Common Terms

The Developers Help Desk – new CU*Answers business initiative recently started for helping clients design, build and manage custom software solutions in a new creative way.

The DHD is the centerpiece of CU*Answers’ DIY (Do It Yourself) business strategy for 2018, and we have often been viewed as a DIT (Do it Together) – a cooperative building firm for many years, and we always will be. However, in many cases today, clients want to take an active role in software development. Our Developer’s Help Desk focus is geared directly to a clients desire to become a custom designer or builder for their desired software solutions.

The hub of our Developer’s Help Desk strategy: a custom project development strategy in which the client is often the primary architect (or general contractor) for designing, building, and managing a custom project. You are able to contract with CU*Answers for only the professional and technical resources desired, and nothing more.

The Application Programming Interface: A good amount of you may understand that an API represents a set of programming instructions and standards for allowing a third party to access certain portions of your application software without having the need to write comprehensive software programs. The API Center is the location on our DHD site for clients to review our most current API capabilities to allow others to develop products that connect and integrate into the CU*answers production suite. Once an API is developed by CU*Answers, it can be used by other third party applications – providing considerably less cost while easier to integrate.

Single Sign On: A strategy to eliminate the requirement for a member having to authenticate themselves on multiple platforms, single sign on passes their credentials forward to simply display the icon verses having to authenticate again. Some common examples:

• Bill pay
• Personal Finance Tools (MX)
• Check processing vendors
• Accessing electronic documents

Off Trial Balance: OTB is critical to providing a more complete picture of the credit union/member relationship – a tool for being viewed as a complete and full service provider. These are products outside the normal trial balance products tracking by CU*BASE, handled via manual balance sheet entries, and tracked via a third party source. The Off Trial Balance database is designed to take key information about these types of credit union relationships, deliver it to CU*BASE, and make it available to your members and credit union staff. Some examples include:

• Credit card data
• Special mortgages
• Investment services

The Software Development Lifecycle: The SLDC is viewed as our policy document that provides a detailed description of the CU*Answers Software Development Factory, and governs our Software Development Processes. This includes items such as:

• Project requests and submissions
• Idea forms
• Project classification
• Project Approval – what makes it to the assembly line
• Development processes
• Quality control testing
• How we handle releases
• Documentation
• Implementation – including how deployment decisions are made

How clients expect to shop today, especially for younger developers emerging in the industry – as an Amazon styled retail experience! The online store is CU*Answers’ newest strategy for clients to shop and order for hundreds of services and products offered by CU*Answers. Shop for a desired product, learn a bit more about it, and then order online, all with a complete chat service incorporated for interactive assistance to any questions or concerns the client may have.