Integrations & Platform
The deliberately short list of services the platform stands on — and the deliberate absences.
How ShilaTeq connects to the outside world — the cloud services and device capabilities that power the platform, and the deliberate integration choices that keep it simple, cheap, and honest.
Overview
ShilaTeq is a self-contained operating system for a stone yard, but it does not try to be an island. It stands on a small, carefully chosen set of external services (a cloud backend, a hosting platform, an embedded map, a messaging channel) and device capabilities (the phone's camera, the browser's storage, hardware-accelerated 3D). Each one was selected to deliver real business value without adding cost, lock-in, or operational fragility.
A guiding principle runs through every choice below: integrate only what earns its keep. ShilaTeq deliberately avoids heavyweight integrations — payment gateways, email/SMS gateways, accounting connectors, logistics APIs — that would add monthly cost, compliance overhead, and vendor dependency without matching the reality of how a small Indian stone yard actually runs on cash, credit, and WhatsApp. Those deliberate absences are documented at the end of this page and are as much a part of the product strategy as the integrations themselves.
Note: This page describes integrations as business capabilities, not as code libraries. Where a capability is delivered by a well-known technology, we name it for transparency, but the focus is always on what it does for the yard and why it exists.
📋 Integration Summary
| Integration | Category | Purpose | Business Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Cloud backend | Database, authentication, realtime sync, secure server functions, file/photo storage | One managed, secure, multi-tenant backend — no servers to run, data isolated per yard |
| WhatsApp (wa.me deep links) | Messaging channel | Send quotes, invoices, dispatch tracking, lead replies, and payment reminders through the app owners already live in | Zero-cost, zero-setup customer communication on India's default business channel |
| Vercel | Hosting & deployment | Global delivery of the web app; instant, zero-downtime releases | Fast, always-on access from any phone; no IT infrastructure for the yard to maintain |
| Google Maps | Embedded map | Shows the yard's physical location on the public showroom | Buyers can find and trust a real, located business; drives walk-ins |
| Camera / QR scanning | Device capability | Scan a block's QR code with the phone camera to pull up its identity instantly | Any worker finds any block in seconds — the core "10-second" promise |
| PDF & Excel / CSV export | Document & data export | Generate GST invoices, gate passes, QR labels; export reports and data | Compliant paperwork and portable data with one tap; nothing is trapped inside the app |
| 3D / WebGL showroom | Device capability | Renders an interactive 3D stone showroom in the browser | A premium online shopfront that turns web visitors into leads |
| Browser storage / offline | Device capability | Stores a local queue of worker actions and app data on the device | Work continues through dead zones and bad signal; nothing is lost |
💡 Tip: Everything in the table above is either a managed cloud service (Supabase, Vercel) or a capability already present in the user's phone and browser (camera, storage, 3D, file export). The yard buys no extra hardware, installs no plugins, and signs up for no additional vendors.
☁️ Supabase — The Cloud Backend
Category: Managed cloud platform (database · authentication · realtime · server functions · storage)
What it does
Supabase is the secure, managed cloud that stores and protects every yard's data and enforces the platform's business rules. It provides five capabilities ShilaTeq relies on:
- Cloud database — the single source of truth for every block, slab, order, invoice, payment, worker, and lead. ✅ Confirmed
- Authentication — owner/admin email-and-password login, and a username-only login path for shop-floor workers. ✅ Confirmed
- Realtime sync — pushes live updates so that when one user records a payment or marks a delivery, every other open screen in the yard reflects it within seconds, with no manual refresh. ✅ Confirmed
- Secure server functions — sensitive operations (reserving stock, executing a cut, applying store credit, processing returns, provisioning a worker login) run as protected server-side routines that clients cannot bypass or tamper with. ✅ Confirmed
- Storage — holds block photographs and generated assets. ✅ Confirmed
Why it exists
A stone yard cannot run a database server, manage backups, or write security policy. Supabase gives ShilaTeq an enterprise-grade backend — with row-level, per-yard data isolation enforced on every table — as a managed service, so the product ships with bank-grade multi-tenancy without the yard (or ShilaTeq's operators) maintaining any infrastructure.
Business Value
- No servers, no ops. The yard's data lives in a managed cloud with automated durability. There is nothing to patch, back up, or babysit.
- True multi-tenant isolation. Every business table is scoped to a yard, and the database itself refuses to return one yard's data to another's user. Security is enforced at the data layer, not just the screen. (See Security & Data Isolation.)
- Live, shared truth. Realtime sync means the owner on the office desktop and the supervisor on the yard floor see the same numbers at the same moment.
- Tamper-proof money logic. Because reservations, cutting, credit, and returns execute as protected server functions, the financial and inventory rules can't be worked around from a browser.
User Impact
Users never see "Supabase." They experience it as: instant login, data that's always there, screens that update themselves, and the quiet confidence that another yard can never see their stock or their customers.
💬 WhatsApp — The Messaging Layer
Category: Customer & staff communication channel (via wa.me deep links)
What it does
ShilaTeq turns WhatsApp into its outbound messaging system. Throughout the app, a WhatsApp button composes a ready-to-send, pre-formatted message and opens it directly in WhatsApp (web or the phone app) addressed to the right customer, supplier, or worker. Five message types are built in:
| Message | Sent from | Contains |
|---|---|---|
| Quotation | Quotations | The quote summary and total, ready to share with a prospective buyer |
| GST Invoice | Orders / Invoices | The invoice details for a completed sale |
| Dispatch + tracking | Dispatches | Vehicle/dispatch details plus a public live-tracking link |
| Lead reply | Leads inbox | A response to a showroom enquiry, with a link back to the catalog |
| Payment reminder | Finance | A polite reminder of an outstanding balance |
Customer-facing messages append a small promotional footer linking back to the yard's public showroom; internal reminders deliberately omit it. Replying to a showroom lead via WhatsApp automatically advances that lead from "new" to "contacted." ✅ Confirmed
Why it exists
In India, WhatsApp is business communication — customers, suppliers, and workers all live in it. Building or paying for a separate email or SMS system would push messages onto channels the yard's contacts don't check. By using wa.me deep links, ShilaTeq plugs into that channel with zero API cost, zero setup, and no message-sending fees.
Business Value
- Reach on the channel that actually gets read. Quotes and reminders land where the customer already is.
- No messaging bill. There is no per-message cost and no third-party messaging account to provision or fund.
- Professional, consistent, and fast. Every message is templated and correct — no retyping totals or fumbling links — which speeds up quoting and improves collections.
- A built-in marketing loop. Every customer message can carry the showroom link, quietly driving repeat traffic.
User Impact
A supervisor taps "WhatsApp," reviews the pre-written message, and hits send. A payment reminder that used to be an awkward phone call is now a two-tap, polite, on-brand message.
Note: Because ShilaTeq uses WhatsApp's public click-to-chat links rather than the WhatsApp Business API, messages are composed and sent by the user, not delivered automatically by a server. This keeps the feature free and instant; automated, unattended WhatsApp sending is noted as a future opportunity in Product Opportunities. 💡
▲ Vercel — Hosting & Deployment
Category: Web hosting and delivery platform
What it does
Vercel hosts ShilaTeq's web application and delivers it globally over a fast content network. New releases are published with instant, zero-downtime deployments. ✅ Confirmed (the live product runs at the live application)
Why it exists
ShilaTeq is a web application by design — nothing to install, works on any phone or computer with a browser. It needs a hosting platform that is fast worldwide, always available, and effortless to release to. Vercel provides that as a managed service.
Business Value
- Zero infrastructure for the yard. The yard just opens a URL. There is no on-premise server, no install, no update chore.
- Instant, safe updates. Improvements reach every user the moment they're released, with no downtime and no "please update your app" friction.
- Fast on modest phones and networks. Global edge delivery keeps load times low even on the mid-range Android hardware common on a shop floor.
User Impact
Users bookmark a link (or install it as a home-screen app) and it's simply always there, always current, on whatever device they pick up.
🗺️ Google Maps — Located, Trustworthy Shopfront
Category: Embedded map on the public showroom
What it does
The public 3D showroom footer embeds a Google Maps view of the yard's physical location, so an online visitor can see exactly where the business is and get directions. ✅ Confirmed
Why it exists
Buyers of high-value stone want to see the material in person and trust they're dealing with a real, established yard. Pinning the business on a familiar map converts an anonymous web page into a visitable, credible destination.
Business Value
- Trust and legitimacy. A mapped, physical address signals a real operation, not a fly-by-night listing.
- Drives walk-ins. Directions are one tap away, turning online browsers into showroom visitors.
User Impact
A prospective buyer scrolling the showroom sees where the yard is, taps for directions, and drives over — arriving already interested in specific blocks they saw online.
📷 Camera & QR Scanning — Find Any Block in Seconds
Category: Device-camera capability (with universal fallback)
What it does
Every block carries a QR code from the moment it's tagged. ShilaTeq's scanner uses the phone's camera to read that code and jump straight to the block's identity card. It prefers the device's fast built-in barcode detection where available and falls back to a software scanner on browsers that lack it, so scanning works across virtually all modern phones. A manual-entry fallback covers the rare case where the camera can't be used. Scanning is available to logged-in workers and, in a safe read-only form, to anyone who scans a block's public QR card. ✅ Confirmed
Why it exists
This is the founding promise of the product: any block, found in under ten seconds, from any phone. A yard holds thousands of near-identical blocks; the camera-plus-QR loop is what makes locating and identifying one instant instead of a walk around the yard.
Business Value
- The 10-second lookup. No walking, no guessing, no paper register — point, scan, done.
- Fewer mistakes. Scanning the actual block guarantees the right record, eliminating mix-ups between look-alike stones.
- Works on the phones people already own. No dedicated barcode scanners to buy or maintain.
User Impact
A worker on the floor scans a block and instantly sees its dimensions, grade, status, and history. A visitor scans the QR on a block and sees a safe public identity card — no login required.
🧾 PDF, Excel & CSV Export — Compliant Paper, Portable Data
Category: On-device document generation and data export
What it does
ShilaTeq generates business documents and data files directly in the browser, with no server round-trip:
- GST tax invoices — print-ready, compliant invoices with CGST/SGST/IGST split, HSN code, and the total spelled out in Indian words (lakh/crore). ✅ Confirmed
- Gate passes / loading slips — an A4 dispatch document with an embedded live-tracking QR and signature blocks. ✅ Confirmed
- Block QR labels — a print-sized label (80×110 mm) to stick on the physical block. ✅ Confirmed
- Quotations — a clean, shareable printed quote. ✅ Confirmed
- Report exports — analytics panels export to Excel, PDF, and image (PNG); tabular data exports to CSV. ✅ Confirmed
Why it exists
A yard still needs paper — a tax invoice for the buyer, a gate pass for the vehicle at the gate, a label for the block — and portable data — a spreadsheet the accountant can open. ShilaTeq produces all of it on demand so the yard never falls back to hand-written challans or retyping figures.
Business Value
- One-tap GST compliance. A correct, professional tax invoice every time, with the tax math done automatically.
- Real yard operations covered. Gate passes and stick-on QR labels bridge the software to the physical dock and stockyard.
- Data is never trapped. Exports to Excel/CSV mean the owner and their accountant can take the numbers anywhere.
- Safe by construction. CSV exports are hardened so that spreadsheet formula tricks can't execute, and rupee symbols survive correctly in Excel.
User Impact
A supervisor finalizes a sale and prints a GST invoice for the customer and a gate pass for the truck — both from the same screen, both correct, in seconds. An owner exports the month's profit report to Excel to share with their accountant.
🧊 3D / WebGL Showroom — The Online Shopfront
Category: Hardware-accelerated 3D rendering in the browser
What it does
The public catalog opens with an interactive 3D stone block and a showroom experience rendered live in the browser using the device's graphics hardware. If a device can't handle 3D — or the visitor prefers reduced motion — it gracefully falls back to a pure-CSS animated stone so the page never breaks. Stone imagery across the showroom is generated as crisp, lightweight artwork rather than heavy photo downloads. ✅ Confirmed
Why it exists
Stone is a premium, tactile product. A flat photo grid doesn't do it justice, and it doesn't differentiate the yard. A tasteful, performant 3D showroom makes a small yard look world-class online and gives buyers a richer sense of the material — turning a web visit into an enquiry.
Business Value
- A premium first impression. The yard's online presence looks like a modern brand, not a classified ad.
- Lead generation, not just display. The showroom is a funnel — every stone can prompt a quote request that lands in the admin inbox.
- Robust everywhere. The guaranteed fallback means the showroom loads and looks good even on low-end devices, so no visitor is turned away.
User Impact
A prospective buyer explores the yard's stone in an engaging 3D shopfront, taps a block, and requests a quote — becoming a tracked lead the yard can follow up on WhatsApp.
📴 Browser Storage & Offline — Work Through the Dead Zones
Category: On-device storage and offline queue
What it does
ShilaTeq stores an offline outbox on the worker's device. When a worker logs a cutting result or completes a task step with no signal, the action is saved locally and the screen updates immediately as if it had gone through. The moment connectivity returns, the app automatically syncs the queued actions in order — safely, without duplicates, and without ever overwriting fresher data. A sync indicator shows the worker what's saved, what's syncing, and what (rarely) needs attention, with a one-tap retry. ✅ Confirmed
Why it exists
Stone yards have concrete walls, metal roofs, and outdoor lots — connectivity is patchy by nature. If the software stopped working every time the signal dropped, workers would abandon it and go back to paper. On-device storage guarantees that a bad signal never stops work and never loses data.
Business Value
- Uninterrupted shop-floor operations. Cutting and task logging continue through outages; nothing waits on the network.
- Zero data loss. Every action is captured locally and reconciled automatically — no re-entry, no forgotten records.
- Conflict-safe. The sync engine is built so a delayed action can never clobber a newer state; stale updates are dropped rather than applied blindly.
User Impact
A cutter in a signal dead-zone logs a full day of output and never sees an error. When they walk back into coverage, everything quietly syncs. An offline banner reassures them: "Offline — your progress is saved and will sync automatically."
⚠️ Limitation: The offline queue currently covers worker shop-floor actions (cutting, task steps, deliveries). The admin app still needs a connection to first load its pages — there is no full offline caching layer for the office side yet. This is called out as an opportunity in Product Opportunities.
🧭 Live Data Freshness — How Everything Stays in Sync
Rather than constantly polling the server, ShilaTeq keeps screens current through a layered freshness system: an in-app cache for speed, event-driven refresh the instant anything changes, a cross-tab signal so multiple open windows agree, and realtime cloud push so a change made on one device appears on another. The result feels effortless — numbers update themselves — while staying light on the network and gentle on modest phones. ✅ Confirmed
Diagram pending. This figure is being redrawn in the documentation's ink-diagram style; the surrounding text describes the full flow.
🚫 Deliberately Not Integrated (Yet) — and Why It Matters
ShilaTeq's integration list is short on purpose. The following are conscious absences, not oversights. Each was left out because it would add cost, complexity, or compliance burden that doesn't match how the target yard operates today — and each is a clear, deliberate future step.
💡 No online payment gateway
What's absent: There is no Stripe/Razorpay-style online card/UPI checkout. Payments (cash, UPI, bank transfer, card, credit note) are recorded manually as they happen.
Why it matters — and why it's the right call for now:
- The target market runs on cash and informal credit; buyers pay by cash, cheque, or direct UPI, not card-on-file.
- Avoiding a gateway means no transaction fees, no PCI/compliance overhead, and no settlement dependency — the yard keeps 100% of every rupee and isn't gated on a processor.
- The trade-off: reconciliation is manual, and there's no automatic payment capture. Adding an optional online-payment/UPI-collection integration is a natural premium upgrade — see Product Opportunities.
💡 No email or SMS provider
What's absent: No transactional email or SMS gateway. Outbound messaging is via WhatsApp deep links plus in-app notifications.
Why it matters:
- WhatsApp is where the yard's customers, suppliers, and workers actually are — email and SMS would land where no one looks.
- Skipping an email/SMS vendor means no per-message fees and no sender-reputation/deliverability headaches.
- The trade-off: there are no fully automated, unattended reminders yet (a person taps send). A future WhatsApp Business API or email digest layer would enable hands-off automation. 💡
💡 No accounting-software sync
What's absent: No direct connector to Tally, Zoho Books, QuickBooks, or similar.
Why it matters:
- ShilaTeq already produces GST-compliant invoices and Excel/CSV exports, so the accountant can bring the numbers into any package today.
- A one-way or two-way accounting integration (especially Tally, ubiquitous in Indian SMBs) is a high-value, well-scoped future add-on — the export path proves the data is ready for it. 💡
💡 No logistics / transporter API
What's absent: No integration with courier or fleet-tracking APIs. Dispatch is managed in-app with gate passes, driver assignment, and a public tracking link.
Why it matters:
- Most yards use local, informal transport (owned trucks, hired vehicles) rather than API-connected carriers, so an in-app gate pass and shareable tracking link fit reality better than a courier integration.
- The trade-off: no automatic carrier tracking updates. A logistics/e-way-bill API integration is a sensible enterprise-tier addition. 💡
Note: These absences are a strategic feature of ShilaTeq's positioning: it delivers a complete operating system for a small stone yard without forcing the yard to sign up for, fund, or integrate a stack of third-party services. As customers grow, each of these becomes an opt-in upgrade rather than a day-one requirement.
Integration Landscape at a Glance
Diagram pending. This figure is being redrawn in the documentation's ink-diagram style; the surrounding text describes the full flow.
Related Reading
- Notifications — how WhatsApp, realtime, alerts, and the activity log work together
- Product Strengths — why these integration choices are competitive advantages
- Product Opportunities — the roadmap for payment, messaging, accounting, and logistics integrations
- FAQ — common questions about integrations, payments, and data
Part of the ShilaTeq Product Documentation Hub — the operating system for stone yards.