Welcome to the Winter 2023 OuterSpatial update! Over the past few months, we have focused on minor iterative improvements while also preparing for significant new features in 2024.

Create Tools

Our create tools have undergone a facelift to improve usability and make room for additional tools. Now, when selecting a check-in location, visitors can easily spot which locations are close enough to be considered “validated”. Additionally, cards for validated check-ins now display with a checkmark in the social feed — making it easy to quickly identify validated vs. non-validated check-ins.

We also introduced another way for visitors to contribute to the community: visitors can use the new Review tool to add a star rating, with an optional review, to areas, points of interests, trails, and outings. The aggregate star rating appears on location screens, giving visitors another way to provide feedback to your organization and another data point to help them discover their next outdoor adventure!

Map Long Tap

We introduced a new "long tap" action on maps throughout the app. This action gives visitors the ability to view the latitude/longitude, what3words address, and elevation data for any point on the map. Stay tuned, as we plan on making more functionality available for this action soon.

Partner Integrations

This quarter, we continued to extend our support for partner integrations to allow organizations to integrate external reservation, parking, etc. systems into the OuterSpatial app — making it possible to create a true “one-stop shop” for visitors.

• We introduced a new “Welcome” screen that pops up for visitors who are deep linked into OuterSpatial from a partner system. This screen dynamically updates to provide the visitor with a personalized welcome based on which partner system they came from. For example, if they follow a deep link from a campground reservation email, the welcome screen might show them a photo of the campground, the name of the campground, and the logo of the hosting organization for their reservation.
• Reservable points of interest linked via the Tyler Outdoors integration (like campgrounds and yurts) now surface in a new "Reservable Locations" carousel on the area screen. This gives visitors a heads-up view of locations they can reserve for a given area.
• We deployed two new partner integrations: LAZ Parking and Agents of Discovery. If your organization is using either of these systems, please get in touch!

Other Updates

Infrastructure

• We transitioned to new image uploading and loading infrastructure to boost the stability, performance, and overall usability of the product.

Mobile

• We improved the performance and stability of challenge response submission, especially for visitors on slower networks.
• Photos taken with the app can now optionally save to your on-device photo library.

Manager

• We introduced new “View Metadata” and “Open in Mobile” options in the “More” menu on area, point of interest, trail, and outing pages. “View Metadata” provides access to information about the location like the organization-supplied id, the date/time the location was created/updated, the latitude/longitude, the what3words address, and more. “Open in Mobile” makes it easy to quickly open the location in the OuterSpatial Mobile app.

Wrapping Things Up

These Winter 2023 updates mark a significant stride forward in enhancing your OuterSpatial experience. With redesigned create tools, empowering map functionalities, seamless partner integrations, and streamlined performance enhancements, we're dedicated to ensuring that your organization's use of our platform remains top-notch.

Stay connected with us as we continue to innovate and bring more exciting features your way. As always if you have any feedback or suggestions, please reach out to the team: organizations@outerspatial.com.