Downtime Notice: Tuesday June 10

[andyrobo]

Fuelly Drivers,

We just wanted to let you know that we will be performing a major backend upgrade on Fuelly Tuesday night. During a small window of time our website and mobile app will be down and unavailable for adding fuel-ups. We are doing the upgrade at one of the slowest times of the week for new fuel-ups but if you do fuel-up your vehicle Tuesday night, please write down the fuel-up info and log it on Wednesday when we are back online.

This maintenance will occur between the following times:
Tuesday, June 10th from 12:00 AM CST - Wednesday, June 11th 4:00 AM CST

Although the website will remain nearly identical, this major back end technology upgrade is the first step in a number of new improvements we'll be rolling out to Fuelly this summer.

Note: If you use the GasTracker+ app, you will need to update the app before you can use it after the system upgrade. It's a whole new app that has the basics but we plan to roll out more features ASAP.

For more information, ask questions or for support, please post to this discussion.

Thanks for your patience as we work to make Fuelly better.

The Fuelly Team.

[NorCalExplorer]

Thanks for the heads up. Look forward to any future improvements.

[mstef66]

How is the Gas Tracker Plus app different from the Fuelly app?

[andyrobo]

Originally Posted by mstef66

How is the Gas Tracker Plus app different from the Fuelly app?

Good question.

GasTracker+ was an app created by a 3rd party developer. When it launched we got excited to see an app for Fuelly and acquired the app from the developer. Unfortunately once we looked under the hood we realized it wasn't the code we wanted to use for the long term. The primary issue with GasTracker is that it uses screen scraping technology so in the background it's calling the Fuelly website, parsing the data and delivering it in a native format. I have to give the developer kudos, it does a lot without having any real access to Fuelly's backend system. Unfortunately this process is also prone to various errors so many people reported that the app simply crashes on them and doesn't work. It might be because they have a different default browser set or some other configuration issue.

We will be releasing a new version of GasTracker on Wednesday after the backend conversion is complete. It's connected through our new API and should work for everyone. I'm sure there will be reports of bugs and we have all hands on deck to squash them. It's a "Sync Only" product meaning you have to have a connection for it to work. When the app changes screens it's accessing information from our API and will not function properly without a connection.

As we announced last year we acquired GasCubby, one of the oldest and leading iOS fuel loggers and plan to make that our primary app in the long run. It will be the same thing as GasTracker+ but it will work offline and also allow users to log their fuel ups without being part of the Fuelly community. The code for the new GasCubby is essentially going to be the same as GasTracker+ and we already have many of the offline features developed. Our plan is to get our new backend system in place, dial in GasTracker and then release the new GasCubby which will be renamed to GasFuelly. At some point in the future GasTracker will not longer be available in the app store and everyone will be directed to install GasFuelly.

I just posted an update in the other discussion about GasFuelly which you might want to read to get some ideas on what kind of features we will be added (here is the link).

So the GasTracker+ is the Fuelly App and we reference it internally as Fuelly Sync Only. Later GasFuelly will be the main Fuelly app and allow for users to log data when no connection is available and sync up as soon as they get connected (plus tons of other features).

We feel having a seamless cross platform solution will provide the best user experience. I know it's a big confusing but we hope that in the long run this strategy will help all the products that are being merged into Fuelly. The primary goal in growing through acquisitions was to help us build a bigger community which means we will be able to collectively harness the data of the other drivers to better understand real world performance of our vehicles.