Enhanced discussions
Photo : David Van Elslande
Enhanced discussions
Photo : David Van Elslande
It's no secret that many leagues have built their internal organization using social networks and the communication and information-sharing capabilities they offered. Today, the general decline in the services provided by these platforms and the political involvement of their owners have led many leagues to question their usage and look for alternatives. The latest developments in Trackkarma aim to improve the discussions feature to address this issue and offer an increasingly credible alternative.
Based on the many feedback points we received from users, we listed a whole series of issues and shortcomings that made Trackkarma's discussions too limited. A few features quickly stood out, and these different ideas formed the foundation of our work for this major update to Trackkarma. In this article, we’ll go over these new features.
Discussion search
The first addition concerns the ability to search through discussions. It is now possible to search across all your discussions or by context (for example, only discussions within a specific team).
These searches can be performed in the main content of the discussions or within the messages.
By clicking on the displayed results, you are taken directly to the full discussion.
Pinned discussions
The second new feature in this update is the ability to pin discussions. Some important discussions indeed deserve to stay at the top.
By pinning them, they become quickly accessible through a dedicated list of pinned discussions.
Mentions
We’ve also improved how mentions work in discussions. It’s now possible to mention "everyone" and thus notify all members involved in the discussion.
Furthermore, the list of members you can tag adjusts to the current discussion and only shows relevant members. For example, in a team discussion, only the members of that team will be displayed.
GIFs
A favorite expression method of millennials, GIFs are now making their big entrance into Trackkarma. You can now insert them into discussion messages using a Giphy search.
Images
Finally, the last new feature in this update has been highly anticipated and addresses a long-standing request. It is now possible to insert images into discussion messages.
For each message, you can select up to 12 images to attach.
However, this last feature is reserved for leagues subscribed to the "Pivot line backer" tier on our Patreon. Storing images represents an additional infrastructure cost, and as always in such cases, this feature is restricted to leagues supporting our project.
Improved Interface on the iOS/Android App
We also took advantage of this update to improve Trackkarma’s interface on the iOS and Android apps, specifically regarding message input. The field for writing a message has been redesigned to be more user-friendly. The "+" button on its left lets you access buttons for adding GIFs, images, and mentions.
With these new features, we believe we've significantly improved the discussion experience and addressed the issues raised by users. Our goal was to make this aspect of Trackkarma more credible as a realistic alternative to social networks. Of course, there are still more areas for improvement, and we’ll continue striving for continuous enhancement of this part of Trackkarma in the coming months!