February was a month of refinement and "straightening the lines." While our engineering team is deep in the final stages of a total video infrastructure overhaul, we’ve shipped major updates to how you present yourself and how your team communicates.

🚀 Key Highlights

• Real Profile Pictures: You can now swap your avatar for a professional headshot. This is a highly requested feature to help remote teams feel more "human" and connected. Upload yours in Settings > Profile.

• Major Chat Overhaul: We’ve pushed a series of updates to make Chat faster and more reliable. This includes fixed thread counters, accurate badge notifications, and smoother message loading.

• Pinned Messages & Stars: Never lose an important link again. You can now pin messages in channels and "Star" your most-used channels to keep them at the top of your list ("Star" is available on Mobile).

• Chat Tabs: We introduced a new tabbed interface at the top of chat channels. This currently houses your pinned items, with a "Files" tab coming soon.

📱 Mobile App Enhancements

• Performance Boost: The mobile app is now significantly faster and more responsive.

• Feature Parity: Mobile users now have full access to pinned messages and starred channels, ensuring you stay organized even when you’re away from your desk.

🛠️ Product & UX Fixes

• Presence & Reliability: Improved "presence" logic to ensure your online/offline status is always accurate, a crucial foundation for our upcoming Analytics suite.

• Headshot Cropping Tool: Fixed issues with the photo uploader to ensure your profile picture looks perfect on the first try.

• Global Support: Added auto-translation for support messages. You can now message the SoWork team in any language, and we’ll be able to help.

• Payment Security: Expanded support for 3D Secure (3DS) authentication to ensure secure and seamless billing for international credit cards.

• Permissions: Fixed a bug that prevented Admins from correctly upgrading Guest accounts to Teammate status.

🎨 New Content

• Gundam Mech Suit: For those who prefer the high-tech look, we’ve released a giant robot outfit for your avatar.

• The "Science" RV: A new interactive object for your office... for those who enjoy a bit of chemistry.

• Affiliate Expansion: We’ve officially added Nigeria to the SoWork Affiliate Program.

🏗️ Coming Soon

Our "Big Three" projects are at the finish line: a total rewrite of our video and screen sharing infrastructure, a seat-based billing system, and the v3 Team Analytics Suite, all launching throughout March.

Vish and the SoWork Team