What we achieved together
vilisto offers innovative solutions for energy management in buildings through self-learning thermostats. These devices capture and analyze energy consumption in non-residential buildings to automatically adjust heating times to match actual demand. This results in an environmentally friendly and cost-effective heating strategy, enabling public buildings and offices to save up to 32 percent in energy and CO2 emissions. (Founded in 2016, the German company has funded its development and market expansion through various financing rounds, including grants and investor capital. Founded in 2016, the German company has secured funding through various funding rounds, including grants and investor capital, to further its development and market expansion. vilisto currently employs nearly 100 staff members and collaborates with over 300 clients.
The technology operates through a combined software and hardware solution. In addition to the intelligent thermostats, an online platform is provided where building managers can view data and adjust settings. The Configuration Service manages the default settings and special rules, such as company holidays, for thermostats and groups of thermostats. This central service has accumulated technical debt over time. The service was set up in TypeScript about 2.5 years ago and consists of approximately 15,000 lines of code.
In the upcoming years, the PropTech company plans to implement additional features. Therefore, the mission for the two-member Comsysto team at vilisto was to a) ensure that future features can be integrated into the code in a straightforward way, and b) make bugs less likely and easier to fix.
Utilizing domain-oriented code, the team worked on improvements on the service after a short introduction to the domain and service. On the technical side, the team significantly improved code quality and readability through refactoring the core domain, for example by reorganizing the directory structure, and adding schema validations. These steps not only reduced the number of concepts but also decreased cognitive load and enhanced input validation. By reducing the risk of circular dependencies and introducing performance tests, the Comsysto team increased the stability of the service. Upgrading to the latest NodeJS version further strengthened security. An additional benefit is that future developers will find it significantly easier to work productively within this microservice.
Thanks to these comprehensive measures, vilisto can now react much faster to business requirements. These optimizations have made the Configuration Service future-proof and laid the technical foundation for further growth.
As CTO of vilisto, I have been involved with our digital heat management software from the very beginning. Together with the Comsysto team, we successfully streamlined part of our system and improved the code. Thanks to their experience and expertise, Comsysto was able to quickly familiarize themselves with this complex subject, gain a comprehensive understanding of it, and propose and implement appropriate solutions.
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