One product, one look

Shipped the week of September 7.

Nearly every screen in TrailsIQ was redrawn this week — the dashboard, every list and detail page, settings, the field app your crew carries, and the app your trail users report through. Underneath it, an expense review queue a manager can clear in one sitting.

One product, one look

TrailsIQ grew a screen at a time, and it had started to look like it: a status was one green on the dashboard and a different green on the trail page, headings changed size between sections, and two pages doing the same job laid it out two ways.

There is one set of colors now, one type scale, and one way a condition reads wherever you meet it. Open, caution and closed are the same green, amber and red on the dashboard, on a trail, on a network band, on a phone. A page you have never opened before is laid out like the one you already know.

Redrawn this week: the dashboard, Trails and the trail page, Networks, Trail conditions, Projects, the planner list and a recorded line's own page, Maintenance, Inventory, Seasonal checklists, Expenses, Work report, Team, Billing, Settings, your profile — and every form in all of them.

The field app has one bar at the bottom

Every screen in the field app now reaches Home, the map, the planner and a new report from the same bar, in the same place. Home means get me out of here from anywhere — whatever is open closes, however deep it was.

The map controls sit in the corners where a thumb can find them one-handed, the home tiles read at a glance, and the bar steps aside on its own while you are recording or filing something so the screen belongs to what you are doing.

Reporting a problem, redrawn

The app your trail users report through got the same treatment, and the design makes one distinction on purpose: browsing looks different from filing.

Home is light and quiet — the organizations somebody follows, the trails they care about, one button to report something. The report wizard is dark, with what step you are on, what it is for, and a way out. Somebody in the wizard is filing a report against a real trail crew, and chrome that changes under them is the clearest signal available that they are inside something with a beginning and an end.

An organization's own page — conditions, the daily report, what is on — reads like a page rather than a form.

Expenses: one table, three ways to read it

Day, Week and Month draw the same table — date, amount, what it was for, who filed it, status — banded by day on the week and by week on the month. A column of amounts compares down the page instead of every row starting somewhere new.

A row opens rather than carrying its own controls: the receipt, the project, the note, and Submit, Edit, Delete are all in the sheet that slides up. Add expense is on all three screens, and because an expense is filed against a day, Week and Month take you to the right day with the form already open.

Export carries the period you are looking at in one press, and a custom range one press further in. Nothing in the header pretends to be a fourth period.

A review queue you work down

Every expense waiting on somebody, grouped by the member who filed it, with their total and a select-all on the card. Tick the ones you are happy with and approve them together; send one back and it takes your note with it, because an expense returned with no reason is a member guessing what to change.

The receipt is a thumbnail you can recognize a till roll in, and a dashed NONE where there is not one — "there is no receipt" is something you need to be told, and blank space does not tell you.

Deciding does not reload the page. The row greys and wears its verdict, the counts under it move, and you keep your place.

Worth a look flags what is checkable rather than what is questionable: no receipt, no description, mileage with no distance, older than ninety days, or two matching claims from one member. Whether a spend was reasonable is your call and the app does not offer one.

Trail conditions, in the colors you already know

The wetness bar reads in the same green, amber and red as the chips above it, and the points where it changes are the thresholds that actually move a recommendation — amber where caution begins, red at the line where the engine would close a trail. The six descriptions of how wet the ground is are unchanged underneath, because how wet it is and what that means for the trail are two different questions.

Areas open by default instead of arriving collapsed, the three forecast cards carry their weather icon so they can be told apart at a glance, and Affected only is a switch — it turns itself off when there is nothing it would show you.

The documentation library

Search and the categories moved into a column down the left side, each category carrying how many articles are in it, so finding the section you want is reading a list rather than scanning nine pills wrapped across three lines. Articles are cards three across with their reading time, and the library opens by pointing at the three to start with.

It is the same library inside the app and at trailsiq.com/docs, where it is readable with no account.

Also this week

A trail's maintenance reads in the order somebody works it. Open first, then in progress, then anything waiting on triage, with finished work folded shut underneath. A trail with a season behind it no longer asks you to read all of it to find what is outstanding.

Structures and points open where they are. Both tabs list rows you can read without leaving the trail, and an inspection question you genuinely cannot answer can be skipped rather than guessed at.

The field app opens fast, and keeps doing so. It now clears out the pieces of versions nobody is running any more, so a phone that has been through a season of updates starts as quickly as one installed this morning.

A recorded line's page leads with its score. The map fills the left with the elevation profile along its foot, the details sit in one card of tabs instead of five stacked ones, and the sustainability reading — the thing the page exists to say — is at the top of the rail rather than below three cards of controls.

New app icons. The mark reads on a light home screen and a dark one, and on the startup screen the app paints while it opens.