Discussions

A discussion is the conversation about a thing: what you found when you got there, what you tried, what it will take, and what somebody should bring next time. It is the part the audit trail cannot hold — a change row records that a status moved, not that the creek is still too high to work in.

You can start one on a maintenance item, on a piece of infrastructure, and on a planned trail.

Opening a discussion

Every one of those three has a speech-bubble button on its detail screen, and it opens the conversation full screen: the thread fills the page, the box you type in is pinned to the bottom, and the newest message is the one you land on.

• A maintenance item — Maintenance, then the item. The button sits beside Edit and Work log.
• A structure — Infrastructure, then the bridge, gate or sign. Beside Inspect and Edit.
• A planned trail — Plan / Record Trail, then the line. In the header, beside Edit.

The number on the button is how many messages the conversation holds. It turns amber when some of them are ones you have not seen, and stays gray otherwise — a badge that is always the alert color is not an alert.

Finding one you were not looking at

A conversation lives on the thing it is about, which is right and is also how one gets missed: a remark on a bridge you had no reason to open is a remark you never see.

Discussions is the speech-bubble button in the bar across the bottom of the field app's home screen. It lists every conversation in your workspace, most recently spoken in first, whatever kind of thing it hangs off. Each row says what it is about, who spoke last and what they said, and opens straight into the conversation.

The button carries a number when there are conversations with something new in them for you, and nothing at all when there are not — so an empty button means you are caught up rather than meaning nobody has spoken. It sits in the bottom bar rather than among the tiles further down so that the number is on screen without scrolling to it, which is the only thing a count like that is for.

The list holds conversations that exist rather than everything that could have one — a list padded with your whole maintenance backlog is a list nobody scrolls.

Saying something

Type, and press Post.

You can attach up to four photos to a message, and a photograph on its own is a message — no caption needed. On the field app they come from the camera or your library like every other photo in the app, and you can mark them up before they go: tap the thumbnail in the box to draw on it.

A photo on your OWN message gets a × after it has been sent, so a wrong picture is one tap rather than deleting the message and typing it again — which used to lose its place in the thread and any answers to it. Removing the last photo from a message that had no words removes the message, rather than leaving a blank line nobody can tap. Somebody else's message is not yours to change: a manager who objects to a photograph can remove the whole remark, which everyone can see happened.

Tap @ to name somebody on your team. Their name is highlighted in the message, and what they are told is different — see below.

Anyone on your team can add a message, including volunteers. Seeing a problem and being able to say so are the same thing, so this is not behind a permission.

Removing one

You can always remove your own.

Removing somebody else's depends on what the conversation is about:

• A maintenance item — the Triage maintenance reports permission.
• A planned trail — the Manage the trail planner permission.
• A structure — owners and managers, the same people who can edit the structure itself.

Owners and managers have all three. You can grant the two permissions to other roles under Settings → Roles & permissions.

That split is deliberate. "I said that and I want it gone" and "that should not be on our record" are different requests, and a conversation anybody can quietly edit is not a record of anything.

Who said it

A message is signed with the name of the person who wrote it, and each person's messages carry their own color so you can follow one voice down the screen.

There is one exception, and it is the one that confuses people: a message from a business working one of your trails through a share is signed with the company's name and carries a Partner label. It is the same rule the item itself follows — an outside crew is identified by who they work for, because a personal name you cannot look up in your own Team list tells you nothing about who is on your ground.

A share lends a trail and its maintenance, so a partner can join the conversation on an item on that trail. Structures and planned trails are not part of what a share lends, and their conversations are not visible outside your organization.

Who gets told

Everyone on the team is notified when a message is added, carrying the message itself rather than "somebody commented" — enough to decide whether it needs you without opening the app.

If you were named with @, the notification says so: "Dana mentioned you" rather than "Dana sent a message". Being asked something directly is a different event from a conversation moving on, and it should not take opening the app to tell the two apart.

To silence one conversation, open it and tap the settings button in its top bar. The panel that rises has one switch, and it stops that conversation reaching you — on your phone as well as in the app, because it is stored against your account rather than on the device. Everybody else still hears about it. A silenced conversation shows a dot on the settings button so it is clear why it went quiet, and reads Muted in the Discussions list.

To stop the emails for every discussion instead, turn off Maintenance discussion under Profile → Email preferences. Every notification email carries an unsubscribe link for its own kind, so you can also switch this one off from the footer of one you have just received.

With no signal

A message typed in the field app with no connection is queued on the phone. It shows in the thread straight away marked Waiting for sync, and it sends itself the next time the phone has a connection — you do not have to come back to it. The conversation stays open while it waits.

Its photos go up with it, in one piece. A message that says "look at this" arriving hours before the photograph would be worse than one that waits.

You can see everything queued under the sync icon in the field app header; a waiting message is listed there as Message.

Reading one you have already downloaded

The field app keeps each conversation you open, so opening it again out of signal shows what it knew at the last sync. The Discussions list does the same, and says Showing the last list this device saw when that is what you are reading.

Something you have never opened on that phone has nothing to show. It says so rather than sitting on a spinner.

Silencing a conversation needs a connection, and says so rather than failing quietly: it changes what the server sends you, so there is nothing a queued copy could mean.