App Of The Day interview with our founder

In an interview with App of The Day – one of the leading top software sites, we had a chance to share how Baby Connect was built and developed.

Below we would like to share some of the highlights of the Interview. We think it would be best to keep the original form of the interview, so here it is: a Q&A session, answered by Xavier our founder. You can access the full interview here.

Did you have any prior development or coding experience?

Yes, I started coding in high school, got a Software Engineering degree, then worked for about 15 years as a developer before starting to work on the app.

What was the most challenging aspect of developing mobile app?

The most challenging was to make sure the backend infrastructure to handle the synchronization on multiple devices was stable and scalable. This was especially difficult in 2009 when the internet connection on phone was unreliable, and cloud services were not as strong and stable as they are now.

How long have you been working on this app?

It took 6 months to develop the very first version. I am still working on it with others 12 years later.

What need of the user did you have in mind when developing this app?

It started with my experience and needs as a parent, the initial idea was to help the communication between family members and caregivers about the care of their children: when was the last time the diaper was changed, did the baby wake up and was fed in the middle of the night, did he got his medicine?
I also wanted to allow parents to feel connected to their children even when they’re away from home by receiving updates and photos throughout the day.

In what way do you think your app is better than similar apps on the market? Please describe in detail what innovation you think you bring and what you are proud of in your app.

The app is very comprehensive and can track every aspect of a child’s development, from birth to teenage years. It can do seamless automatic real-time synchronization on each caregiver device and is available on all platforms: iOS, Android, Web, on the Apple Watch, Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant.
One important feature that makes the app special is the strong customization capability that allows adapting the app for all situations.
We’re especially proud that the app is helping parents with difficult situations: children that are heavily medicated, with medical problems, disabilities, or need constant attention.

What are your future plans and expected features of the coming new versions of this app?

More statistics and type of data visualization, a refresh of the look and feel, and more capabilities on the Apple Watch app and the voice assistants.

Assuming new users of your app are reading this page. What do you want to ask them to do (contact you about X, Share the app, etc.)?

Install the app, spread the word, and let us know your feedback about the app and how we can improve.

Important change to Baby Connect

Today, we’re excited to announce that we’re moving to a subscription model for our application: the app is now free to download, but saving entries in the app will require a subscription plan (at the end of the trial period):

• Family Plan: up to 5 children at $4.99 / month
• Professional Plan: up to 15 (active) children at $14.99 / month

Since we started Baby Connect back in 2009, we kept on working on the app, evolving it to respond to your demand. The app price is our only revenue stream, we do not sell private data or run ads.

The change to a standard subscription model will allow us to:

• Invest on our cloud infrastructure to continue providing seamless data synchronization, push notifications, unlimited storage of photo, and maximum data privacy and security,
• Continue providing same-day customer support,
• Keep adding new features to the application, and support new iOS/Android systems and devices.
• Keep providing an ad-free application.

A subscription plan is valid for the whole family, with no limit on the number of caregivers and family members: only one person in the family needs to subscribe to a plan, every family members will automatically benefit from it (as long as they’re linked to a child’s profile).

The application is still accessible in read-only mode without a subscription plan: the history, graphs, photos and data export are always available, but saving new entries is only available with a plan. Subscriptions can only be done via the iOS or via the Android mobile application.

Professionals with more than 15 children should switch to our Daily Connect application which is designed for home daycares and large childcare centers. Contact us at support@babyconnect.com to make the switch.

If you already have a Baby Connect account (February 5, 2021)

There is no change to your account, you do not need to subscribe to the new plan. In fact, even if you have not purchased the Baby Connect mobile application, you can now download and use it for free. You can still save information on your existing children’s profile.

If you create a new child’s profile, then you need to subscribe to a family or professional plan to be able to save more than 100 entries for the new profile.

If you invite a new family member or caregiver, then the new invitee will need to subscribe to a family or professional plan to be able to save entries on your child’s profile. No subscription is needed for read-only access (the app is free to download and to use in read-only mode).

You will not be automatically enrolled in a subscription plan. You will not be charged if you do nothing. You will only be charged if you explicitly subscribe to a family/professional plan. If you subscribe, the plan is automatically renewed each month and can be canceled at any time without fee. If cancelled, you’ll still have read access to the application and to your data.

Contact us at support@babyconnect.com if you have any questions.

Manage your milk stash with Baby Connect

When recording a pumping entry, you can now specify a stash location for the milk bottle. You can also adjust the quantity in the bottle to be stashed, in case it is different from the pumped quantity.

Save Bottle Stash Location

Via the ‘Milk Stash’ button on the home page, the application will show the total quantity, the number of bottles and the list of bottles in each stash. You can easily reorganize your stash here, move or remove bottles from a specific location. The application will also clearly indicate bottles that have expired and need to be thrown away.

During a bottle feeding, you can pick a bottle from the stash, this will automatically remove it from the stash when the feeding is saved.

The 3 defaults stashes are Fridge, Freezer and Deep Freezer, but you can easily customize this list and their expiration.

Baby Connect for Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri

Baby Connect is now available for the three major voice assistants: Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri.

Those integrations allow you to track diaper changes, bottle feedings, nursing, or sleep sessions using your voice. You can say things such as “log a dirty diaper”, “start nursing from the left”, “log a 3 oz formula feeding”, or “when was the last diaper change?”.

Any voice action is automatically synchronized to your account and to the Baby Connect application. For instance, you can start a sleep timer with Alexa, pause it with your iOS app, continue the timer with Google Assistant and stop the same timer with Siri.

The Baby Connect Alexa skill can be enabled through the Amazon Alexa app (US only). The complete list of accepted utterances is available here.

Google Home and Google Assistant users can use our Baby Connect Google Assistant action. The recognized commands are available here.

For iOS users, Baby Connect now support Siri shortcuts. You can access available Siri shortcuts in the system settings application, under Siri & Search > Suggested Shortcuts, and add those shortcuts to your list. The suggested shortcuts are automatically generated by Baby Connect based on your usage.

Let us know what else you would like your assistants to do with Baby Connect. The list of recognized commands keeps evolving, make sure to check back regularly on your Baby Connect assistant page for hints on new capabilities.

Night Mode

With the most recent version of our mobile application, you can now activate a night theme to make it easier on your eyes in dark environments. The mode can be enabled by tapping on the button at the top left of the home page, and choose the night mode menu option. You can enable it manually or on schedule, for instance each day between 10pm and 6am.

New features for child care centers

The latest version of the application includes several changes and new features for everybody. Among those, a new invitation workflow make is easier to connect with others caregivers. Several usability enhancements were made both on the iOS and the Android applications and several new categories are available on the AppleWatch application.

For child care centers, a new module for parent sign in / out and a new customizable welcome email are also available in this new version.

New module for parent Sign in / out

When this option is activated, parents receive a 4 digits personal code to sign in and out their child in the center.

When a parent arrives at the child care center, he will enter his 4 digits code on a dedicated device to sign in the child.

The app will show the list of children that the parent can sign in for approval.

For pickup, parents will use the same device and code for signing out.

The sign in/out time and the parent name are saved on the child history. It is included in the daily summary email. The information is also used for attendance reports.

The option is available to Professional and Enterprise subscriptions. Child Care administrators can activate it in the settings > Sign In / Out page.

Invitation code and Welcome Email

We’ve improved the invitation workflow with invitation codes and better emails. It’ll be easier to connect with others caregivers.

In addition, for Professional and Enterprise accounts, an email is automatically sent to first-time users to explain how the application is used in classrooms. You can personnalize this email in the settings > customize email page.

 

New features for Child Care professionals

We’re rolling out today new features and improvements designed especially for nannies, child care administrators and teachers.

Inactive children profiles

You can now mark a child profile as inactive. You can use this for children that are not coming to the child care anymore, either temporarily (vacation, sick, …) or permanently. The child will not appear in your home page but you can still access the profile in your settings page, and bring it back to active status when needed.

 

Custom Message in the automatic daily email

The app can already automatically send summary emails to parents at the end of the day, with no action from teachers. You can now also add a specific message, it will be added to the daily email (Premium plans only).

Email all parents

We’ve received a lot of requests for an easy way to send an email to all parents. This is now feasible in the settings section of the web application (Premium plans only).

 

Attendance report pdf export

You can now export the attendance report for all children in a pdf file. You can keep it for your record, or give it to parents for billing purpose (Premium plans only).

 

Dashboard

This one has been available for some time already. Make sure to update to the latest version of the application on your iPad or Android, you’ll love it. The dashboard will also be available in the next version of the iPhone application.

If you don’t have a premium account already, check out all the features available in the subscriptions.

New features in the iOS application

Here are the new features in the latest version (4.0) of the iOS application that we recently released:

– Print a Photo Book: we’ve partnered with Mosaic so you can create a book with your photos saved in the application. Pick 20 photos from your album and you will receive a beautiful photo book a few days later. It’s easy to order, shipping is fast, and the quality is excellent.

Tap on the photo button on the home page of Baby Connect to order your book.

– Sound customization: You can now customize the sound for the push notifications, reminder alarms and timer alarms.

– Dashboard (iPad only): this is especially useful for child care professionals who can have an overview of all children in the classroom.

The dashboard will display the time since the last feeding, diaper change, potty, or sleep on the same page.

You can easily save new events from the same page, and quickly view which children are in the classroom and which children have been checked out. No need to switch to each child page anymore.

Child Care administrators can also easily view all classrooms and all children in each classroom via the dashboard page.

 

– New child selection interface (iPad only): it is now much easier to switch child with the new interface.

 

 

The new version is available now as a free update on the AppStore.

New features in the latest Android application

We’ve just released a new version of our Android application. This is a major release with several important new features:

– Timeline Graph: this was one of your most requested feature. This graph allows you to easily identify trends and patterns in your child schedule.

 

– New Weekly and Monthly bar charts in addition to the daily charts are now available.

 

 

– Old menus have been replaced by new Sliders for the child selection and for common menu options.

     

 

– Dashboard Page: this is especially useful for child care professionals who can have an overview of all children in the classroom.

The dashboard will display the time since the last feeding, diaper change, potty, or sleep on the same page.

You can easily save new events from the same page, and quickly view which children are in the classroom and which children have been checked out. No need to switch to each child page anymore.

 

 

 

– Child Care administrators can now easily view all classrooms and all children in each classroom. This is only accessible to Professional and Enterprise subscriptions.

 

 

Several others minor new features (for instance a new photo browser) and plenty of bug fixes were also included in the release. The new version is available now as a free update on the GooglePlay Store and will be available shortly on the Amazon AppStore.

Baby Connect on Windows Phones

We are pleased to announce the availability of Baby Connect on Windows Phone 8 and 8.1.

Baby Connect is the only baby tracking application available on all platforms: iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Web.

Parents and caregivers can use the application on their phone and easily exchange information about theirs children with the application. For instance, mom can use the application on an iPhone and dad on his Android phone, nanny can use the Windows Phone app and grandparents can use the web application. Each event will be automatically synchronized on each device.

When changing phone, users are still able to download the application on their new device, whichever type it is. Logging in the application with an existing Baby Connect account will automatically synchronize the whole history to the new device.

To celebrate the new release, Baby Connect is free on the Windows Phone Store for the next 3 weeks.