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After launching in 2006, Taboola has grown to become the leading discovery platform on the open web, serving a combination of the world’s best brands and the most respected global publishers. Using machine-learning algorithms, the Taboola technology analyzes hundreds of signals to capture exactly what kind of content is most likely to engage each individual, with more than one billion unique users a month.

“As we grew, our need for internal tools was paramount, and the Galil team have proven themselves again and again. It was a good decision to double the size of the Galil development team within our Operations unit!”

Ora Egozi-Barzilai R&D Director, Head of R&D Operations at Taboola

Business Challenge

To remain a leading light in the discovery industry, Taboola’s goal was to build an internal tools team, enabling Sales, PS and R&D massive growth, while not affecting the main roadmap. This goal has taken on special importance for Taboola, with the close attention of the company senior managers.

The Project

Taboola looked at a number of local teams and solutions, but were convinced that Galil Software’s R&D extension team was what they needed.

With an initial team of three developers, including a Team Leader, the following e2e responsibilities were defined:

  1. Team receives requirements for a new tool which needs to be developed.
  2. Team analyzes the requirements and designs a suitable solution for the tool.
  3. Team creates jobs for build and deployment in Jenkins and makes sure the service is running on the server.
  4. Team develops in relevant technologies according to the need of the developed web tool (technologies are not set; we choose the technologies and change according to the need, with a POC also developed).
  5. Team develops unit tests for the code.
  6. Team is responsible for testing the tool.
  7. Team chooses a name for the tool.
  8. Team maintains the tool after release and adds new features as required.

Galil Software’s Solution

As part of the overall solution for Taboola, a number of important projects have been developed by the team:

  • Fraud detection for the billing team to be able to approve or reject accounts.
  • Different automated reporting and alerting tools for account managers, management, external clients and company employees.
  • Machine learning tools which are used to predict required values for the sales team.
  • Toolbox for assisting the professional services and sales in their daily work.
  • Other projects for enhancing R&D processes.

Each project has it is own functionality with various technologies in use:

  • Login (SSO/LDAP) and permissions
  • Data Updaters
  • REST API/GraphQL
  • Technologies, including Spring Framework & Spring Boot, repositories such as JPA and CRUD, Java, Aspect Oriented Programming, DBs (MySQL, Vertica, Cassandra), Apache Maven, Junit Framework, ES6, React-Redux, Node.js, and others.

The Galil team worked on these various tools and technologies in cooperation with different departments at Taboola. Thanks to a successful building of trust and responsibility, Taboola now knows that any challenge can be taken on by the Galil team.

The initial Galil team consisted of three developers including a Team Leader, and quickly expanded to seven developers.

Customer Benefits

Taboola has benefited greatly from the Galil team’s technical expertise, which has added value to both the Taboola team and its customers. Working with Galil Software meant that the Taboola team did not have to worry about learning new technologies or dedicate in-house resources for creating these important tools.

The company’s Tel Aviv office is not much more than an hour away, making collaboration so much simpler than if the project had been taken offshore.

Advantages for Taboola include:

  • The project included building a tool from scratch and taking responsibility for planning, designing, developing, testing, releasing and maintaining the product.
  • By using the technologies we needed – we started working with React 3.5 years ago without any prior knowledge before moving to Redux – we added new technical value and capabilities for the Taboola team for each tool we worked on.
  • Our work on designing new solutions has led to our integration as an independent R&D unit within the Taboola family.
  • Weekly visits and daily meetings are set with each team we work with in Taboola.
  • We believe that one of the main reasons for success is our good relations with the customer. This relationship has been nurtured by our professional work which, in turn, results in trust and additional projects in the pipeline.