We worked hard this past week to make the Birdhouse app better for you. Here’s what we did over the past 10 days or so.
We wrapped up and released Android 2.2.3, which focused on bug fixes and future-proofing the application
Have you noticed a difference? Less crashes? Better initial download experience? Easier to mark recurring activities complete?
Continued working on iOS 2.2.3, which includes a handful of bug fixes and future proofing measures
A big part of this project was first determining what is still not working quite right in our iOS 2.2.3 app, and addressing what we need to do to fix those things. After figuring out how to approach the remaining bugs, we approved the plan with the team and got to work.
Our iPhone app is also having a daylight savings time issue, which produces duplicate days. After a fair bit of pondering, we figured out the solution to that one too and knocked it out.
We’ll be patching up some remaining bugs in the coming week and we’re excited to get them out the door for you.
We made some improvements to the way recurring activities work.
We’re working on sorting out bugs and details in the new Activities API to make it stronger and even more amazing. Some of the structure wasn’t quite right and was resulting in inconsistent output, which basically means you were seeing some problems on your end with recurring Nutrition and Therapist activities.
The new recurring system was also mistakenly programmed to omit the recurring activity item that occurs on its end date on the activity page on the website and within the iPhone and Android apps. Oops! We fixed it, so now Birdhouse honors the end date– an important detail!
Smiley faces all around.
We’re testing a New Feature!
We are testing an exciting new feature with a few families to see how they like it and what we can do to help them get the most of it amidst their busy schedules. Lots of coordinating, emailing, checking in, tweaking, etc.
We can’t wait to share more details with you once it comes together a bit more.
We released the app to the Amazon/Kindle App Store!
We discovered that with very few changes necessary, we could upload Birdhouse to the Amazon Appstore for Kindle device. So, we did! This being our first time doing so, we waited to see how long their review process takes (1 day, for us), and then released the app for Kindle! Awesome.
It feels good to make Birdhouse available in one more place, in addition to the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, and Google Chrome Store, for families who need it.
We’re planning for Android 2.3 – Nutrition & Therapy
Our discussions around the next version of our apps have been focused on specifics for how exactly we’re going to bring Nutrition and Therapy management to them. It continues to be more difficult than you’d think it would be, but each time, we get a bit closer to making it happen.
We’re hoping to be ready to start coding this piece in the next couple weeks.
Birdhouse 2.0
We haven’t spoke much about it, but we’ve been busy working on the next generation of Birdhouse for Autism. This is incredible exciting and we’re so close to being able to release it!
In the past week, we setup the export to use a new time zone support, setup navigation for switching between weeks and days, setup dynamic and alphabetized loading of activity types and filters (lots of setups!), improved the login/logout process so it works properly in more circumstances, and met weekly to review and discuss progress on its overall designs and development.
We can’t WAIT to share more.
We reviewed and updated our Operations Maintenance and Evaluation Processes
This includes a number of housekeeping items, including routine account management for our dns setup, tweaking our analytics setup so we can better understand how new families are signing up, paid some bills, evaluated crash reports and other errors people might be having, and set up routine maintenance checks for our new Amazon store listing. Looking good 🙂
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Yay! That’s what we’ve been up to the past week. Let us know what you think. We always love hearing from you.
-Adam