My Summer 2026 with TextNow
I'm back at TextNow for my second co-op term. Last fall I was mostly building n8n workflows; this time I'm building full-stack dashboards.
Introduction
My Fall 2025 term was all about workflow automation and n8n. When I came back for Summer 2026, the focus shifted to internal dashboards and analytics tools that teams use every day. I've been working across Ruby on Rails, React, Snowflake, Python, and n8n, and it's been a lot faster than last term. Shipping eight systems in the first month taught me that writing the code is usually the easy part. The hard part is figuring out what people actually need and getting something useful in front of them quickly.
About the Employer
Organization Overview
- • Telecommunications company serving millions of users globally
- • Building internal dashboards, analytics tools, and AI integrations
- • Self-hosted infrastructure for tools the business depends on
Computing Science Relevance
TextNow's internal tooling covers a lot of what you learn in comp sci: SQL and relational databases, Rails APIs, React frontends, Snowflake for data, and integrations with a bunch of third-party services. It's a good place to take classroom concepts and apply them to stuff that actually affects how teams work day to day.
Learning Goals & Outcomes
Own End-to-End Project Delivery
Lead dashboard projects from requirements gathering through deployment, coordinating with stakeholders across HR, Legal, and Engineering
"Coming back for a second term, I felt a lot more comfortable owning things right away. The AI Analytics Dashboard was a lot to juggle at once: Snowflake pipelines, Rails APIs, React charts. Breaking it into smaller milestones and demoing early helped a ton."
Present Technical Work to Non-Technical Stakeholders
Demo dashboards to HR, Legal, and leadership teams; translate data insights into actionable business language
"Demoing the HR Analytics Dashboard to our People team made me realize I was explaining SQL when I should've been talking about turnover and hiring trends. The demos that went well weren't the flashiest ones. They were the ones where someone said they could use it tomorrow."
Design Scalable Data Architectures
Architect multi-source data pipelines, handle API rate limits, and design schemas that support evolving dashboard requirements
"The AI Analytics Dashboard pulls from dozens of APIs (Claude, OpenAI, Cursor, etc.) and they all work differently. Different auth, rate limits, response formats. I learned pretty quickly that normalizing everything in Snowflake upfront saves you from patching messes in React later."
Master Full-Stack Dashboard Development
Build production Rails + React applications, integrate with Snowflake and external APIs, and deploy on internal infrastructure
"The Metrics Dashboard Builder is basically a Wix-style site builder running on our own infra. It forced me to figure out component architecture, drag-and-drop state, and rendering in ways I never dealt with in school. Easily the hardest frontend I've shipped so far."
Collaborate Across Departments
Work closely with HR, Legal, Customer Care, and Engineering teams to gather requirements and iterate on dashboard features
"The DPIA Dashboard meant sitting with Legal and mapping their whole privacy impact assessment process into software. I learned that you can't really guess what people need from a ticket. You have to talk to the people doing the work."
Work Experience
This is my second co-op at TextNow. I'm leading full-stack dashboard work across the company, mostly with Ruby on Rails, React, SQL, Snowflake, Python, n8n, and JavaScript. About a month in, I've shipped eight production systems for HR, Legal, Customer Care, and Engineering.
What I Built
AI Analytics Dashboard
The biggest project so far. Built a dashboard for pulling, cleaning, and visualizing AI usage across the company. Integrated with Snowflake, Rails, and React, and connected to dozens of APIs (Claude, OpenAI, Cursor, and others).
Metrics Dashboard Builder
Built a Wix-style website builder so teams can create their own metrics dashboards without writing code. Runs entirely on TextNow infrastructure.
HR Analytics Dashboard
Gave HR a place to see turnover, terminations, hires, new co-ops, promotions, and other workforce metrics in one spot.
Paid Time Off Dashboard
Full Dayforce integration showing upcoming PTO by org, user, and team. Also flags work that might not get done because someone's going on leave, so managers can plan around it.
Full DPIA Dashboard
Built the full Data Protection Impact Assessment workflow and dashboard so Legal can run the whole DPIA process in one place, from intake through review and approval.
Care Copilot
Hooked up Confluence vector search and an AI agent inside Zendesk so Customer Care agents can pull up relevant docs while they're talking to customers.
Recognition Dashboard
Built charts and metrics so teams can see how they're recognizing each other's work.
Unit Testing Agent
Built an agent that generates unit tests automatically when someone opens a new GitHub pull request.
Reflections & Conclusions
Coming back for a second term made a big difference. I already knew the team and the tooling, so I could hit the ground running. Shipping eight dashboards in a month also showed me what happens when you move fast without thinking about architecture first. The AI Analytics Dashboard especially forced me to get serious about normalizing data, caching, and making complex analytics actually readable.
The main shift from Fall 2025 is going from n8n automation to full-stack product work. The Metrics Dashboard Builder (basically a no-code site builder on our own infra) was the hardest frontend I've done. I'm a lot more comfortable now owning something from the database schema all the way to the deployed UI, and I have a much better sense of how Rails, React, Snowflake, and n8n fit together in production.
School teaches databases and web frameworks separately. Here I'm wiring Snowflake into Rails into React charts, while also plugging into a bunch of external APIs. You don't get that kind of end-to-end experience from assignments.
The AI Analytics Dashboard got me interested in how companies actually track and manage AI tool usage. That's going to matter more and more, and building it from scratch was a good learning experience. I'm looking forward to shipping more through the rest of the term and bringing what I've learned back to my last couple years at Guelph.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to everyone at TextNow for having me back and letting me run with some pretty big projects. Shipping eight systems in the first month, and building the AI Analytics Dashboard from scratch, has been a huge part of my growth this term.
Also want to thank the HR, Legal, and Customer Care teams for working with me on the dashboards they use. And thanks to the University of Guelph co-op program for setting this up.
Thank you to the entire TextNow team for your support this term.