What’s new

The app now talks about request packs and the people you ask, and every request pack carries its own team.

• A Team tab on every request pack: invite someone to just that pack, change their role, remove them from the pack, and see when each person last signed in.
• The same tab lists the people answering in that pack, with when each of them last opened their link.
• One business or person can have several request packs, each standing on its own.
• New names in the app: Request links, People answering, Businesses and people, Who it’s for and Details.

The app and the site move onto the 2021 Classic desktop look: a white page, a pale rail, one hairline, rows separated by space, bold only for emphasis. A template starts forty request packs at once, one for each business or person, and a draft pack is sent in one press.

• Calendar feed: every needed-by date as an all-day event in Outlook, Google or Apple Calendar, from a private address under Settings.
• Tick requests on the Requests list and complete, reopen or date them together, whichever request pack they belong to; order the list by needed-by, recent updates, request pack or title, and the CSV follows.
• Undo after a bulk complete, reopen or date change, on a pack and on the Requests list: every request goes back to exactly the status and date it had.
• Activity rows open what they describe: the request, else the pack, else the workspace.
• Copy link on a request, a pack or a workspace, for a colleague or a note.
• Saved replies: the sentences you send every day, kept once under Settings and dropped into a reply with one press.
• The Classic look throughout: white, one pale grey and one hairline, black and one grey for text, coral for a destructive action, two weights, 32/16/13 sizes, dialogs one width with a full-width black action.
• Start a template for several businesses or people at once: one draft request pack for each, ready for Send pack.
• Each screen loads on its own: the portal for the people you ask never downloads the staff app, and the staff app opens with only the Request packs page.
• A draft pack has one Send pack action: it emails everyone assigned and makes the pack active.
• Every big figure on the Request packs page and on each business or person’s page opens the list it counts.
• Every list’s filters live in the address (Workspaces, Requests, People, Activity, Files, Updates), so a filtered list can be bookmarked or sent to a colleague, and a workspace links to its own activity and files.
• The Team page shows what each person carries: workspaces owned, requests open, requests overdue.
• An uploaded file must look like what it claims to be: a renamed executable is refused as not what its name says.
• A page that fails says so with Reload beside it; an address that matches nothing says Page not found; a keyboard can skip straight to the content.
• Every page names itself in the browser tab, and the search box offers the pages you opened most recently before you type.

What went to the people you ask and whether they opened it, the whole team’s requests on one page, and the work that comes round every month doing so by itself.

• Packs that come round again: repeat a pack every month, quarter or year, rolled forward on the day as a draft with the next period in its title. The Request packs page lists what is coming up in the next month.
• Add several requests at once: paste a list, one request per line, into a section.
• Requests in the rail: every request across every request pack in one filtered, bookmarkable list, with Export CSV.
• The Request packs page lists people whose emailed links have sat unopened for three days or more.
• Notes for your team on every workspace, pinned or not, that the people you ask never see. Search finds them and the workspace export includes them.
• Hand over: move every request still waiting on one person to somebody else when the person answering changes.
• A workspace has an Emails tab: every request email and scheduled reminder that went out, and whether its link was opened. The chosen tab is in the address, so links land on it.
• Staff replies and corrections are emailed to the person answering, with the words and a link straight to the request; a switch turns it off per reply.

The people you ask see your name, you hear from them, and a template can be read before it is used.

• Your own branding, under Organisation on the Settings page, for admins: name, reply-to address, website and a PNG, JPEG or SVG logo up to 512 KB with a preview and Remove logo. The logo, or the name, stands at the top of the portal, the phone upload page and the portal sign-in page with a quiet via Docsroom; request and reminder emails end Sent by your name using Docsroom, followed by the name of the business or person. Staff screens stay Docsroom. Every change is in the activity trail.
• Notifications, under Notifications on the Settings page, per person: five switches (someone you asked replies, uploads a file, submits a table or form answer, marks a request complete, or a bidder asks a question), all on to begin with; as it happens, one email a minute at most, or one daily summary at a chosen time between 06:00 and 20:00. Your own actions never notify you. Updates in the rail shows the unread count; the page lists everything newest first with All and Unread, search, and Mark all read. Without email set up the page still fills, and Settings says why nothing is sent.
• A template row opens its own page: description, sections and every request read-only with how it is answered, its acceptance requirements and help text. Use template there, or Use template on the row, picks the workspace and title and starts the pack.
• Search, first in the rail, or Cmd+K on a Mac and Ctrl+K elsewhere, from any staff page. Two characters or more finds workspaces by name or reference, packs and requests by title or by the name of the business or person, people by name or email, files by filename and templates by title, up to eight a group with names that begin with what you typed first. Arrow keys move, Enter opens, Escape closes; See all results opens a full page with a count for each group and up to 20 in each.
• Due dates on the staff side: an Overdue figure on the Request packs page and each pack, an Overdue filter, "Overdue by N days" chips, a Needs chasing list, and a Coming due section in the daily summary.
• A workspace status report to print or download as a CSV, an Export CSV on the Activity page, and a Send me a test email button under Email delivery.
• A workspace can be set to Completed or Draft from Edit workspace details.
• Every screen is checked for accessibility on every headless run: status chips and hints are darker so they clear the contrast rule, and read-only pages can be scrolled from the keyboard.
• Templates can be edited: rename, add or reorder requests, change wording, or delete, including the nine built in.
• The Request packs page has Everyone’s and Mine tabs; Mine shows only the workspaces you own.
• Data rooms can carry terms of access: a bidder must accept them before anything opens, and each acceptance is on the access log.
• Keyboard shortcuts: ? for the list, g then a letter to go to any page.
• A Dockerfile: one container serving the API and the site, with the database, uploads and backups on a volume.
• Duplicate a request: the same ask again, right after it, for a second person to answer.
• A Viewer role: reads everything, changes nothing but their own account. Roles are changed from the Team page.
• The list of businesses and people shows thirty at a time with Show more, so an imported list of hundreds stays quick.
• Choose how long request links stay open: 30, 60, 90 or 180 days, or a year.
• A People page: everyone answering requests across every workspace, with link state and what is waiting on them.
• @Name in an internal note tells that colleague.
• The Activity page filters by kind of event and by person, as well as by business or person.
• Save as template, from the pack menu: your own pack under Templates, ready to use for any business or person.
• Housekeeping under Settings: completed workspaces untouched for months, listed with what deleting each would remove.
• Import from a CSV: one business or person per row, its contact as the first person answering, names already here skipped.
• Notifications can be narrowed to only the request packs you own.
• Needed-by reminders: three days before a date and on the day, each person answering is emailed what is still due, once.
• A workspace names its owner on the team; the Workspaces page filters by Mine, Nobody yet or a colleague.
• Data export: everything held about a business or person as one JSON file, from the Download files page.
• "How this works" on the portal’s landing page: four plain steps, naming your organisation.
• Select requests in a pack and set, or clear, their needed-by date in one go.
• A message of your own at the top of request emails, and Download your files on the portal’s landing page.
• A getting-started band across the top of the Request packs page that ticks itself off as the account is set up, and hides when it is done.
• PDFs and photos open in a preview from the request thread, the Files page and the portal, with a Download button beside them.
• Internal notes: a reply saved for your own team only, never sent or shown to the people you ask.
• Roll forward to a new period: the same pack again, every request back to awaiting, people kept, dates moved on.
• npm run check:design fails the build on hand-written colours, px sizes, retired tokens and off-set modal widths.

The things people ask about before they sign up.

• Two-factor authentication for staff with an authenticator app and eight recovery codes that can be reissued. The Team page shows who has it on, and an admin can remove it from a colleague who has lost both phone and codes, recorded in the activity trail.
• A Settings page: your name and email, password, where you are signed in (with sign out of other devices), two-factor, backups and email delivery.
• Nightly backup of the database and every file into one archive; the newest 30 kept; backups listed and downloadable in Settings; npm run backup and npm run restore.
• Delete a workspace, a request pack, a person in a workspace or a member of the team. Removal is immediate, clears any file nothing else refers to, and is recorded.
• One design pass over every staff and portal screen: one type scale, one card and row shape, one modal width set, search first in every list, and a list row always opens a page.
• In the portal, the list puts what needs the person answering first, with a progress bar (2 of 7 done · 3 need your reply). Status colours say whose turn it is: orange theirs, blue yours, green done. Empty lists say whether nothing exists yet or nothing matches.

Docsroom now covers more kinds of work.

• Acceptance requirements on a request, with documents checked as they arrive. Switched off since; a person looks at what comes back.
• Send a request back with a note saying what needs correcting. The button is now called Ask for clarification.
• Bank transactions tab: import a CSV and raise one request per line. Since taken out of the app.
• Table answers (payroll hours, starters and leavers, stock count) with drafts, submit and approve, totals and CSV export.
• Form answers with typed and required fields; files inside forms.
• Workspace kinds: business, family, employee, legal matter, deal.
• Templates: Monthly payroll inputs, New starter, Business onboarding, Nursery enrolment, School admission, Intake (legal matter), Conveyancing: sale, Data room (business sale).
• Data rooms: parties, request visibility, bidder questions kept to their party, downloads logged by party, access log.
• npm run seed:demo adds fictional example workspaces for every use case.

Docsroom now has a front door. Staff sign in with email and password; people who lose their request link can ask for a new one.

• First-run setup creates the admin account. No default password.
• Forgot password sends a one-hour, single-use link. Using it ends other sessions.
• Team page: admins add people, who set their own password from a seven-day link, and remove them, which signs them out everywhere.
• A sign-in page for the people you ask at /portal: enter the email on the participant record and receive a fresh private link.
• Every activity row, download record and request email now names the signed-in person.
• Eight wrong passwords pause sign-in for that address for fifteen minutes.
• The product is called Docsroom.

Workspaces, request packs and the portal for the people you ask, moved out of the bookkeeping app into a product of its own.

• Four kinds of request: question, upload, decision, approval. Sections, drag to reorder, bulk assign, complete, email and delete.
• One conversation per request, with attachments on any reply. Drag and drop, photo library and camera.
• Upload from a phone: a 30-minute QR link private to one request.
• Delegation with Not mine, every handoff dated.
• Participant links that show only what is assigned to that person; withdraw in one click.
• Request emails from your own domain with 30-day, request-scoped links, previewed before sending.
• Scheduled reminders per person: daily, every two days, weekly or custom; they stop when the list is done.
• Download files as one ZIP, organised by pack and request, with a history of what was taken and when.
• Templates, starting with monthly bookkeeping.