Receiving reports from the public
Let trail users report a fallen tree or a broken plank, with no account and no email — and choose what they can consult in return.
Your trail users see problems before you do. They ride your trails every day, and when a tree comes down across one, they know that same morning — while your crew will find out next week.
The obstacle was never their goodwill. It was the form. Creating an account, remembering a password, finding the right page: nobody does that standing in a trail holding a bike.
Public reports remove all of it. The user opens the app, takes a photo, sends. No account, no email, no password. You receive a geolocated report, with the photo, in an inbox waiting to be triaged.
Where: left navigation bar, under Administration → Public reports for the settings. The inbox is under Reports.
What the user sees
When someone opens the app without being a member, they land on a façade stripped to the essentials: your network's name, and one button.
The public façade, once the network is recognised.
- 1Your network's name and its trail count. The app recognised it — from the trailhead QR code, from the code, or from the user's position.
- 2The report button. It is the only path, deliberately.
- 3Your trail map, if you allow it.
- 4Your published trail conditions, if you allow them.
The two tiles at the bottom are not mandatory: you decide on each in the settings. A network that does not publish conditions does not show the tile.
How the app finds your network. Three paths, in this order:
| Path | When it helps |
|---|---|
| The trailhead QR code | The normal case. One scan and the user is in your network, even with no cell coverage |
| The six-character code | When the camera will not cooperate, or the sign is damaged |
| Position | The app offers the networks around the user |
The QR code and the code come from the same settings page, ready to print.
The report itself
Three things, only one of which is mandatory.
The submission screen, user side.
- 1The position, taken from GPS. The user can correct it on the map if the problem is a few metres away.
- 2The photos. This is what makes a report usable.
- 3The description, free text.
- 4Sending. With no coverage, the report goes out on its own as soon as the connection returns.
We do not ask for the problem type. That is a decision, not an oversight. Asking a trail user to choose between "erosion", "drainage" and "structure" asks them to do your classification work — and they will choose badly, which costs you more time than asking nothing. A photo and a position are enough: you classify at triage, knowing what you are looking at.
The first name is optional, and it is all we ask for. No email, no phone, no last name. You cannot contact a reporter back — that is the price of no-account, and it is also why people actually send.
It works with no coverage. The report is queued on the device with its photos and goes out when coverage returns. The user sees right away that it is saved.
What the user learns next
A report that vanishes into the void does not get repeated. So the user can follow theirs from My reports, and they get a notification whenever you move it forward:
| What you do | What the user receives |
|---|---|
| You accept the report | "Work is planned" |
| Work starts | "The crew is on it" |
| The task is finished | "It's fixed" |
| You refuse | The reason, if you choose to share it |
| You attach it to an already-fixed problem | "It was already fixed" |
These notices are deliberately thin on detail. The user has no access to your planning, your assignments or your discussions — they only know where their report stands.
The settings
Everything is decided on one page, and nothing is active until you turn it on.
The public report settings.
- 1The master switch. Off, the public can send nothing and the rest of the page is greyed out.
- 2Photo required, and first name asked or not.
- 3What the public can consult: the trail map and your published conditions.
- 4Nothing is saved until Save.
Leave photo required on. A report without a photo is almost always unusable: "there's a tree" says nothing about the size, whether a handsaw is enough, or whether it takes two people. You can make it optional, but you will harvest noise.
Your network's visibility is set here too, in three steps:
| Step | Who can report to you |
|---|---|
| By invitation | Only those with the QR code or the code |
| On site | Those physically inside your zone |
| Listed | Anyone who finds you in the network list |
Start on By invitation long enough to see the volume, then widen. That is easier than the reverse.
A daily cap limits the number of reports per device per day. It exists so one frustrated user cannot fill your inbox.
Turning "Trail map" off also clears the cache. If you allowed it and then withdrew it, the trail lines already downloaded to phones are erased on the next opening. The setting does more than hide a button.
Once they start coming in
Reports arrive in an inbox separate from your tasks, because a report is not a task: it is information to verify. What comes next — triaging, creating the task, grouping what repeats — is in Triaging reports from the public.