This version makes your conversations easier to follow and requesting a placement simpler. We've also fixed several issues in the planning and with photos and videos.

New features

• In the new communication system you can mark all your messages as Read at once. This button and the "Archive" button are now together in the menu behind the three dots.
• Requesting a new placement? Finding the right school is now much easier.
• In your child's profile, schools are also easier to find by city, and changing the level or class for an existing school is more straightforward.
• If there's an outage, you'll see a notice on the home screen and the login screen, so you know we're working on it.

Fixed bugs

• If your organisation requires you to request a whole extra day, and that day is made up of several connecting day parts, you could still cancel single day parts afterwards. That's no longer possible: a whole day now appears as one day part in your planning.
• When you reported your child absent for one day part, the other day parts were sometimes selected too. You can now choose exactly the day parts you want.
• Videos in conversations couldn't be opened or downloaded on some Android devices. This is now fixed.
• After you download a document or a media file, the app now makes clearer that it opens in another app on your phone.

This update mainly makes the app nicer to use day to day. Picking a date for a request is noticeably smoother, also when you plan further ahead or have several children, and a handful of small annoyances on the profile screens have been resolved.

Fixed bugs

• Picking a date for a planning request is much smoother. Paging further ahead through the months stays responsive, also with several children, and the calendar stays on screen while the planning loads.
• Edits on the parent and child profile screens were kept when you closed the screen without saving. They are discarded properly now.
• iOS: opening the App Store from the "new version available" prompt could fail. This is now fixed.

Maintenance and improvements under the hood 
As with every release, we did work behind the scenes as well: the underlying frameworks and libraries have been updated, outdated code has been cleaned up, and we extended our monitoring so we spot and fix problems faster than they get reported. You will not notice any of this directly, but it keeps the app stable, secure and ready for what is coming in the next releases.

This update is all about consent survey requests. Requests that allow more than one answer can now actually be answered that way, expired requests are finally recognisable as expired and no longer come at you in a popup, and filters make the list easier to work through. On top of that, a number of screens you use daily have become smoother and more reliable.

New features

• Consent survey requests that allow more than one answer now show checkboxes instead of radio buttons, with a banner saying multiple answers can be selected.
• The consent survey requests list screen has new filters (replacing the filter by child): All, Open and Expired. 

Fixed bugs

• Picking a date for a planning request is much smoother. Paging further ahead through the months stays responsive, also with several children, and the calendar stays on screen while the planning loads.
• Edits on the parent and child profile screens were kept when you closed the screen without saving. They are discarded properly now. 
• The country was not shown on the contact person screen. This has been rectified.
• iOS: opening the App Store from the "new version available" prompt could fail. This has been resolved.
• Expired consent survey requests still triggered a popup on the "Home" screen even though they could no longer be answered. They no longer count towards the popup and are shown as expired in the list.
• The popup about open consent survey requests appeared twice when switching accounts or opening the app from a push notification. This has been solved.

Maintenance and improvements under the hood 
As with every release, we did work behind the scenes as well: the underlying frameworks and libraries have been updated, outdated code has been cleaned up, and we extended our monitoring so we spot and fix problems faster than they get reported. You will not notice any of this directly, but it keeps the app stable, secure and ready for what is coming in the next releases.

Messages: completely new!

Communication with the childcare organisation now feels like an actual conversation. We rebuilt Messages from the ground up. Keep reading to find out all the new things about the new and improved Messages.

One conversation per child, and per group
No more one-off messages, but ongoing conversations. Every child gets a personal conversation with the staff, plus a conversation with the group your child belongs to. These are there by default, so a conversation may well be empty at first. As soon as a staff member sends something, or you ask the first question yourself, the conversation gets going. You see who's writing, with name and photo, exactly like you'd expect from a chat.

The organisation can also send you messages about specific topics, for example about your contract or about invoices and payments. You'll recognise those by the topic shown at the top of the conversation. You can't reply to those just yet, that's coming in a future update.

Find the right conversation fast
Filter your overview by All, My children, Childcare groups or Organisation. Unread messages show up right away as a badge on the Messages tab.

📎 New: send attachments yourself
This is one of the biggest changes: you can now send photos and documents yourself. A photo of a filled-in form, the doctor's note, the birthday party invite. Tap the Paperclip icon button, pick from your camera, your photo library or your files, and your attachment goes along in the conversation. Everything stays together in one place, so you'll never have to work out where you sent that photo again.

Settings per conversation
Inside a conversation, tap the name at the top to open the "Conversation Info" screen. There you'll find the participants, and there you can switch off notifications with a single tap when you'd rather not get push messages for that conversation. Notifications off? You'll see it in your message overview, with its own icon, just like the second parent one. So you always know where you stand without opening the conversation.

Second parent reads along
Per chat you decide whether the second parent reads along. The icon in your overview shows the status at a glance.

Please note: By default, both parents are part of all conversations. The first parent must explicitly set in the Octopus Parent App, for each conversation, that the second parent is not part of that conversation. This applies to both Backoffice messages and conversations with the Group.

📣 Announcements
Messages from the organisation now have a place of their own, all in one list. Handy for closing days, newsletters and other notices.

🔔 A dedicated inbox for your requests 
Was your extra care request approved or declined? You'll find it here, with the child, the status and any note from a staff member. No more digging through your messages.

📷 The timeline stays the timeline
The timeline now pulls daily activities and photos from the new system, and loads noticeably faster.

📦 Archive
Your old messages are still there. You'll find them under "Archive", where you can read everything back at your leisure. Replying happens in the new conversations from now on.

Over to you 💜 This is only the first step. We'll keep building on it, and we'd much rather do that with your experience to guide us. What works well? What's still missing? What would you like to see next? Let us know via your Profile → Feedback. We read everything, and your message helps decide what we pick up next. Thanks for all your feedback!

In this update you can view and edit your emergency phone number on your profile page. We've also made photo albums easier to browse, made invoices clearer, and fixed a few issues along the way.

New features

• The "Emergency phone number" is now shown on the parent profile page and can also be edited there.

Fixed bugs

• Photo album: the album header showed a misleading date. It now shows the number of items available in the album instead.
• Photo album: photos and videos are now grouped under date labels, making large albums easier to browse.
• Timeline: Opening media from a timeline item now shows only the media from that item, instead of the child's entire album.
• Invoices: the invoice card no longer suggests a period that could differ from the invoice itself. It now shows the invoice amount.
• Fixed an issue where an expired or revoked session could leave the app in an error state. You are now signed out cleanly and can log back in.

A small maintenance release. This update fixes a login issue that could leave the app stuck on an error screen.

Fixed bugs

• Fixed an issue where an expired or revoked session could leave the app in an error state. You are now signed out cleanly and can log back in.

Version 26.7.0 makes the information around child care considerably more complete. Planner comments can now be found directly on the day they relate to, a child's school details can be updated independently, and changes made by the back office to consent surveys are transparently visible. In addition, a number of reported issues have been resolved and the app has become more stable in several areas.

New features

• Planner comments in the day details: When the planner has left a comment on a care day, it is now shown in the details of that day. A marker in the calendar makes it immediately clear which days carry a comment, so important information about the care is not missed.
• Editing school, level and class in the child profile: A child's school details can now be updated directly from the child profile. The same form is used as when requesting a new traject or placement, which makes for a consistent experience.
• Insight into consent survey answers changed by the organisation: Back-office employees can change answers to consent surveys. The answer history now shows that an answer was changed, by whom and when. Deleted answers are reflected as well, so the status of every consent survey remains traceable. 
• More detail on requests for a new placement (contract): Request overviews now also show the request date and the reason given, making the request history easier to follow.

Fixed bugs

• School selection when requesting a new placement (contract): When requesting a new traject, the list of schools is matched to the city that was entered, making the right school easier to find.
• Notice period when terminating a placement (contract): The notice period configured by the organisation was not taken into account when cancelling a traject. The earliest possible end date is now calculated based on this setting.
• Consent surveys after an answer has been deleted: When the back office removed a previously given answer entirely, this could result in an error. This situation is now handled correctly and the question can be answered again.
• Loading of the timeline: In certain cases the timeline could not be loaded due to incomplete data on photos and albums. The timeline is now resilient to this.
• Notification permission on Android: On Android devices the notification permission was in some cases denied without ever having been requested. Permission is now requested at the appropriate moment.

UI/UX

• Attention for urgent consent surveys: When consent surveys marked as urgent are still unanswered, an informative message on app start-up draws attention to them. The app remains fully usable throughout. The popup message will be shown again however, until the consent surveys are answered.

Improvements and technical updates

• Mandatory updates: From this version onwards it can be determined per release whether an update is mandatory. This helps ensure everyone is on a recent version, which matters for new functionality such as the renewed chat.
• Stability and logging behind the scenes: The handling of data from KIS has been made more robust in several places, and logging around sign-in and session renewal has been improved, which simplifies troubleshooting.

Version 26.7.0 is primarily a maintenance release: a number of reported issues have been resolved and the app has become more stable behind the scenes. The most notable improvement is that requesting a new password from within the app works as intended again.

Fixed bugs

• "Forgot password" from within the app: A password reset requested from the app did not result in an email, while the same request via the parent portal did. The request now carries the correct organisation details, so the email is received again. 
• Notification permission on Android: On Android devices the notification permission was in some cases denied without ever having been requested. Permission is now requested at the appropriate moment.

UI/UX

• Session stability: Session renewal has been improved, preventing unintended sign-outs.

This release brings significant improvements with improvements to the calendar view, better placements management, and improved media handling. Users will experience a more intuitive interface with clearer day event type distinctions and a budget overview feature.

New features

• Budget Overview: A comprehensive budget hours overview showing available hours, usage, and expiration dates is now available in the app. The Budgets screen can be found under the three dots menu on the top right corner of the Planning tab. 
• Request new placements (contracts): Until now it was possible to see the placements for each child in the app, request changes to a placement, view the attached contracts, cancel the requested changes and eventually terminate a placement (contract). Starting with this version it's also possible to request a new placement, for instance when wishing to switch from one type of childcare to another (KDV to BSO). This can be done in the app and it still needs to be reviewed and approved by the childcare organisation.

Fixed bugs

• Whenever there was a planning day event such as "closed location" that was only applicable for part of the day, this was not displayed correctly on the calendar day details. This is now fixed.
• There was a small bug which caused newly received media items to not appear on the All Media page immediately. Also only a small number of items was retrieved each time when scrolling. These issues have been solved so that the media page behaves smoothly.

UI/UX

• Fixed SafeArea layout issues on iOS across multiple screens (including Placements screen) for better visual presentation.
• Improved the text and buttons on the "Review the app" card on the Home page to make it more clear.

Improvements and technical updates

• We have done some technical improvements to an area of the code that was causing some issues resulting in users being occasionally logged out.

This release focuses on refining the user experience with improved UI consistency and technical improvements under the hood. The application maintains its core functionality while benefiting from backend improvements.

Fixed bugs

• We have done some technical improvements to an area of the code that was causing some issues resulting in users being occasionally logged out.

UI/UX

• Fixed SafeArea layout issues on iOS across multiple screens (including Placements screen) for better visual presentation.
• Improved the text and buttons on the "Review the app" card on the Home page to make it more clear.