“Using the Active Steward™ software in a whole new way!”
Active Steward™, our proprietary software for product stewardship, undergoes continuous updates to improve functionality and user experience. This is all down to the hard work of the development team.
So where is Active Steward™ going?
We asked Ross Newby, Software Developer, some questions to find out more:
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Ross Newby:
Ross joined the Active Steward™ team in March with a range of experience with large E-Commerce clients. He is an avid outdoors-man and has previously volunteered as a park ranger and hopes to continue completing annual ‘Tough Mudder’ events.
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How have you found your time at Active Steward™ so far?
“I am truly loving my time at Active Steward™! I joined the project because there were tonnes of ideas on how to improve the existing system and I wanted to be busy programming and leaning every minute of the work day. I’m happy to say, that has been the case since day one.”
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What have you found the most challenging/the most interesting
“I recently implemented a new feature using an open-source project called DataTables. The technology is JavaScript based and extremely popular for viewing large data sets.
From first proposing the solution, to executing the implementation and testing, I’m really happy with the result and how it integrates with the existing program.
Since it was a completely new feature, the code was written from scratch and I always find that the most exciting part of programming and I’m sure many of my colleagues would agree.”
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What have you learnt?
“It’s still early in my career and I can still be considered an industry newbie; both by status and name!
Working in a small team is pushing me to take a lot of responsibility for the code I write and its design, giving me additional confidence, as well as a great understanding of the large system already in place on Active Steward™.”
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What have you been working on?
“I joined the team as version 4 had just been released and I’m excited to put my name to features in 4.1. Most recently, I’ve been making some of the systems most time-consuming tasks execute asynchronously, which greatly improves their usability. In fact, usability and user experience has been most of my focus to date.”
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What’s coming up next?
“The whole team has been working hard to make the document store in Active Steward™ more scalable and we’ll soon be working together to test the new functionality.
We are also prototyping an extension to the Inventories and Lists service. Hopefully, soon, people will be using the Active Steward™ software in a whole new way, to help track regulatory information. This new venture, combined with the existing Inventories service and new document store, should provide a really appealing service; I’m excited to see it come to fruition!”