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New web interface

ยท 5 min read

Over the past year we've been busy working on a revamped version of the JobStaq web interface, and work on this has finally completed to a stage where it's ready to take over from our original web interface as the primary interface for all users.

Why the change? We wanted to modernise the technical aspects of our web interface. Work commenced on the original version over 5 years ago, and in this time, the scope of the product has changed significantly, and we've gained more understanding in how best to structure our code and features to enable product development to proceed at a faster pace.

What's new? In addition to the technical changes, we've made sure to include some improvements which we hope will improve your experience while using JobStaq.

  • Unified search improvements: our search system now has the ability to search through knowledgebase articles, settings pages, notes, events and jobs in addition to customers and properties, to enable you to locate any required information more easily than in the previous version.
  • **Notification improvements:**you're now able to see all notifications requiring action through the web interface, and track which ones have been seen, and which still require action to address.
  • Popup improvements: popups are used in a lot of places, such as sending communications, editing invoices, and scheduling events. In the original web interface, any unsaved data from open popups was lost when you changed pages, which may be an issue if you're in the middle of writing something and need to respond to an incoming call from a customer. In the new web interface, technical design changes mean it's now possible for these to remain open as you move between pages, so you can go back to what you were working on after a call, or navigate to other pages to see details which you may want at hand to create a quote item, such as job notes.
  • Calendar improvements**:** the sidebar event details view was incredibly narrow and hard to see details when long event descriptions were required, so we've made the switch over to a popup system so this information is easier to read. Street view support has also been added directly to the calendar, so you're able to assist engineers in locating a property from the office if required.
  • **Design changes:**there were a large number of inconsistencies between how pages (especially settings) were layed out, which we've now attempted to settle on a standardised layout for.
  • Employee & vehicle files & notes: you are now able to create notes or store files against employees and vehicles within the web interface, to track any MOT / insurance documents, employment contracts, or any other information you'd like stored in a central place.
  • Developer settings: we've added a settings area for developers, so that you're able to make use of our API to integrate any custom systems into JobStaq. You'll be able to see API documentation and manage API keys.
  • **Storage breakdown:**we've added a breakdown to the billing section to show how each file type is impacting your storage usage, to assist you in reducing the amount of data in your account if required.
  • Re-generate forms: there are some cases where JobStaq isn't able to detect changes made to job or customer details and automatically update related forms, so we've introduced the option to manually force the PDF to be re-generated to accomodate for this.
  • Relative dates: we've added relative dates (eg. 3 years ago) alongside actual dates (eg. 23/09/2020) in several places to assist you in quickly identifying how old certain pieces of data (such as quotes, communications, and events) are. We've also added this to event popups so you quickly can see the duration of the event, rather than just the start/end times.
  • CSV list exports: all list views now have the option to export all data, or just selected rows, to a CSV file for analysis or importing to other software.
  • Dark mode: choose between a light or dark interface, like you've been able to in our app, to match your preference!

Transition period We'll no longer be providing any future bug fixes or updates to the original web interface, so we'd encourage you to move over to the new interface as soon as possible to ensure you're having the best possible experience with JobStaq. However, we understand that there's a chance we've missed something or made some user experiences worse than the old version, so you'll still be able to make use of the original web interface for the next couple of months until we're sure that the new interface is working better for all users, at which stage we'll be shutting down access to the original interface. So, if you run into any problems, please let us know what's not working, and resort back to the original interface until we've been able to resolve these issues for you.