Happy April 
Did you know that the name for the month of April originally came for Aprilis which means to open? I found this here and was struck by the sudden realization of its relativity with the open mapping ecosystem. The tech collective approach, HOT has brought to build the tools with, for, and by the community so far has been commendable. So, what we want to see is the same collaborative effort to make the tool even better. Here is a GitHub discussion dedicated to improving the quality of mapping by working on new tools for validation. And we would love to hear your thoughts.
And now, Let’s go through the latest updates that have happened during March. Also, find our previous blog here.
So, what happened in March?
During this month, our primary focus was on writing test cases and updating dependencies to improve the tool’s robustness and provide users with a better experience. However, we always prioritize our community and ensure that critical bugs reported are immediately fixed, along with feature enhancements. Hence, below are some of the new updates:
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A user reported that the priority area was not visible on a task page. We have fixed this issue and will be there in the upcoming deployment. More info here.
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It is also essential to provide proper messages to users, as determining the cause of an error can be tedious. Previously, when a user was not logged in but attempted to access management sections through a URL/link, a permission message would appear without prompting the user to log in. We have addressed this by reminding users to log in before displaying the permission message.
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Likewise, the markdown editor has been a highlight since its launch, so we have been replacing the text editors available in the tool with markdown editors in different sections. This month, we did that in below areas:
a. Message team members section b. Task action and task detail section
- Furthermore, there is something interesting coming soon. We have been working on displaying related projects on the project detail page. Below is a quick preview of how it will appear, but we kindly ask for your patience and to wait for the official release :).
Give us 
if you enjoy the new updates.
What else beyond updates?
- As part of the HOT efforts to improve the quality of the mapping, we’re working on new tools for validation. Previously, we discussed some ideas for validation before uploading changes to the map. This time, we want to discuss ideas for post-uploading changes to the map. So, we welcome your valuable input in this discussion.
Wanna be a part of the Tasking Manager community?
• Join Slack: #tasking-manager or Matrix: here
• Visit Tasking Manager Github here to
- See the progress of a particular month on the GitHub board
- Request a bug fix or feature enhancement
- Help us prioritize issues, and feature requests
Upcoming events
- Deployment scheduled on April 12th.
- Monthly collective meetup on Wednesday, 12th April at 9:00 UTC or 15:00 UTC.
Thank you for being a part of Tasking Manager. Will see you in next month’s updates. Until then, keep mapping for people in need.
Namaste 