What Deep Functional Testing Finds

Steps to reproduce

1. On an iPhone, open the address verification step and tap Take a photo.
2. Allow camera access when iOS asks, or allow it in Settings and come back.
3. Tap Take a photo again, or anything else on the screen.

Root cause

The app opened the photo picker in the same moment it was closing its own permission sheet. iOS presented the picker while the sheet was still animating away, so the picker never appeared, never finished, and sat invisibly over the whole app, swallowing every tap.

Business impact

Residents froze at the exact moment they were proving their address to join, with nothing on screen to explain why.

Fix

Close the sheet first, then open the picker a moment later and only once the app is active. The same pattern later froze the app when opening a link from a post, and a search of the code found one more case when sharing a meetup to a calendar. All three now go through one shared helper.

Steps to reproduce

1. Sign up and write a review of a local business.
2. Go to Settings and delete the account.

Root cause

A database trigger that recalculates ratings ran with the permissions of whoever caused it and called its helper by an unqualified name. Deletion requests arrive from the sign in service, which cannot resolve that name, so the trigger failed and rolled back the entire deletion. Deleting a profile directly as an admin always worked, which is why it went unnoticed. It surfaced when 489 automated test accounts piled up on staging: the cleanup step had been quietly ignoring the same error.

Business impact

Both app stores require working account deletion inside the app, and data erasure requests depend on the same path.

Fix

The trigger now runs with fixed permissions and fully qualified names, the cleanup step checks for errors, and an automated test deletes an account that has written a review on every run.

Steps to reproduce

1. Start the weekly digest send.
2. Start it again a few seconds later, as a double click or a scheduler retry would.

Root cause

The send kept no record of who had already been emailed, so nothing distinguished a second run from the first.

Business impact

A duplicate in every inbox invites unsubscribes and spam complaints, and spam complaints hurt delivery of every future email.

Fix

A send ledger for each edition and resident. Each resident is claimed before their email goes out, so a repeat run skips them, and a run cut off by a timeout can simply be started again to finish the rest.

Steps to reproduce

1. Sign up in app version 1.0.17.
2. On the Welcome screen, skip the "Which cluster are you in?" step.
3. Add a photo or skills and tap Continue. The cluster sheet opens.
4. Pick a cluster and continue.

Root cause

The cluster picked in the sheet stayed on screen but was never sent with the save, so the server kept refusing a profile without a cluster.

Business impact

New residents hit a wall in their first minute. Two reported it within a week, and most people in that position simply leave.

Fix

Every save now carries the cluster, the server no longer refuses a save over a missing cluster, and sign up asks for the cluster up front.

Steps to reproduce

1. On an iPhone, create a post, listing or meetup.
2. Add a photo from the library without cropping it.
3. Save.

Root cause

iPhones store photos as HEIC by default. An uncropped library pick returned the original HEIC file, and storage accepts only JPEG, PNG, WebP and GIF. Profile pictures are always cropped, and cropping converts the image, so they slipped through.

Business impact

Posts, listings, meetups, business logos and portfolios could not use iPhone library photos, and the error only appeared at the very end, at Save.

Fix

The picker now asks iOS for a compatible JPEG, and a refused file gets a plain explanation instead of a technical error. On the web, HEIC profile pictures that browsers cannot show fall back to initials.

Steps to reproduce

1. Open a profile created before the five skill limit, holding seven skills.
2. Change anything, for example add a showcase item.
3. Save.

Root cause

The new limit only stopped people adding a sixth skill. Profiles already over it were refused on every save, whatever was being changed.

Business impact

Five early members could not update their profiles, and the error pointed them at the wrong step.

Fix

Both editors now check first and take the person to the skills step: "The limit is now 5 skills and you have 7. Untick 2 to save."

Steps to reproduce

1. List a business under Car Wash & Services.
2. Ship a release that renames the category to Car Services & Sales.
3. Browse Find Help on the web or in the app.

Root cause

The rename shipped with a data update that was never run on production, so the listing kept the old category name. Both browse screens build their sections from the current category names, so an unknown name meant no section and no listing.

Business impact

A local business was invisible to residents for more than five weeks, with nothing to warn anyone.

Fix

Corrected the data on production. Listings with an unrecognised category now appear under Other Services, so a mismatch can never hide a business again.

Steps to reproduce

1. As a resident, leave a five star review for a business.
2. Open the business card in the directory.

Root cause

The routine that updates review counts ran with the reviewer's permissions, which cannot change someone else's business record, so the update silently changed nothing. An earlier patch only seemed to work because its one time correction ran with admin rights; every review written afterwards was missed again.

Business impact

Businesses lost the ratings they had earned, and reviewers saw their reviews apparently ignored.

Fix

The routine now runs with its own permissions, and every business's count was recalculated.

Steps to reproduce

1. Sign up with an email address that already has a confirmed account.
2. Wait for the confirmation code, then tap Resend.

Root cause

The sign in service deliberately sends nothing for an existing address, so sign up cannot be used to check who is a member. The app did not recognise that silent answer, and the symptom looked like an email delivery fault, which sent the first investigation the wrong way.

Business impact

Returning residents concluded the app was broken.

Fix

The app now recognises the already registered answer. The website shows "You already have an account" with Sign in and Forgot password, and the app opens sign in with the address filled in. An automated test pins the sign in service's behaviour.

Steps to reproduce

1. Create a meetup on the website.
2. Type the year 209820 into the date.
3. Save.

Root cause

The form checked that a date was present, not that it was a real date in a sensible range.

Business impact

Broken sorting and odd listings for everyone browsing meetups.

Fix

Dates must now be real calendar dates from one year ago to two years ahead, with friendly errors. The database also refuses impossible years, as a second line of defence.

Steps to reproduce

1. Install a staging build on an iPhone, then replace it with the store app.
2. Run the automated tests on staging.

Root cause

Staging and store builds share one app identifier, so the phone's old staging registration kept routing staging notifications to whichever build was installed. The doubled "New meetup:" came from the title being added twice.

Business impact

No residents were affected, but the same gap could put test content in front of real people.

Fix

Removed the stale registration, stopped notifications from test accounts, and removed the doubled prefix.