August 2026 Release

A reliability month. The mobile app was the focus: it syncs when you tell it to, tells you why when it cannot, opens far faster on large councils, and finally lays out properly on a tablet. On the web app, related records got a lot more useful, and we fixed an audit trail problem that was crediting edits to the wrong person. Everything below is live now.

Mobile app: sync you can trust

This is the change most of you have been waiting for.

• Sync now. A button on the sync screen forces your queued work up straight away, instead of waiting for the app to try again on its own.
• No more stuck uploads. Work could sit in the pending list even with full signal, in the office, on wifi. That is fixed.
• Nothing waits for a reason we cannot see. Some updates were being held back by a mismatch between the app and the server. The app now recognises what the server sends back and clears the queue properly.
• A new task appears straight away. On iPhone, a task you created did not always show in your list until you reopened the app.
• Only the tasks you asked for. The download was pulling every task regardless of your due-date filter, which made the first sync far slower than it needed to be.

Mobile app: faster to open, however big your council

The app was downloading far more than it needed on every sync, which is why it felt sluggish on councils with thousands of assets and a long task history. It now asks the server for fewer records, and for less on each one. Onboarding a new user with wide permissions takes a handful of requests instead of a couple of dozen.

Nothing about how or when your work syncs has changed. It is the same conversation with the server, in fewer words.

Mobile app: sync errors that make sense

When a change cannot be saved, you now see the actual reason rather than a generic failure. The same detail appears in your emailed sync log, so you can either fix it yourself or send us something we can act on immediately.

Mobile app: built for tablets

If your team works on tablets, the app now behaves like a tablet app rather than a stretched phone app. Text and icons stay a sensible size, the navigation drawer stays open on a wide screen, lists use two columns, and rotating the tablet or using split screen no longer breaks the layout. The login, welcome and task screens have all been rebuilt to suit the larger screen.

Routines: the audit trail now records who actually made the edit

Thank you to the councils who raised this. When someone edited a single inspection inside a routine, the platform was also stamping every remaining future inspection in that series, and recording the person who built the routine as the editor rather than the person who made the change. For clerks and RFOs who set up a lot of routines, that meant an audit trail showing edits they never made, at times they were not logged in.

That is fixed. An edit to one inspection now touches only that inspection, and records the person who made it. Choosing "this inspection only" is respected.

We are also planning a tidy-up of the historical records that were wrongly stamped, so the trail reads as it should. We will confirm before we touch any council's data.

PM note, remove before publishing: the remediation migration still needs John's approval (see CV-618, "Data remediation"). Either confirm it is going ahead before this note ships, or soften the paragraph above.

Web app: related records that actually connect

• Related assets inside a building. From an asset's Assets tab, use the plus button to search for and link another asset. This is how you record the kit that lives inside a building.
• Add a related record from the asset image. You can now create a linked record straight from the Overview tab, without leaving the asset.
• Related assets on the map. Preview an asset's related assets on the map view.
• The related asset moved to the task Overview screen. It sits where you would expect it now, and you can view, add and remove it from there.
• Created at and Created by on Related Tasks. So you can see who raised each linked task and when.

Web app: Quick Filter on the map

July's Quick Filter came to the asset list. It is now on the map view too, so you can narrow the map to buildings, benches, bins, play equipment and the rest in one click, with no advanced filter to build.

Web app: asset detail on your task lists

Task lists can now show the asset's location tag, asset type, sub-category and main category as columns, so you can sort and filter your work by where it is and what it is, without opening each task.

Web app: users, permissions and smaller fixes

• The assignee picker was missing your most recently added team members.
• A user who had been removed from a council could not be added back.
• A member with a custom permission set could not edit their own assets.
• Drawing a polygon on an active asset silently disabled the Update button.
• Creating a task from another task failed when the original had no linked asset.
• Routine sub-task order is now kept as you set it.
• The routine confirmation dialogue no longer closes itself when first opened.
• Related records for a routine now include the task description.
• There is more room on the routine assignees field, so you can see the clear control.

Checklists

• Defibrillator Check now covers the cabinet. Prompted by South Swindon Parish Council, the check gained three items for outdoor cabinets: cabinet lock, cabinet heater (with an N/A escape when it is above 5°C) and cabinet cleanliness. It goes from five items to eight, and applies to both Defibrillator and Defibrillator Outdoor Cabinet assets. No existing question changed.
• Vehicle sweeps now follow the walkaround. Also from South Swindon: the Van Sweep was re-sequenced into the order you actually walk a vehicle, with exterior lights grouped, then glass, body, wheels and tyres, fluids, charging items on electric vehicles, the cab, and the safety kit last. That order has now been applied across the whole light-road family, so Car, Motorbike, Utility Vehicle and Emergency Vehicle sweeps all match, in both petrol or diesel and electric versions. Only the item numbering changed. Your completed inspections and any defects raised from them are untouched.
• Water Outlet Check wording and free-text prompts updated.
• A general Room asset type. If a room does not fit one of the specific types, there is now a plain Room, and it carries the quarterly Room Sweep like every other room type.

Behind the scenes

Some fixes you will not see, but will feel: editing routine sub-tasks and assignees no longer trips our web firewall's request limits and returns "Network Error", and a large download can no longer exceed the response size cap and fail outright. The admin and asset web apps were also migrated to a faster build system.

In your hands

Everything above is live now. Keep the ideas coming at ideas.civic.ly, or email hello@civic.ly.