Our latest product updates: Release Notes – February 2020

February 2020 will go down in the annals of Disciple history as kind of a big deal. We’ve published info about new features and platform updates before, but not like this. 

What the heck are Release Notes?

Release Notes are pretty common for tech companies like Disciple. In Release Notes companies present and explain new features, platform updates and bug fixes to their users. 

Our plan is to publish Release Notes roughly every month, and although what we’re presenting to you here is extremely excellent, don’t be alarmed if we tinker with the way we present it – that’s just us improving on perfection…

And so, 🥁, here are the Disciple Release Notes for February 2020 detailing what we’ve been working on in the last few weeks. 

🎉 What’s new 🎉

Bottom navigation

This is a feature that’s become ubiquitous across social media and community apps. It’s essentially a menu that’s fixed to the bottom of the screen. It gives users quick access to key features within the app. It’s generally accepted across tech that a bottom navigation gives users a better overall experience. 

We’ve been testing this for a while to see how users interact with it. The TL;DR is this: it’s improved everything! 

The results from our bottom navigation testing has shown that:

• Users spend less time looking for specific groups
• It takes users much less time to discover the notifications page
• It takes users less than half the time to find their own profile
• Users spend more time on the app overall – this is because with the bottom navigation we’ve given them clear routes to different parts of the app.

Bottom navigation FAQ: Can I edit what appears in my app’s bottom navigation?

Not yet, but that’s something we’re working on. However, we’ve added a ‘menu’ button to the new bottom navigation – this gives your members access to anything they might need that’s not directly linked from the navigation. And there is a ‘home’ button too – that will take members to whatever your chosen home page is.

One feed

This is an old-school chronological feed of all posts from all of the groups members are part of. We’ve added one feed as a way for members to make sure they don’t miss out on posts from all groups they’re part of from across your community. 

Pinned posts or ‘hottest’ filters can’t be added to the new one feed. 

🔀 What’s changed 🔀

Remove sharing option from articles

This is a change requested by a customer for their community app. Pretty simple: you can turn off the sharing option across your app to keep your content exclusive. This is to give Community Managers more control over what from their community can be shared externally. 

Media appears at the bottom of posts

We’ve reordered the layout of posts. Media (images and videos) used to appear at the top of posts with the rest of the post below. Now the media appears at the bottom, so that the content of the post is front and centre. 

⬆️ On the left is the old post layout; on the right is the new layout. I know right 🤯

🔧 What we’ve fixed 🔧

Blurry group dashboard image 

Some users found that the image in the background of the Groups dashboard was blurry. We’ve fixed this so that the image only turns blurry when you scroll through the groups. 

⬆️Left = old blurriness; right = newly fixed clarity

We’ve also changed the oil, pumped up the tyres and done a whole load of other platform fixes and updates. These are mostly behind-the-scenes things, many of which aren’t noticeable, but they’re all essential. 

With all of these updates we’ve started 2020 off right. Keep an eye out for our future Release Notes to find out what’s in store for your Disciple community. 

If you have any questions or thoughts about what’s here, contact your Customer Success Manager or feel free to email us on info@disciplemedia.com.