RentPath Engineers Build New Communication Feature amidst COVID-19

RentPath is where new ideas turn into new products and features fast. Just recently, two of our Lead Engineers, Tad and Ben, partnered together to create a new working feature to help our clients and customers communicate better during COVID-19 pandemic and beyond!

While the initiative is still in its infancy, it will leverage a variety of providers, with Twilio leading out of the gate, to integrate a streaming platform that has lots of great features such as screen sharing, group rooms – similar to what you’d find in a Google Hangout or a Zoom call.

“The idea of building this feature came as a response to helping our customers connect with renters in these difficult times as we’re all grappling with this pandemic. We want to make sure people are able to find the best home in the safest way possible,” explained Ben.

“Basically, it’s a path which we can expand on later,” explained Tad. “(We) had a good concept and we took that and tried to simplify things for now to get MVP (Minimal Viable Product) for this done.”

“I think the biggest obstacle in getting this done was familiarizing myself with the SDK and the EventEmitter API which is something I haven’t worked with too extensively in the past. Other than that it was a pretty straight forward feature build,” Ben added.

RentPath employees have the support of our leadership team and creative freedom to develop potential products, features and enhancements to create real and helpful consumer and client solutions. While the feature is in its early stages, these two took on additional responsibilities within our COVID-19 task team to integrate our existing architecture with Twilio’s SDK for a very unique experience on Rent.com – coming soon. We’re grateful to have them on our team and can’t wait to see what they cook up next!