These are the release notes for the second beta release of iATN's mobile app for iOS, which will be going out to beta testers later tonight, or early tomorrow. The beta test is 90% full, so if you have an iOS device and are interested, please sign up here ASAP: https://iatn.net/beta

You can read the previous build's release notes here: http://iatn.me/9B6 [iatn.me]

What's New

The biggest change in this release is the new feature allowing you to filter the Community view. Choose from All, Favorites, My Posts, Non-Vehicle and Vehicle discussions, as well as more specific topics (e.g. Technical Theory, Emissions, Shop Management, etc.), and we'll save your topics for easier selection next time.

NOTE: "Favorites" is currently just your favorite forums, and it is not yet editable within the mobile app, but will be soon. For now, set your favorite forums on the web at http://members.iatn.net/forums/ Note that it may take up to 15 minutes for changes to your Favorites preferences to affect the view in the mobile app.

[Here's a demo of the new feature.]

Also: quite a few bug fixes. Thanks for your feedback reports, please keep them coming, using the in-app "App Feedback" option on your profile tab.

Release Notes

In this version of the app, the following should be working:

• Reading discussions in on the Community tab. As mentioned above, you can now easily filter the view based on your preferences. It defaults to showing all discussions, but you can now change your view.

• Posting new messages and replying to existing discussions, including the ability to attach vehicle data (vehicle tag, DTCs, symptoms). Rather than picking a forum to post in, you post by choosing from a category. The goal here is for us to steer people's posts to the best category/forum based on what they're posting about.

• Subscribing to receive mobile "push" notifications when any discussion you're interested in receives replies. Just tap the Notify button in the mobile app when reading an interesting discussion. (We're currently sending notifications at most once per hour for each discussion that has received any replies during the previous hour.)

• Searching the Knowledge Base. Premium members only, as with the desktop version of iATN. However, in the near future, basic members will have the option to purchase a "Mobile Pass" directly in the app, providing short term access to search within the mobile app. (Most likely in 3, 7, and 30-day passes.) Our traditional Premium Memberships will still provide the best value: less expensive for monthly access, and will work across desktop and mobile. But for those that just want temporary search access on mobile, there will soon be a way to do that.

• VIN barcode scanning. There are a few ways to access this functionality. The first is to tap on the Search tab, then tap the barcode button in the top/right corner, or the "Scan VIN Barcode" button in the middle of the page (if you don't already have a search going).

There are a couple of shortcuts for VIN scanning available also. On the "Today View" that you can access in iOS by pulling from the top of the device down the screen, an iATN widget is available to install. Tap on the "Scan VIN" button there, and you'll be taken right into that functionality in the app. For those with iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, the newest models which support 3D Touch, you can also press firmly on our app icon to quickly access VIN barcode scanning.

Both 1D and 2D barcodes should work. We've found that barcodes on the door jams typically provide the most reliable barcode scanning.

• Sharing/Printing. You should be able to share or print any message using the "action" button at the top/right of the message view. And for replies to forum messages, you can tap on the reply and you'll see Reply/Share buttons that are specific to that reply, allowing you to reply to that reply, or share it.

• Logging In. For those using iCloud Keychain or have saved iATN login credentials in mobile Safari, you should find it very easy to login to the mobile app, as it will automatically prompt you to login with your account..

• Joining iATN. Though you are all already members of iATN, it's important that new members can join via the mobile app. You might even have some colleagues that aren't on iATN yet that may want to try out this functionality. If you're already sign into the app, tap on the profile tab (the one with your name on it), and select Sign Out. You'll see the option to "Create Account" near the bottom/left of the login form. It should be relatively easy to fill out the form and quickly start using the app. (Note that new accounts are read-only until our staff processes them by hand and approves/rejects them.)

Known Issues

Rest assured we have much, much, much more planned for the mobile app. If you find that there's something you can do on iATN now that you can't do in the app, it's already on our list of features. (Things like: rating messages up/down, saving things to My iATN, accessing saved items from My iATN, attaching photos and videos to the messages you're posting, messaging other members and our staff, etc.) So those are all things that are definitely on our radar.

Here are a list of some other issues you may encounter in the app that we know about and are working on for future beta releases:

• File viewing is barebones right now. Improving this is a high priority. Image viewing works ok right now, and viewing videos within messages works, but viewing file details, saving images to your device, sharing files, etc... all need work.

• Issues related to pull-down-to-refresh. Sometimes the activity "spinner" at the top of the view gets stuck when you pull down, sometimes the topmost message gets tucked under the navigation menu up top.

• iPad display issues on the Search tab. Sometimes the filtering bar will disappear (it should always be accessible using the Filter button at top/left on the search tab).

• Some issues related to dictation using Siri. E.g. if you dictate a long subject line (over 70 characters), it will erase it, instead of letting you edit it down to the right size.

Thank You!

We appreciate your time in helping us beta test the mobile app so we can make it great!

Thomas Winzig
Administrator
iATN
Brea, California, USA

Files Referenced: