September Update

August was a rollercoaster for the team behind your go-to LSD locator and finder, but as summer winds down, we’re looking ahead to a productive and exciting fall. In this blog post, we’ll discuss the “Behind-the-Scenes Bug Battles” that kept us busy and the steps we took to overcome them. We’ll also give you a sneak peek into what’s coming in September to fill all your oilfield locator needs.

Behind the Bugs

We had an influx of bug reports in August, and we’re grateful to our users for their patience and understanding. Here are the two main issues we faced:

Sweeping Changes to our Lookup Systems

As your trusty oilfield maps provider, our top priority has always been to make OilTrails functional in any terrain, regardless of cell service quality. To accomplish this, we’ve strived to store as much LSD location data as possible on users’ devices. However, we cannot store all the data, and we rely on our services to fetch the rest. We host much of this data on our own servers, but we also use third-party services to provide an additional redundancy.

In our ongoing commitment to deliver the best possible experience, we recently transitioned to a new API service provider. This move aligns with our goals of scalability, high performance, and data reliability, allowing us to continue offering you the robust and seamless OilTrails experience you’ve come to expect. This meant we had to make sweeping changes to our lookup systems, which resulted in a few bugs. Unfortunately, something else happened at the same time that complicated the issue…

iOS 17 Public Beta Woes

Shortly after we pushed a full production release, reports of crashes began to pour in. Obviously our full attention was on combing through our newly introduced lookup changes. It was odd, because our crash reports were not displaying any information, adding to the confusion.

It turned out that users were updating to the iOS 17 public beta. Beta software does not report through Apple’s crash reporting within the IDE. However, once we realized that the crashes were coming from the beta, we were able to quickly diagnose and fix the issues. We’re happy to report that the latest version of OilTrails is fully compatible with iOS 17.

Latest Version Updates: Stability Restored

A vast majority of the bugs we taken care of and we have been monitoring to ensure no further problems arrise: we have just released new update that aims to squash a few more minor bugs and improve your experience with OilTrails. For Android, we’ve just launched version 2.0.400, and for our iOS users, version 2.2.409 has been available for a few days now.

Important Notice

We’re planning to send an in-app message within the next couple of weeks to notify users who haven’t yet updated. The message will serve as a friendly reminder to switch to the newest version to ensure you’re taking full advantage of OilTrails’ capabilities and features. To ensure you are on the current version, please check the App Store or Google Play Store.

Upcoming Plans for September

1. Expanding Offline LSD and NTS Lookups on Android

Offline LSD and NTS lookups have been available on iOS for over a month now, and we’re thrilled with the positive feedback. Our Android users can expect this feature to roll out in the future.

2. OilTrails Business Access: A Sneak Peek

One of our most requested features is multi-user access, designed for businesses wanting to empower their teams with reliable oilfield navigation, well data, and weather. Although we’re still in the early stages, we’re actively working on prototypes and discussions are ongoing with platform providers to make this a reality. Are you a business looking for a lease tracker app for your team? please contact us if you would like to pilot the program when we start rolling it out.

We’re excited for what’s coming and can’t wait to roll out these plans in the coming months. We are always striving to improve OilTrails, the ultimate oil well lease locator app. Thank you for being a part of the OilTrails community. As always, for any suggestions or queries, feel free to contact us.

Onwards and upwards to a promising fall season!