Hey there!

We've been busy since our last product update in November 2022. I'm excited to share all the progress we've made since then. This update will cover just the highlights. If you want all the nitty gritty detail about the 35+ OuterSpatial releases deployed so far this year, check out our release notes: Manager, Mobile, and Web.

Highlights

Challenges

You can now create and edit challenges on your own in Manager. Just click on the new Challenges section in the left-hand navigation to get started.

New challenge gamification features are now available in Mobile, including support for earning badges, a leaderboard, and a social feed on the challenge screen/page. You can see these new features for yourself by taking a look at the Passport to Your California State Parks challenge.

Challenge pages in Web have been revamped with an interactive map, a list of the challenge tasks (with badge images, if available), and a social tab to display a running list of public challenge responses.

Elevation Profiles

Interactive elevation profiles have been added to trail and outing pages in Manager and Web.

Additionally, the backend infrastructure we use to generate elevation data has been improved to ensure that elevation profiles are available for as many trails and outings as possible.

Partial Trail Tags

This one requires more of an explanation, so here goes: OuterSpatial hides most of the complexity related to trails vs. trail segments for visitors because introducing that level of detail into the user experience muddies the water unnecessarily for most who are just focused on getting out on a trail to hike, bike, or run. That said, when it comes to highlighting trails that meet important accessibility criteria, like wheelchair friendly, it’s critical to know if an entire trail is accessible or just a portion of the trail is accessible.

To that end, we recently introduced new functionality across the OuterSpatial product to better highlight when a trail has a tag (like wheelchair friendly) that only applies to a portion of the trail’s segments. This is our attempt to surface more detail about a trail’s underlying segments without introducing friction for the vast majority of visitors who don’t need that level of detail.

Trail edit pages in Manager now show more information about tags that only apply to a portion of a trail's segments. They also show which tags are available on all of a trail’s segments and have, therefore, been automatically applied to the trail.

In Mobile and Web, the tag display for trails has been updated to highlight tags that only apply to a portion of the trail's segments.

Latitude/Longitude and what3words

Latitude/longitude is now displayed on all location screens and what3words is now displayed on point of interest screens to assist visitors and emergency responders in an emergency situation. This is the just the beginning of a deeper integration with what3words, so keep an eye out for more functionality in upcoming releases!

Other Improvements

Manager

• Organizations on the Free plan can now upgrade to the Team plan in the Manager billing section and manage payment method, view invoices, etc.
• We added 20+ new point of interest types and location tags to highlight city infrastructure, emergency response, and athletic fields. The new types and tags can be added in location detail pages in Manager.
• The events calendar has been updated to make it easier to use. You can create an event by dragging to specify a date/time range on the calendar, and you can also duplicate an existing event.

Mobile

• We've continued to improve the stability, performance, and usability of the Android app. Importantly, it’s also now up to feature parity with the iOS app.
• Visitors can now delete their OuterSpatial account directly in the app. This is laid out in our Delete Your Account knowledge base article.
• A "Post to Instagram" tool has been implemented to make it easy for visitors to cross-post images attached to their OuterSpatial posts to Instagram. You can read more about this tool in our Share a Post on Social Media knowledge base article.

Web

• A site wide search tool is now available on the home page.
• Interactive maps have been added to community and organization pages, with the ability to "Explore" each in a fullscreen experience.

Conclusion

Those are the highlights! We’re already hard at work on the next round of product improvements. Here's a sneak peek at what's coming the second half of the year:

• A new onboarding step in Mobile that allows visitors to personalize their OuterSpatial experience by setting accessibility, activity, and lifestyle preferences.
• A redesigned community home screen/page that uses a visitor’s location and preferences to highlight outdoor experiences that are most relevant to them.
• A new alert system that surfaces important information throughout the app/website, along with a new in-app notification center to help visitors manage their notifications.
• Additional ways for visitors to contribute back to the community, including rating and reviewing a location and reporting a condition, hazard, or incident.

These are big changes, so we should have a lot to report in the next product update! In the meantime, if you have any feedback or suggestions, please reach out to the team: organizations@outerspatial.com.

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