Triaging reports from the public

A public report is not a task. It is information to verify.

The distinction sounds academic; it is very practical. If every report became a task, your board would fill with duplicates, false positives and already-fixed problems — and you would spend your evenings cleaning up. Reports therefore arrive in a separate inbox, and nothing enters your planning until someone decides it should.

Where: left navigation bar → Reports. On mobile: the Reports tab of the inbox.

The inbox

On opening, you see every untriaged report received, whatever the year. That is the default: what is waiting for a decision.

Status is a progression, not a label. Four steps: received, accepted, in progress, resolved. The bar fills as the problem moves along, which scans in one glance down a whole column. A refused report leaves the progression and turns grey.

The three views serve different moments:

In board view there are no filters: the columns already filter. The closed column shows nothing by default — a button in the top menu brings them up when you need them.

You are told when one arrives. A new report triggers a notice inside the app, a notification on your phone, or an email — you pick which ones in notification settings. Tapping the phone notification opens the inbox; the notice inside the app opens the report itself. Only members allowed to see the inbox get these notices.

Triaging a report

Click a row: a panel opens with everything you need to decide.

You have three possible outcomes, no more.

Turn it into a task. The button opens your usual creation form, already filled with the report's position, trail, activity, description and photos. You complete the type and the priority — what the public did not tell you — and save. The report stays linked to the task and follows its progress on its own.

Attach it to an existing task. Often the right move: someone reports a problem you already know about. The report's photos are added to the task, and the reporter is told work is planned. If the task is already finished, they are told it was already fixed — which is a real answer, not silence.

Refuse it. Outside your network, a duplicate, or simply not a problem. You can enter a reason and choose to share it with the reporter. Share it: "this trail is not ours" prevents the next five reports.

The trail link matters more than it looks. It is what makes the task appear in the right trail's reports. The app offers the closest trail; when there are several candidates, it lets you choose rather than guessing. Once you have chosen, the row shows the trail you kept and reminds you how many others were possible, so you can go back to it.

Which activity it is for

Visitors are never asked which activity they were doing, for the same reason they are never asked the type of problem: they do not know how you are organised. The activity comes from the trail.

In your network a trail belongs to exactly one activity. A corridor ridden and walked is therefore two trails following the same line. As soon as a report is linked, its activity is known without ambiguity. It is spelled out: in its own column in the list, and on its own line in the triage panel, right above the trail it comes from.

When several trails overlap, the activity is what tells them apart. Two lines in the same place often share a name, metres from each other. The app then shows each candidate's activity, so you pick the one the visitor was actually on. That activity is also the one the created task takes.

The problem types on offer are the ones for that activity. When you create the task, the first step asks for the type. The list you get is the one for the report's activity, not the one you had selected at the top of the screen. A bike report will therefore never offer you a type reserved for hiking.

A report with no trail shows no activity. When there is nothing to infer it from, the app would rather say nothing than invent it. It does work it out when every possible trail belongs to the same activity: the trail is still yours to pick, but the activity is not in doubt.

The activity selector at the top of the screen does not filter this inbox, and that is deliberate: a report waiting for a decision must never vanish because you were looking at another activity. You see everything that comes in, with the activity written on every line.

Grouping what repeats

A tree across a busy trail gets reported three times before noon. Handling all three separately means creating three tasks for one tree.

When you create a task or attach one, the app shows you the reports waiting at the same spot and lets you choose which ones come along.

Why nothing is pre-checked. Two reports twenty metres apart can be a fallen tree and a rock in the descent. Include the wrong one and its reporter will receive "in progress" then "resolved" for a problem that is not. The cost of a mistake is carried by a trail user, not by you: that is why the box is empty, and why every row shows its photo, its description and its age.

The window is deliberately narrow: reports within 40 m and less than 72 h old. Beyond that, two reports in one place are probably two different problems, or the same problem reported two seasons in a row.

Only untriaged reports appear. A neighbour already accepted, in progress or resolved is not in the list: there is nothing left to decide about it.

With no neighbours, nothing changes. The selection screen does not appear, and "Create task" opens the form directly.

In the field

Full triage is available on mobile, with the same logic and the same outcomes. Neighbour selection there is a full screen, presented when you tap Create task or Attach:

Triaging from the field has a real advantage: you are standing in front of the problem. You can see whether the three reports are about the same tree, which no photo will ever tell you as well.

Who can triage

Two distinct permissions, on purpose:

A volunteer can therefore watch reports arrive without being able to decide, and a lead can triage without being able to change the network's openness. The full role breakdown is in Understanding roles.

What it looks like on the dashboard

The dashboard counts three figures over the chosen period: reports received, closed and refused, with their change against the previous period and a histogram of receptions per day.

The ratio between "closed" and "refused" is the measure that counts. If it tilts toward refusals, your users are reporting off-topic — often because your network's zone is set wrong, or because your trailhead sign is in the wrong place.