System Status

When & What was effected
Over several weeks Email sending was interrupted in the Acter App for all Matrix accounts on acter.global. In particular verifying emails addresses to the app or using them for password recovery didn't work: emails just didn't find their inboxes.

What happened
We first though this was a bug in the App and thus searched there for a quite a while, before we realized the cause was in the running infrastructure. In an attempt to break free from unnecessary servers we have recently consolidated the services we used to send emails through. We had already disabled mailgun and then also closed our sendgrid account in order to switch (temporarily) to Amazon SES, which worked fine in testing. What we didn't realise was that it was running in a sandbox-mode only allowing us to sent to acter.global email-addresses. Thus, our tests worked, but emails to external providers were not sent.

What was compromised/lost
Nothing was compromised or lost. Just emails were not delivered.

Measures taken to prevent this in the future
We have finished the switch and are now sending emails through sweego, a French company with Data Centers in France. Email sending has been restored successfully.

Additionally, we have been planning to add a more extensive monitoring system to our infrastructure and will for sure add the ability to get notified when the email sending isn't working anymore as expected.

Minor Fixes and internal upgrades of the way that notifications are handled.

Due to a minor UX-Bug this would block rendering upon first start on MacOS, which is why we release a fix two days later under the higher version number.

When & What was effected?
Sept 28-30th, Push Notifications to iOS devices (iPhone & iPad).

What happened
We missed that push notifications certificates can and do expire. Unfortunately the expiration date fell on Saturday so we were only informed about this in report on Monday, and immediately issued new certificates and restarted the service.

What was compromised/lost?
Nothing was compromised or lost.

Measures taken to prevent this in the future?
Documentation has been added to the internal processes clarifying the procedure and steps to follow to rectify this in the future. Further an overhaul and collection of all certificates that can expire on us is put on the todo-list.

When & What was effected?
3pm-6pm GMT the server matrix.acter.global and with that the Acter App was unavailabe.

What happened
Due to a problem with the Apple Push Notifications we had to update the server infrastructure. During which we noticed that some database upgrades were due to be made. Running them on the staging instance everything worked just fine and came back up quickly. So we decided to also run them on the main server underestimating how much larger that server upgrade would be, took the server into maintenance mode and started the update. After about an hour in the upgrade (without much visible progress) we decided to cancel it and delay it for some better time. Unfortunately, restoring to the previous state took almost another hour in itself and thus we experienced a prolonged down time of the main server until everything was restored.

What was compromised/lost?
Nothing was compromised or lost. All data could be restored without problems.

Measures taken to prevent this in the future?
For the time being we will only be doing database upgrades for pre-scheduled time frames with low activity and not do some "on the go" anymore.

• [New] : All new categorize management for sub-spaces and sub-chats
• [New] : You can now create custom categories and manage all the sub-space and sub-chat base on the your requirements
• Show the room name when invited
• Fix joining public sub rooms

• Fix crash when picking an Avatar or image on older devices
• Suggested spaces and chats are preferably now shown on the overview of a space, if configured
• [Fix] you can now suggest chat rooms you are already in as well
• Unified the way chats and spaces are shown in various lists for a cleaner UI and improved layout
• Spaces and Chats are now separated on the invites editing page for easier and cleaner access
• Empty lines are now preserved and rendered in chats when composing room message text.

• A new 'Create new update' action button on the bottom of each space makes it easier to activate this feature and create an update for that space
• [Fix] restores the proper pages and routing upon start of the app on supported devices
• [New] : All new ActerIcon support for Pins and TaskList
• [New] : You can can select custom icon and color based on the Pin and TaskList details.
• You can now take any Event you see and use it as a template to create any other similar event. Clicking Actions -> Copy as New will open the create event dialog with all fields filled in with the content from the current event for you to edit and submit.
• Acter is now available in Swahili (sw). If your system is in Swahili and you've never changed the language, Acter will automatically switch to Swahili for you.
• You will find your bookmarked spaces shown first in all spaces lists now, from the quick jumper, over the spaces listing to any place you have to select a spaces - making it easier and more convenient to use.
• We are now suggesting you users you already know when you start the process to invite individual users or start a new chat conversation.
• [Fix] Showing the DisplayName and Avatar for users not yet in the room in to-invite screen

• By default all space app features are deactivated now and need to be explicitly activated at first. The activation, however, has become a lot easier by being provided through the actions on the bottom of each space: if the feature isn't active yet, the admin still sees the button and upon click is asked if they want to activate it, including the option to set the permission level of who can use that app.
• [Fix] where the app settings of previously created spaces where interpreted under the new defaults incorrectly. Instead we are keeping the old fallback and default behavior and the wire protocol as is and instead create all futures spaces with the explicit having the features turned off now.
• [Chat]: Now we have hardened the mentions matching in chat input text so it won't imply false positives and only validates user mentions belonging to rooms.
• Link Help Center from Settings page
• Rename process from app to acter in task manager on windows
• [New] : Time format is now based on the your localised system setting (12 Hour/24 Hour)

• [Fix] we were not correctly referencing News Calendar Events, we now have support to render external links, too.
• Rename process from app to acter in task manager on windows
• [New] : Space Details : Now you can see list of parent spaces when you click on the parent spaces badge
• Fixes of bugs and the UX of the emoji picker: you can now close it easily with the x on the top right, even from the search.
• Chat: fix bug where text disappears when try to tap on field in edit/reply state.
• Now Chat supports storing unsent composed message in improved way .i.e. can persist between app restarts and reply/edit views.

• Acter is now available in Spanish (thanks to Sandra) and in Arabic (thanks, Omar!)
• [Fix] : Restrict user on updating RSVP status if event is past
• [Fix] : Restrict user on updating Dates if event is past/ongoing
• Fix for being to sensitive on rage shakes
• [New] : Brand new UI-UX for Pin creation
• [New] : Support for adding attachment while Pin Creation
• [New] : Now you can add one or more Link as attachment for Pin

• Fix on showing the relations of spaces and chats properly if you've left any of the rooms
• replace ref.invalidate() with proper notifiers that listen to SDK events
• Fix bug in quick jump navigation, where it used to go black rather than properly jump sometimes
• Fix uploading of my Avatar: no more crashing, instant updating
• [Chats]: various fixes has been done which cause input cursor to lose focus when interacting with emoji picker, swipe-reply/edit and sending messages.
• [Chats]: bug fix where on desktop, input doesn't go multi-line when shift+enter.
• [Chats]: bug fix on mentions when suggestions don't come up with name of user.

• You can now easily "close" chats and spaces as an admin.
• Fix in routing if you resized the app window while in setting screens.
• Acter is now available in french!
• Show the progress when inviting many users via other spaces
• Pull to refresh for Space Overview page
• [New] : Better visualisation of Ongoing, Upcoming and Past events by colours
• [New] : Event listing screen contains Search and Filters option for better explore your events
• [Fix] : Now dashboard will show events which you are attending
• Sending attachment in chats works again
• Removing attachments from Pins and other objects works again
• Fix issue in displaying chats of a space if there aren't any further to show
• Now when you mention some user in chat, the styling colors will appear on name/id.
• We have massively improved the performance of the chats section

• [Improvement] : Space Details : Space Header now also show members list UI
• [Enhancement] : Space Details : Click on section Header labels now lead you to relevant detail page
• [Improvement] : Hide unwanted avatar UI on message thread if it is DM
• [Fixes] : Disable invite button in Room Details page if it is DM
• [Improvement] : Couple of UI fixes on chat listing and Filters Area
• [Fixes] : Close attachment selection option dialog upon tab

• Fix: Avatars some time showed up weird, were broken or didn't show at all
• Fix: Several instances in which the App failed or froze because of broken Avatars
• [Improvement] : Now you can view space and group chat avatar in full screen
• [Improvement] : If you have permission than you can have inline avatar change option instead of go to any detail screen
• [New] : You can zoom in and out avatar view for better visualisation
• Fix to show invite code even after managing it
• Show the number of additional rooms associated with an invite code (if any)
• Allows you to select the invite code if more than one is possible
• Simplify onboarding, drop unnecessary screens
• Automatic Crash analytics if you opt-in to that
• [Improvement] : Task list UI is now more consistent and robust
• [New] : Now you can search any task list by it's title name

• Switching to black background and bolder blue colors for highlights for better contrast
• Fix to make sure the description of the visibility items is legible
• Fixed the chat rooms list ordering based on latest message timestamp.
• [Improvement] Total overhaul of the Space Detail Screen replacing the navigation with a fresh and variable top bar navigation, nice intro sections with full-screen-views of the actual features and quick actions on the bottom (if you have the rights to). Making the space screen a more mobile-friendly and nicer to work with.
• [fixes] General UI and Color issues fixes
• [Improvement] : Pins list UI is now more consistent and robust
• [New] : Now you can search any pin by it's title name
• At PR#1783, many fns for password rest were made and some of them are unnecessary or duplicated. Will refactor them.

• [fixes] General UI and Color issues fixes
• Fix inviting all space members to chat room, fixes #1895
• Do not render link previews for room and user mentions, fixes #1604
• Fix chat input Capitalization, fixes #1902
• Fix support for proper user mentions and room links, fixes #1829