With release 23.03 of the CareAR App, we introduce the following:
- App renamed from CareAR Assist to CareAR
- Merge of Instruct functionality inside the CareAR Assist App
- UX flow and UI updated
- Home screen modified for clarity
- The walkthrough screens for the brand-new user
- The home screen is slightly modified for clarity
- The organization of the bottom tray is adjusted
- The label Recents is replaced with History
- The hamburger menu is slightly modified and simplified
- We introduce Experiences and history of access
- The empty states are more consistent
- Support for authenticated consumption of Instruct experiences
- Support for experience access control
Additionally, we deprecate the ICMP-based check for connectivity as many enterprise networks restrict the use of ICMP. A future release will replace this function with a REST API based check.
New Features and Capabilities
APP NAME CHANGE: FROM CAREAR ASSIST TO CAREAR
With the addition of Instruct functionality into the CareAR Assist app, we have renamed the app from CareAR Assist to CareAR. Existing users of CareAR Assist (release 23.02 or older) will observe the change when they upgrade the app (either manually or via the automatic update process provided by their device).
INSTRUCT FUNCTIONALITY
The key enhancement with this release is the debut of CareAR Instruct functionality that has been merged into the CareAR Assist app. CareAR Instruct is an application that allows a user to consume content (we call them Experiences) that has been prepared for the purpose of visually immersive step-by-step instructions, procedures, job aids, inspections, or processes that are intended to be followed in a particular sequence.
Default application for Anonymous Experiences
The current behavior today for accessing an experience is that when a user loads the experience (via scanning the QR code of the experience or tapping the URL link associated with the experience), the CareAR Instruct app will launch on the user’s device to load and present the experience.
With release 23.04 of the CareAR backend infrastructure, we allow this default behavior to be set by CareAR Operations on a per tenant level – either launching via the merged app or the standalone Instruct app.
If you have an existing tenant and you prefer to auto-launch the CareAR merged app (release 23.03) for your users to anonymously consume public experiences, then contact CareAR support.
Note that new tenants will be initialized with the setting enabled to default to the CareAR merged app (release 23.03).
GENERAL USER EXPERIENCE UPDATES
With this update, there are several significant enhancements to the user experience within the app.
Initial Walkthrough Screens
With the initial loading of the app, we updated the walkthrough screens to include an Instruct functionality screen.
Home Screen
With the home screen, we provide clear call-to-action tiles (for Assist or Instruct), revised tray options, and a tappable profile pic.
Updated Hamburger Menu
The contents of the menu items under the hamburger menu have been slightly reorganized for clarity.
Firstly, the language selection button is moved from the main menu to the Settings submenu.
Recents -> History
With this release, we relabel the Recents button (located in the lower tray of the screen) to History and present the user’s historic usage of Assist and Instruct. The user can review the entire history with Assist and Instruct activity intermingled. Alternatively, the user can filter just the Assist activity or just the Instruct activity. With the Instruct filter, the user can re-launch any given experience.
Contacts
We made a small enhancement to the Contacts screen, allowing the user to set (or un-set) a contact as a Favorite. The star to the right of the contact’s name indicates whether a contact is a favorite.
Experiences
With the introduction of the Instruct functionality into the CareAR app, we include the ability for the user to view all the Experiences that are available to the user in the user’s tenant. This includes both public and private experiences. Note that if an experience is restricted to certain groups, if the user does not belong to group-restricted experiences, then the user will not see those restricted experiences.
When a user consumes an experience when they are logged in (i.e., authenticated), then by definition they are not anonymous and hence will not decrement the anonymous session balance of the tenant.
Refer to the Experience Access Control documentation for additional details.
Empty States
As part of general UI cleanup, we made the empty state screens more consistent. Examples are provided below.