interposed at fixed positions.

8. Admin interface for viral marketing – The Administrator has the option to select

pre-configured / standard e-mails to all the people whose e-mail ids have been

captured in the system. This means registered users or expired users or yet to

confirm users.

Reports The currently identified reports to be built are:

• Total and cumulative list of House Owners registered by year, month, day.


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• Total and cumulative list of House Sitters registered by year, month, day.

• Total and cumulative list of House Sitters due for renewal in a selected

period.

• Total and cumulative list of House sitters who have overshot their renewal

date.

• Total and cumulative list of House sitters who have renewed so far – whether

on time or within grace period.

• Total and cumulative list of House owners who need to be paid in the current

month / any selected period.

• Currently running house sits – matched by owners and sitters and payment

status for the same.

• A report showing owners that have listed a fee paying rental.

• A report for how many sitters have paid for the above.

Reporting Mechanism As discussed, following would be the reporting mechanism for now:

• The reports can be calculated at around midnight - typically when load on site is

minimum - and stored in the system. The day’s report thus would have the data

till the run time.

• These reports would be e-mailed to a list of recipients, or alternately we can email

a link for every day's reports to this list of recipients. If we send a link, one would

have to log on to the admin module in order to see the reports.

• During the day one can access these reports any time, but the data would not get

refreshed. At this point we would want to avoid on demand report generation

loads till the traffic justifies that.

• One would get to see fresh data only after the reports have run the next day. You

can see archived report by selecting past dates.

house sitting srs

Documents