What's new

A high-level history of major changes to the Signposting Toolkit.

Duplicate and delete workflows from their cards — 15 October 2026

Practice admins can now duplicate or delete a workflow from its card on the Workflow Guidance page, and can do the same with a workflow wherever they find it.

New

• Choose ⋯ on a workflow’s card, or right-click it, for Duplicate… and Delete…, as in Manage workflows. Deleting asks you to type DELETE first, and deleting your practice’s copy of a shared workflow takes your practice back to the shared one. See Delete a workflow.

Improved

• A workflow’s card, its row in Manage workflows and the workflow itself now offer practice admins the same things. The button at the top of a shared workflow now says Customise for your practice.
• The page for managing workflows is now called Manage workflows, as the link to it is, rather than Manage Workflow Templates. Shared workflows are marked Shared there and at the top of the workflow, rather than Global and Default.
• A new shared workflow appears at your practice once the Signposting Toolkit team has published it, not while it’s still being written.
• Until Workflow Guidance is switched on for your practice, staff who open a link to a workflow are told it isn’t switched on yet, as on the Workflow Guidance page. Practice admins can still prepare workflows. See Roles and permissions.

A redesigned Workflow Guidance page — 15 October 2026

Workflow Guidance is now a library of your practice’s workflows, with the same look and search as Signposting and the Practice Handbook.

Improved

• Select anywhere on a workflow’s card to open it: the row of Open workflow buttons has gone. Each card shows the workflow’s icon, its name and when to use it.
• The page is headed Workflow Guidance, as in the menu, as not every workflow is about a document. Its sections are Everyday and Other workflows, each A to Z.
• Search finds workflows with all the words you type, in any order, and highlights them. Press / to jump to it and Enter to open the only match, and use the arrow keys to move between cards. When you go back from a workflow, your search is still there. See Workflow Guidance.
• A workflow added in the last two weeks is marked New, and one whose steps have changed Updated. Tidying a workflow’s diagram or wording, or changing its settings, doesn’t mark it. Your practice’s own copy of a shared workflow says Customised for your practice, more quietly than before.
• The cards follow your Theme in Preferences, as Signposting and the handbook do, and the page is shorter and easier to read on a phone.
• Practice admins find Edit, Settings and Customise… in a ⋯ menu on each card, and Engagement and Manage workflows at the top of the page. Creating a workflow and its settings use the new section names. See Workflows.

One sharp logo everywhere — 14 October 2026

The toolkit’s header, sign-in page and browser tab now show the same Signposting Toolkit logo as these guides, sharp at any size.

Improved

• The logo at the top of every page is the compass with “Signposting” and “TOOLKIT” beneath it. It’s drawn rather than a picture, so it stays crisp when you zoom in or use a high-resolution screen, and it no longer gets squashed on a phone.
• The icon in your browser tab and on a saved home-screen shortcut is the compass on its own. A browser may keep showing the old icon for a while until it refreshes its copy.

Feedback question asked afresh — 14 October 2026

The feedback card can now ask its question whatever you told the earlier four-question survey.

• Before, if you had answered the four-question survey, the card waited 60 days before asking How useful is the toolkit in your day-to-day work?, and if you had chosen No thanks, it never asked. Now it can ask you, as long as you’ve used the toolkit on a few different days.
• What you tell this question’s card still counts: Not now puts it away for a week and Don’t ask again stops it asking. It still appears at most once a day, and stops after a few days whether or not you answer.
• Your answers to the earlier survey are kept as they were. See Answer a feedback survey.

The menu and the keyboard — 14 October 2026

Pressing Tab no longer moves through the menu while it’s closed, and closing the menu puts you back on its button.

Fixed

• With the menu (☰) closed, Tab went through its links, which you couldn’t see. Now Tab skips the menu until you open it.
• Closing the menu with Esc, or by choosing something in it that opens over the page, such as Suggest a feature, puts you back on the menu button. Before, you were left on a button in the hidden menu.

Feedback in one click — 13 October 2026

The feedback survey is now one question that a single click answers, and practice admins can see how their staff rated the toolkit.

Improved

• One question, one click: the card now asks How useful is the toolkit in your day-to-day work? Select a face and your rating is saved straight away; a comment is optional, and you can select another face to change your answer. If you haven’t used the toolkit enough to say, choose I haven’t used it enough yet. See Answer a feedback survey.
• Asked at a better moment: the card appears on a home page when you come back from using the toolkit, never as you arrive or over guidance, and only once you’ve used it on a few different days.
• What you told the earlier survey still counts: if you said No thanks to the four-question survey, you won’t be asked this one, and if you answered it, the card waits 60 days. You can always answer from the menu.

New

• Staff feedback on Analytics: practice admins can see the share of staff who found the toolkit very or extremely useful, every answer’s count and a summary to copy, once at least five staff have given a rating. Comments and who answered stay with the Signposting Toolkit team. See Staff feedback.

Quicker choices in the handbook’s page editor — 13 October 2026

The handbook’s page editor has quicker ways to set up a page, and layouts to start an empty one from.

New

• An empty page can start from a layout: Step-by-step procedure, Who to contact or Quick reference. Its headings go into the page for you to fill in or replace. See Adding and editing pages.

Improved

• When adding to the handbook, choose Guidance page or Table beside the heading.
• Choose a page’s warning badge in one go: None, Important, Urgent, or Custom… to write your own.
• The other categories a page shows in are listed under Also show in. Select × on one to take it out, or + Add to choose another.
• For practice admins, Who can edit lists the people named on the page, each with × to take them off. Type a name or email to add someone. See Letting staff edit a page.

A calmer page editor in the handbook — 13 October 2026

The handbook’s page editor now starts with the title and the writing, with the page’s settings beside them and saving always in reach.

Improved

• The heading says what you’re doing and where, such as New page in Nursing, under the handbook’s trail to that category, and the cursor starts in the title.
• The page’s settings sit beside the writing, or below it on a narrow screen: where it lives, its warning badge, reviews and, for practice admins, who can edit it. A new page just shows its review reminder, which counts from the day it’s added. See Adding and editing pages.
• A new page starts with just its content. Add Role cards or Notes at the bottom when you need them, and Remove them again.
• The editors grow as you write, with their formatting buttons staying at the top of the screen, instead of scrolling inside a small box.
• Preview, Cancel and the save button stay in a bar along the bottom of the screen, which says when you have unsaved changes. Press Ctrl and S (⌘ and S on a Mac) to save, and Back to editing returns you to where you were after a preview.
• Saving without a title now says the page needs one and puts the cursor there, rather than the button doing nothing.

Show a handbook page in more than one category — 13 October 2026

A handbook page can now show in other categories as well as its own, so staff find it wherever they look.

New

• Choose Also show in… from ⋯ on a page’s card, or Also show in on its edit screen, to show it in other categories. It’s still one page, and its own category still decides who can see and edit it. Practice admins can show any page anywhere, and category editors between the categories they look after. See Show a page in more than one category.
• In a category it’s shown in, a page’s card says where it lives, such as From Nursing › Ordering, and the page lists the other categories after its own, under Also in.
• A category’s editors can take a page from another category out of theirs, with Remove from on ⋯ on its card.

Finding your way around the handbook — 12 October 2026

A handbook page now shows the category it’s in, search results say which category each page is in, and / jumps to the handbook’s search.

New

• Above a handbook page’s title is the category it’s in, after any category it sits inside, such as Nursing › Ordering. Select a category to see its other pages, which helps when you’ve opened a page from a link or a quick access button. See Reading a handbook page.
• Press / to jump to the search box from anywhere on the handbook’s main page, with your last search selected to type over. See Find what you need.

Improved

• When a handbook search finds pages in more than one category, each card says which category its page is in, beside when it was updated.

Menus on handbook pages, and more in category menus — 12 October 2026

Pages you can edit have a menu on their card in the handbook, and a category’s menu can now put it in the menu or delete it once it’s empty.

New

• Each page you can edit has ⋯ in the corner of its card on the handbook’s main page, or right-click the card. It offers Edit, Move to… another category, Still correct when its review is due, Copy link, Open in new tab and, for practice admins, Delete with Undo. The cards of pages due a review say Review due to whoever can edit them. See Adding and editing pages.

Improved

• A category’s menu in the handbook (⋯ beside it, or right-click it) now has Show in menu or Take out of menu, and Delete once the category has no pages or subcategories. See Categories and visibility.

Plainer words in the handbook settings — 12 October 2026

A handbook category’s settings have plainer names, and the handbook starter has moved to the Pages tab.

Improved

• Build pages with the handbook starter is on the Pages tab of the handbook settings, next to Add page, rather than above the rest of the settings. See Build pages with the handbook starter.
• In a category’s settings, Visible to is now Who can see it, Editors is Who can edit and Starter template is Template for new pages. See Categories and visibility.
• The settings say page or table rather than item: a quick access button has a Page it opens, found by its title, category or type, and the Audit tab names the page or table each change was to. See Quick access buttons.

Asking before deleting in the handbook settings — 12 October 2026

Deleting a category or a quick access button in the handbook settings now asks first, in the toolkit’s own box.

Improved

• Delete category asks you to confirm, and says no pages go with it and that it can’t be undone. Esc closes the question and leaves the category’s settings open. See Categories and visibility.
• Delete on a quick access button asks too, and says the page it opens isn’t changed. See Quick access buttons.

Fixed

• A deleted category stayed in the list until the page was reloaded. It now goes as soon as it’s deleted.

Drag handbook categories into order — 12 October 2026

Practice admins can drag handbook categories into a new order, and it’s saved in one go.

Improved

• On the Categories tab of the handbook settings, drag a category by its handle to where you want it. The new order is saved when you let go, rather than at every step. Subcategories move within their own category. See Categories and visibility.
• With the keyboard, Space picks a category up, the arrow keys move it and Space drops it. The arrow buttons still move a category one place at a time, and the list shows its new place straight away.

Set the on-take GP from the handbook — 12 October 2026

Practice admins can set the on-take GP from the handbook’s pinned panel, without opening the settings.

New

• Set on-take GP in the pinned panel, or Edit rota once this week has a GP, opens this week and the next three to fill in. Open the full rota goes to the settings for weeks further ahead. See Pinned panel and on-take rota.

Icons for handbook categories in the menu — 12 October 2026

Practice Handbook categories in the menu now have an icon beside their name, so each is easier to spot.

New

• Menu icons: each category listed under Practice Handbook in the menu has an icon, such as a phone for call handling or a pill for prescriptions. When a practice admin ticks Show in menu, AI chooses one from a fixed set of icons, by the names of the category and its pages. Practices without handbook smart visuals get the icon the category’s name suggests. See Choose a category’s menu icon.
• For practice admins: open Menu icon under a category’s Show in menu to choose another icon, or select Let AI choose to ask AI again. Everyone at the practice sees the same icon.

Shorter tabs in the handbook settings — 12 October 2026

The handbook settings’ Structure & Settings tab is now three shorter tabs, Categories, Main page and On-take rota, and each category takes one line.

Improved

• Categories lists each category on one line, with its subcategories under it, how many pages each holds, and a tag for any setting that isn’t the usual one, such as Restricted or In menu. Select a category to open all its settings, where you can also rename it, add a subcategory or delete it. See Categories and visibility.
• Main page has the quick access buttons and the pinned panel, and On-take rota the weekly rota, which Set on-take GP opens.
• Category settings, in a category’s ⋯ menu in the handbook, opens that category’s settings.
• Delete category works once a category is empty, and until then says what’s still in it.

Fixed

• View detailed engagement on the handbook’s card in Analytics opened the handbook settings on Pages. It now opens Engagement.

Set on-take GP opens the rota — 12 October 2026

The Practice Handbook’s Set on-take GP link now opens the on-take rota, where the week’s GP can be set.

Fixed

• Set on-take GP, in the practice operational info panel when this week has no GP, opened the handbook settings on their first tab rather than at the rota. It now opens On-take rota (weekly) in Structure & Settings. See Pinned panel and on-take rota.
• Links to one part of the handbook settings, such as Set on-take GP and Category settings in a category’s ⋯ menu, could leave you at the top of the page when it took a moment to load. They now go straight to that part.

Add a handbook category without leaving the handbook — 11 October 2026

The foot of the Practice Handbook’s category list now has a way to add a category, and a shortcut to the category settings.

New

• Add category, at the foot of the category list, adds a top-level category there and then. Manage categories opens the categories in the handbook settings, for everything else, such as changing their order. Only practice admins see them. See Categories and visibility.

See which handbook categories are restricted — 11 October 2026

A lock in the Practice Handbook’s category list now marks the categories that not everyone at the practice can see.

New

• A lock beside a category means it’s restricted, or sits inside a restricted category. Practice admins see it on every restricted category, and category editors on the ones they look after. Other staff never see it. On a phone, the Category list says “restricted”. See Categories and visibility.

Long handbook category names take two lines at most — 11 October 2026

A very long category name in the Practice Handbook’s list now stops after two lines, so it doesn’t push the categories below it down the screen.

Improved

• Long category names end in ”…” after two lines. Point at one to see the whole name. Screen readers still read all of it. See Practice Handbook.

Find handbook pages that aren’t in a category — 11 October 2026

Handbook pages with no category have their own place in the category list, rather than only showing under All.

New

• Uncategorised, at the end of the Practice Handbook’s category list and the Category list on a phone, shows the pages that aren’t in a category, whenever there are any. See Practice Handbook.
• For practice admins, it’s a quick way to find those pages and put them in a category: open one, select Edit and choose its Category. See Categories and visibility.

Staff no longer see empty handbook categories — 11 October 2026

The Practice Handbook’s category list leaves out categories with no pages for staff, so nobody opens one to find it empty.

Improved

• Categories with no pages yet don’t show in the handbook’s sidebar, or the Category list on a phone, until a page is added to them. See Practice Handbook.
• Practice admins and category editors still see the empty categories they can add pages to, greyed until they have one. See Categories and visibility.

See which handbook categories have changed — 10 October 2026

The Practice Handbook’s category list now shows which categories have pages you haven’t seen since they were added or changed.

New

• A dot beside a category’s page count means a page in it, or in a category inside it, has been added or changed since you last looked. It shows on a category even while the ones inside it are folded away, and goes once you’ve opened the pages or chosen Mark all as read in What’s changed. On a phone, the Category list says how many, such as “2 changed”. See Practice Handbook.

Feedback surveys — 10 October 2026

The toolkit can now ask staff how it’s working for them, with a short survey that’s easy to put off until a quieter moment.

New

• Feedback surveys: once your practice has been live for four weeks, a small card on the toolkit’s home page may ask if you have a minute for four quick questions. Choose Give feedback to answer, Not now to be asked again in a week, or No thanks to stop the card asking. You can answer whenever suits you from Share feedback on the toolkit in the menu. See Answer a feedback survey.
• Your name is only kept with your answers if you tick I’m happy to be contacted about my answers. The Signposting Toolkit team switches surveys on for each practice; see Optional features.

Work on a handbook category from the handbook — 10 October 2026

Each category in the Practice Handbook’s sidebar now has a menu, so you can add a page to it, rename it or add a subcategory without opening the handbook settings.

New

• A menu on each category: point at a category and select ⋯, or right-click it. On a phone, ⋯ is beside the Category list. Practice admins can choose Add page, Rename, Add subcategory (for top-level categories) or Category settings, which opens the category in the handbook settings. Deleting a category, and who can see or edit it, stay in the settings. See Categories and visibility.
• For category editors: the menu on the categories you look after has Add page. See If you look after a category.

Handbook categories fold away and count search matches — 10 October 2026

The Practice Handbook’s category list is shorter in a big handbook, shows where your search matches are, and is easier to use on a phone.

Improved

• Subcategories fold away: a category with others inside it has an arrow beside it. Select the arrow to show or hide them, or choose the category to open it. The handbook remembers which you’ve opened on this device. See Practice Handbook.
• Search counts: while you search, each category shows how many pages match, and categories with no matches are greyed out.
• On phones: choose a category from the Category list above the pages, rather than scrolling past every category to reach them.

Needs attention stays short in a big handbook — 8 October 2026

The Pages tab of the Practice Handbook settings is easier to use when your handbook has a lot of pages.

Improved

• Needs attention shows how many pages there are for each reason, and lists one reason’s pages at a time, 10 at first. A long list of pages nobody has opened no longer pushes everything else down the page. See Needs attention.
• Pages and tables: in a handbook with more than 30 pages and tables, each category is closed until you open it. Searching or filtering shows every match.

Fixed

• The search box on the Pages tab could be squashed to a few letters when a category had a long name.

Handbook changes you haven’t seen, review reminders and one page editor — 7 October 2026

The Practice Handbook now shows each person the changes they haven’t seen, reminds practices when pages are due a check, lets staff report problems with a page, and has one page editor for everyone.

New

• What’s changed is personal: its number counts the changes you haven’t seen yet, and pages added or changed since you last looked are marked New or Updated on their cards. Opening a page counts as seeing it, and Mark all as read clears them all. See What’s changed.
• See what changed: a page that’s changed since you last opened it says so at the top. See what changed shows the edit, with wording added highlighted in green and wording taken out struck through in red. For a list, it shows the rows added, changed and taken out. See Reading a handbook page.
• Review reminders: choose how often each page should be checked, from every 3 months to every 2 years (a year unless you change it). Staff see when a page was last reviewed under its title, and Review due once it’s due. See Review reminders.
• Report a problem: on a page they can’t edit, staff can tell your practice’s toolkit administrators what’s wrong. Reports arrive in Suggestions, marked Practice Handbook with a link to the page. See Problems reported by staff.
• Needs attention: the handbook settings open on Pages, starting with the pages to check: problems reported, reviews due, empty pages and pages nobody has opened in 90 days. Still correct records a check in one click. See Needs attention.

Improved

• One page editor: practice admins now add and edit pages in the same full-page editor as everyone else, with Preview to see the page as staff will, and a warning before you leave with unsaved changes. Add page opens it in the category you’re looking at, and who else can edit a page is set there and saved with it. Each page now has Edit rather than separate Manage and Edit links. See Adding and editing pages.
• Plainer wording: when you add something, choose Guidance page or Table.
• Undo: straight after you delete a page, Undo puts it back as it was.
• Marking a page as reviewed, or changing only its review details, no longer shows it as updated in What’s changed.

Handbook search finds what’s on the page — 7 October 2026

Practice Handbook search now looks through the text of every page and every list, and each page’s card shows how the page starts.

Improved

• Search: Search handbook… finds words anywhere in a page, including role cards, the rows of lists such as phone numbers, and attachment names, not just in titles. Pages with your words in the title come first, and the others show the line where your words appear, highlighted. Going back from a page brings your search back. See Practice Handbook.
• Page cards: each card shows how its page starts, and a list’s card shows how many entries it has.
• Pages added with the handbook starter keep their wording in Page content, like other pages.

Fixed

• Cards for pages made in the handbook editor said No content yet, even when the page had content.
• On pages from the handbook starter, and the example pages copied in when the handbook was switched on, text deleted in the editor came back after saving. It now stays deleted.
• On phones, the category list covered the top of the first page card.

Practice settings agrees with your setup page — 7 October 2026

Practice settings now has a single card for your setup page, which counts the same steps as the page and is named after what it shows.

Improved

• The card is Setup & onboarding while you’re setting up, and becomes Surgery Health once your practice is live or every setup step is done, as the page does. Before, a separate Surgery Health card appeared as soon as the questionnaire was finished, but opened your setup steps until setup was over. See Setup checklist and Surgery Health.

Fixed

• The Setup & onboarding card could say Setup complete while the Continue setting up panel still listed cards to change. The card didn’t count cards sent back for changes in clinical review, or the team members and high-risk buttons steps. It now counts every essential step on your setup page, and only shows Complete once they’re all done. See Setup checklist and Surgery Health.

Teams can look after their own handbook categories — 7 October 2026

You can now name the people who look after a Practice Handbook category, give a category a starter template for new pages, and list up to three categories in the menu.

New

• Category editors: under Editors on a category in the handbook settings, name the people who look after it, such as your nurses for a Nursing category. They can add pages and lists to it and its subcategories with Add page, and keep them up to date, without opening the handbook settings. They always see their categories, so a category for one team only needs that team naming once. Only practice admins can delete pages. Users & access shows the categories each person looks after. See Letting a team look after a category.
• Starter templates: give a category the headings every new page in it should start with, such as supplier, delivery days, how to order and who covers. Subcategories use their parent’s template unless you set another, or none. See Templates for new pages.
• Categories in the menu: tick Show in menu on up to three categories to list them under Practice Handbook in the menu, for everyone who can see them. Each opens the handbook at that category. See Categories in the menu.

Improved

• Saving a handbook page that looks like it has a password in it now asks you to check first, because the audit trail keeps every saved version of a page.
• People who can edit a list can set up its columns from Edit on the list, not only in the handbook settings.

Fixed

• Deleting a handbook page said it could be restored later. Deleted pages can’t be brought back from the toolkit, and the message now says so.

Last active counts all use of the toolkit — 5 October 2026

The Last active column on Users & access now shows when each person last used the toolkit at your practice, including clinical review and admin work.

Fixed

• Last active, Active last 30 days and Never signed in only counted opening cards and Practice Handbook pages. Someone working through clinical review, editing cards or running the practice could look days behind, or as if they had never signed in. Now anything they do at your practice counts, to within a few minutes. Earlier activity at your practice counts where the toolkit has a record of it, such as card views and review decisions. See Users & access.

High-risk buttons link to cards your practice uses — 5 October 2026

When you add a custom high-risk button, the symptom search now lists the cards your practice uses, as your staff see them.

Fixed

• The search for a custom high-risk button listed every card in the shared library. It now lists your practice’s cards, including your own symptoms, by the names staff see. It no longer offers cards you’ve hidden or switched off, or cards removed from the library: a button to a hidden card opened a page that could not be found, and a removed card couldn’t be added. See Custom buttons.

Who can read and edit the handbook — 5 October 2026

Users & access now shows what each person can do in the Practice Handbook, and the handbook starter shows who will read your pages.

Improved

• The Handbook column in Users & access shows whether each person can read the handbook, edit particular pages or edit every page. A person’s panel lists the pages they can edit, with links to them, and names any category they can’t see. Everyone at your practice can read the handbook, so there’s nothing to switch on for each person. See Users & access.
• Before you add pages from the handbook starter, it shows who will be able to read them. Afterwards, the handbook confirms they’re live for your team, with View as Standard User to check what staff see. See Build pages with the handbook starter.
• The top of the handbook settings shows how many people can read the handbook and how many categories are restricted, with View as Standard User. Viewing as a standard user from the handbook settings now opens the handbook itself, not your practice’s home page.
• The Handbook access filter in Users & access is now Handbook editors: everyone who can edit at least one page.

Fixed

• The Practice Handbook write access switch in Users & access has gone, along with the Manage write access link in the handbook settings. The switch never changed what anyone could read or edit, and being off by default it made the handbook look unavailable to standard users. To let someone edit a page, name them as an editor of that page. See Letting staff edit a page.

Quick access settings show what staff see — 5 October 2026

The Quick Access tab now shows the quick access buttons your staff actually see, including the starter set your practice has until you choose your own.

Fixed

• If your practice hadn’t chosen its own quick access buttons, Show quick access buttons on the staff home screen appeared unticked, even though staff saw a starter set of buttons. It’s now ticked, with the starter buttons listed, so you can change them or switch them off. See Quick access buttons.
• The symptom search lists your practice’s cards, including practice symptoms, by the names staff see. It no longer offers cards you’ve hidden or switched off, which never showed as buttons.
• Cancel goes back to your saved buttons instead of clearing the list, and Save only appears once you’ve changed something.

Shrink the setup panel to one line — 4 October 2026

You can now shrink the Continue setting up panel to one line, and workflow diagrams fit the window below it.

New

• Hide shrinks the Continue setting up panel at the top of each page to one line, which still shows how many cards are approved, or your next step. The panel opens in full again when your next step changes, or when you choose Show. See Open your setup journey.

Fixed

• When the Continue setting up panel appeared above a workflow diagram, the diagram could run past the bottom of the window, taking its zoom buttons out of view. Diagrams now resize to fit whenever the panel appears, or is hidden or shown.

Highlights that fit your practice — 4 October 2026

Setup asks once, at the right time, whether highlights would help your team, and no longer counts them as done just because the built-in colours are switched on.

Improved

• Once your cards carry your own wording, the setup page asks Would highlights help your team? Choose highlights, choose Not now to be asked once more a few weeks after go-live, or choose We don’t need highlights. You’re never asked more than twice, and staff never see the question. See Whether highlights would help.
• The Highlight rules setup step is done when your practice has highlight rules of its own or has chosen to go without them. The highlights card under Make it your own shows which.
• Highlight Config is now the same editor as the guided highlight setup. It suggests phrases from your practice details and your cards, says how many of your cards each phrase colours, previews highlights on passages from your own cards, and adds several at once. See Highlight rules.
• Highlights must now use readable colours. Existing highlights that are hard to read are marked Hard to read, and you can still switch them on or off.
• The built-in highlights for “green slot”, “orange slot”, “red slot”, “pink” and “purple” have been retired. If your cards use colour-slot wording, those phrases now have highlight rules of their own in the same colours, which you can change or delete. New practices start without them. See Built-in highlights.

Fixed

• “Purple” and “pink” are no longer coloured like an appointment type wherever they appear, such as in “purple rash”.
• Switching image icons on or off while configuring one practice could change another practice’s setting. It now always changes the practice you’re configuring.
• If you run more than one practice, links from a practice’s setup page to Signposting settings now open that practice’s settings, not your first practice’s.

See the toolkit as your team does — 4 October 2026

Practice admins can now view the toolkit as a standard user, to check what their team sees without a test account.

New

• View as Standard User, on Users & access and in the menu under Management, opens your practice as a standard user sees it. A blue bar at the top of every page says who you’re viewing as. Back to my view takes you back to the same page in your own view, so you can compare the two. See See what standard users see.

Quieter sources for the shared wording — 4 October 2026

The sources a shared card’s wording was checked against are now a single grey line at the end of the card, instead of a box above it.

Improved

• On the card page, Sources for the shared wording now sits below the card rather than between the review panel and the card. It’s at the end of the Symptom Library and Clinical Review previews too. Select it to see the sources.
• It no longer turns amber when your practice has changed the wording. Instead it adds “checked against the shared wording, not yours”. See Sources for the shared wording.

Reviewing a card in one panel — 4 October 2026

When you review a card, its status, the last review and the decision buttons are now together in one panel at the top.

Improved

• The panel shows where the card sits in the list you came from, for example Changes requested · 3 of 12, with Previous and Next.
• It shows who made the last review, when, and their note. It also shows which age group your decision covers, and whether reception can see the card.
• Mark Approved is now Approve, and Approve and next is the main button. Set to Pending appears only on cards that aren’t pending. See Working through the queue.

Fixed

• When nothing was pending, the Pending list said every card was approved, even if some still had changes requested. It now says Nothing waiting for review and offers a button to open those cards.

AI customisation counts your own cards — 4 October 2026

Setup now shows AI customisation as done only once AI has drafted your practice’s own cards.

Fixed

• The setup page and the notice in Clinical Review could treat AI customisation as done for a practice that hadn’t used it, for example after editing cards by hand, or when another practice had used AI on the same cards. They now count only AI drafts of your own cards. To keep your current wording instead, choose Use existing wording. See Use existing wording.

Start reviewing from the top of the list — 4 October 2026

Clinical Review now has a Start reviewing button above the list, so you can work through cards one at a time and read each in full.

Improved

• Start reviewing opens the first card in the list, and Approve and next takes you through the rest in the same order. In Changes requested, Start making changes opens each card in its editor with the reviewer’s note beside it. See Working through the queue.
• Card names in the list look like links, and selecting anywhere on a row opens the card.
• The buttons on each row are quieter, so the list is easier to scan. View is now Preview.

Request changes keeps your note — 4 October 2026

Your note in the Request changes box is no longer lost if it’s too long or doesn’t save, and the box works the same on a card’s page as in the Clinical Review list.

Fixed

• A note longer than 1,000 characters failed with “Invalid input” and was lost. The Request changes box now shows a count as you get close to the limit, says how much to cut, and sends the note once it fits. See Requesting changes or disabling a card.
• If a request doesn’t save, the box stays open with your note and says why, so you can try again.
• On a card’s page, the box now opens with the cursor in the note, and closes with Esc or a click outside it, as it already did in the Clinical Review list.

Clearer next steps in setup and clinical review — 3 October 2026

Setup now shows what’s left of clinical review as two jobs, checking cards and making requested changes, and counts your progress in cards approved.

Improved

• The setup page and the Continue setting up panel show two jobs side by side: cards waiting for a clinician to check, and cards sent back for changes, which any practice admin can make. Each says how many cards it covers, and the second says who asked for the changes. See Set up your practice.
• Setup progress counts cards approved, such as 23 of 221 cards approved, instead of stages, because checking every card is most of the work.
• Step labels on the setup page no longer name a role. Only Review and approve your cards is marked, as clinical sign-off.
• In Clinical Review, AI drafts have an AI draft tag and list only what AI asked you to check, instead of the same red note on every card. See AI drafts and smart visuals.
• Cards sent back for changes lead with Make changes, which opens the card in its editor with the reviewer’s note beside it. Once saved, the card goes back to Pending and the list shows who edited it and what was asked for. See Resolving requested changes.
• Bulk approve pending leaves out AI drafts and cards edited since they were last reviewed, such as fixes to cards sent back for changes, so each gets checked on its own. Its confirmation says the approvals are recorded in your name.
• Request re-review… has moved into the More review actions menu, and its confirmation says how many approvals and notes it will clear.
• Cards with changes requested show a Changes requested banner, the same words the Clinical Review list uses, instead of “Marked as Needs Change”.
• The Continue setting up panel no longer appears on the setup page or in Clinical Review, which show the same steps themselves.

Fixed

• The setup page said “1 staff accounts added”.

Pick up practice setup where you left off — 2 October 2026

Returning admins can continue saved card generation and work through outstanding reviews from the setup panel.

New

• AI customisation saves progress for the whole practice. Continue unfinished cards, pause safely, and retry temporary service limits without regenerating saved cards. See Customise your cards.

Improved

• Cards edited or reviewed after a generation selection are protected. Older runs offer a conservative list of untouched cards to check.
• The return panel separates saved AI draft counts from current clinical review counts and explains why reviewed cards are excluded by default. It makes clear when an older run’s original selection is unknown.
• Review links keep the practice and your list view, including its sort, search and filters. Read the reviewer’s note beside the editor, use Save and next to work through changes, then approve each card explicitly when ready. See Working through the queue.
• Setup indicators keep partly saved generation runs unfinished. Two admins confirming the same cards join one run, and a different selection waits until the saved run is continued or finished. You can keep the current wording even if AI customisation is later switched off.

Tidier automatic layout — 2 October 2026

Workflows laid out for you, including AI drafts and changes AI proposes, are now more compact and easier to follow.

Improved

• A panel of steps that the main path doesn’t lead to, such as a separate set of DNA letter steps, sits beside the main path instead of above it, so it no longer pushes the main path’s steps apart.
• A step that only one answer leads to sits just below that answer, so Yes and No branches stay short, and a step several answers lead to sits below them all.
• Less empty space above and below questions.
• An answer’s label sits by the step it leads to, rather than halfway along a long line.
• Workflows already laid out for you are shown with the new layout straight away, including to staff. It’s saved with your next change.

Fixed

• The space just above and below a question no longer gets in the way of clicking the lines and labels there.
• Lines in a new AI draft or starter go round steps from the start, rather than only after your first change.

See Laying out the steps.

Refine a workflow with AI — 2 October 2026

Practices with AI workflow drafts can now describe a change to a workflow in their own words, check AI’s version of it, and apply it or not.

New

• Refine with AI, in the toolbar while editing a workflow. Describe the change, such as “Put the DNA letters steps in their own labelled section”, then choose Propose changes.
• AI’s version is shown in place of the workflow, with new, changed and moved steps marked and the changes listed. Nothing is saved until you choose Apply changes, and Cancel leaves the workflow as it was.
• Undo AI change puts the workflow back exactly as it was, until you make another change.
• A more compact layout, with the steps closer together, which stays as you edit. Ask AI for it.

Improved

• On a phone, the buttons at the top of a workflow you’re editing wrap onto a new line instead of running off the screen.
• The list of changes when you publish, and in version history, now includes answers that end a path being added, removed, renamed or ending differently, and a different first step.

See Refine a workflow with AI.

Follow a workflow step by step — 1 October 2026

Workflows can now be followed one step at a time, with a large button for each answer, or read as an outline, as well as seen as a diagram.

New

• Step by step, at the top of a workflow, shows one step at a time. Choose an answer, or Next step, until you reach the outcome and what to do with the document. How you got here lists your answers so far, and Back and Start again let you change one.
• Outline lists the steps in the order you follow them, with each question’s answers indented under it. It can be easier to use than the diagram on a small screen or with a screen reader.
• A workflow opens in the view you used last.

See Handbook, appointments and workflows.

Start a workflow from a starter, a copy or an AI draft — 1 October 2026

New workflows can start from a ready-made starter, a copy of another workflow or, where it’s switched on, a draft written by AI, and the version history shows what each version changed.

New

• Create workflow… asks How do you want to start?: Blank, A starter (Hospital and clinic letters, Third-party requests or Test results), A copy of a workflow, or Draft it with AI for practices with AI workflow drafts.
• Duplicate next to each workflow in Manage Workflow Templates.
• Version history says what each version changed, with the full list a click away. View shows any version on the diagram, and Restore puts an earlier version’s steps back as changes to check and publish.
• Build a workflow from the Outline while editing, adding each next step from the list.

Improved

• The workflow settings page is tidier, with the icon picker in a standard dialog.

See Workflows.

Build workflows by adding the next step — 1 October 2026

Workflows are quicker to build: add each next step from a + on the diagram, changes save by themselves and can be undone, and new workflows lay themselves out.

New

• Every path that isn’t finished ends in a +. Choose it to add an instruction, question or outcome, already connected, or to go to a step that’s already there.
• New questions start with Yes and No answers, each with its own +.
• Rename a step by double-clicking its title, or an answer by clicking it on its line.
• Undo and Redo, in the toolbar or with Ctrl+Z (⌘+Z on a Mac). Deleting a step offers Undo straight away.
• New workflows are laid out for you, top to bottom, with panels drawn round their steps and lines that go round steps rather than through them. Tidy up lays out an existing workflow the same way.
• A list of things worth checking before staff use a workflow, such as answers that don’t lead anywhere, with Show me. The publish dialogs list them too.

Improved

• No more Save changes: changes save by themselves, and Saved shows next to the workflow’s name.
• The side panel opens only when you’ve selected something, and changes there apply as you type.
• If someone else changes a workflow while you’re editing it, or you change it in another tab, your copy no longer overwrites their changes.
• Undoing every change since you last published clears Unpublished changes.

Fixed

• Some older workflows showed Couldn’t save for every change, because they had lines to steps that had since been deleted. Those lines are now ignored, and an answer that led to one shows a + so you can choose where it goes.

See Workflows.

Safer workflow changes, and a calmer look — 1 October 2026

Changes to a published workflow now wait until you publish them, and workflows have a clearer, calmer look.

For practice admins:

• Staff never see half-finished changes. Once a workflow is published, your changes go into a working copy, and staff keep the published version until you choose Publish changes. Before publishing, it lists what you’ve changed: steps added, renamed or removed, and lines added or relabelled. Discard changes puts the steps back as they were published, and See what staff see shows the version staff have.
• Version history. Each time you publish, the version staff see is recorded. A workflow’s Settings lists its versions, with when each was published and by whom.
• Settings no longer unpublish a workflow. Changing a workflow’s name, description, icon or section applies straight away, instead of hiding the workflow from staff until it’s published again.
• Tones instead of colours. Mark a step Important or Urgent to give it an amber or red bar down the side. Steps you coloured before show as the nearest tone until you choose one.
• Customising a shared default copies the version your staff see, now including its badges and tones.
• No lost edits on the way out. Leaving a workflow with your browser’s back button, or a link elsewhere in the toolkit, saves the step you were editing. Publish on a draft also asks about unsaved changes first.
• Nothing left out when you publish. Publishing waits for changes that are still saving. If moving a step or resizing a panel couldn’t be saved, publishing stops and tells you, so you can make that change again first.

For everyone using workflows:

• A calmer look. Steps are clean cards with the first words of their details. Questions have a question mark instead of a diamond, outcomes are green cards that say what to do, and answers sit on the lines as labels. The INSTRUCTION, QUESTION and END labels have gone.
• Follow a route. Point at a step to highlight the lines into and out of it in blue.

See Workflows.

Easier workflow building — 1 October 2026

Building a workflow is easier: new workflows open ready to build, connecting steps works first time, and changes are no longer lost.

For practice admins building workflows:

• New workflows open ready to build. After Create and start building, the flowchart opens in editing mode with a prompt to add the first step: an instruction, a question or an outcome. A new step opens with its title selected, so you can type its name and press Enter to save.
• Edit from the top of the page. Edit workflow and Done editing sit above the flowchart, next to the workflow’s status (Draft or Published). While you’re editing, a note says whether staff will see your changes straight away. The Mode switch in the Details panel and its pop-up warning have gone, and Publish sits at the top whenever the workflow is a draft.
• Connecting steps works first time. The dots on a step’s edges appear as soon as you start editing (they used to need a page reload), are larger, and take the connection when you let go right on them. Connecting from a question asks for the answer’s label, with Yes and No one click away; connecting from any other step adds the line straight away.
• No more lost changes. Changes to a step’s wording are kept while you move other steps around. Opening another step, closing the panel or finishing editing asks whether to save or discard changes you haven’t saved, and Save changes stays in view at the bottom of the panel. Moving two steps in quick succession now saves both.
• No browser pop-ups. Confirmations and errors appear in the toolkit’s own dialogs and messages, and a save that fails now says so instead of failing silently.
• Customising a shared default. Staff keep seeing the default until you publish your customised copy, instead of the workflow disappearing from their list as soon as you start. The copy opens ready to edit.
• Manage Templates shows each workflow’s status (Published or Draft, and Hidden when it’s switched off) and its section as named on the Workflow Guidance page. Edit opens the flowchart ready to edit, and the actions are no longer cut off: descriptions sit under the names, and Delete asks you to confirm in a dialog. Workflow settings and the create dialog use the same names: Where should it appear?, List on the Workflow Guidance page and Publish.

For everyone using workflows:

• Easier to read. The flowchart fills the window and opens at a readable size at the top, instead of shrinking the whole workflow to fit. Scroll to move through it; pinch, or hold Ctrl (⌘ on a Mac) and scroll, to zoom.
• Clearer wording. Workflow cards say Open workflow, and only a practice’s own copy of a shared default is marked Customised.

See Workflows and, for staff, Workflow Guidance.

Help that knows where you are — 1 October 2026

Help is now a click away on every page, searches every guide, and shows the guides for your role.

New

• A ? button at the top right of every page opens Help, starting with the guides for the page you’re on.
• Search every guide from the Help panel. Type a task, such as “add a user”, and go straight to the right section of these guides.
• What’s new in the menu lists recent changes, with a blue dot when something has changed since you last looked.
• Get support at the bottom of the Help panel: how to report a problem, ask for a card change or raise a clinical safety concern.

Improved

• Help shows reception staff the guides for using the toolkit, and practice admins the guides for running it as well.
• The sign-in page has a Trouble signing in? section, and the Access Denied page and the message for a module your practice doesn’t have now say what to do next.
• The “New navigation” tip no longer appears for new accounts.

See Getting help in the toolkit.

Card pages need you to sign in — 1 October 2026

A card’s own page now asks you to sign in, and shows your practice’s version of a card only to your practice’s team.

Fixed

• Signing in to open a card. If you open a link to a card while signed out, the toolkit asks you to sign in and then takes you to the card. Before, the page opened without signing in and showed your practice’s wording.
• Your version of a card stays in your practice. Someone signed in to a different practice who opens your practice’s version of a card sees Access Denied, as on your practice’s other pages.

See Data and security.

Diagrams of how cards go live — 1 October 2026

Three new diagrams show at a glance how a card is reviewed, how your practice’s library is built and how setup fits together.

• How a card goes live, with what staff see at each review status: in the Clinical reviewer guide and Clinical governance.
• The shared library and your practice’s changes: in Cards.
• The four setup stages, with who leads each one and what completes it: in Set up your practice.

Readable 999 in smart visuals, and a standard Request changes dialog — 1 October 2026

Phone numbers in smart visuals are now readable on the red warning panel, and the Request changes dialog and AI customisation samples work like the rest of the toolkit.

Fixed

• Smart visuals: phone numbers such as 999 showed in dark grey, even on the red If any apply panel, where they were hard to read. They now take the colour of the text around them, including your practice’s highlight colours.
• Request changes in Clinical Review now opens the toolkit’s standard dialog: you can type your note straight away, and Esc closes it like Cancel. The wording and choices haven’t changed.
• AI customisation: the sample cards now show each card’s wording as staff will see it, and support panels keep their line breaks.

See Requesting changes or disabling a card and Smart visuals.

Practice Handbook editor shows the page you selected — 1 October 2026

In Practice Handbook settings, the page editor now always shows, and saves, the text of the page you selected.

• Fixed: after you selected a different page, the editor could still show the previous page’s text, and saving then replaced the selected page’s text with it. The first page you opened could also look empty.
• Fixed: Reset changes now puts the saved text back in the editor too, not just the other fields.
• If a page’s text looks wrong, the Audit tab shows who last saved each page and when.

See Practice Handbook.

New screenshots and help for the page you’re on — 1 October 2026

The guides now show today’s screens, and the toolkit’s Help panel starts with the guides for the page you’re on.

• Up-to-date screenshots of 21 screens across the staff, setup, clinical review and admin guides. They show a fictional practice and its staff, with cards from the approved library.
• Help for this page. Open Help & Documentation from the menu and the guides for the page you’re on are listed first, including the tab you have open in Signposting settings.
• Guide links on admin screens. Each Signposting settings tab, Users & access, Module access, AI customisation, Practice Handbook settings, workflow templates and Analytics link straight to their guide.

See Running your toolkit.

Internal guides moved off this site — 1 October 2026

These guides now cover only what practices need: the guides for the Signposting Toolkit team and for developers have moved elsewhere.

• The System management guide for the Signposting Toolkit team is now inside the toolkit, and its changes are listed there rather than in these release notes.
• The developer guide now lives with the code.
• Old links to either page still work and forward to the new place.

Guides reorganised by who you are — 30 September 2026

These guides are now arranged around the people who use them, with a guide for each role and one page per task.

• For reception teams. A full staff guide covering finding a symptom, reading a card (with an annotated example), the high-risk and quick access buttons, age groups, smart visuals and suggested questions, and what to do when you’re unsure. It replaces the old one-page user guide.
• Setting up your practice. An overview, then one page for each of the four setup stages. Each page says who does it, the steps, what “done” looks like and common questions. The finer points of AI customisation are tucked into expandable sections.
• For clinical reviewers. A dedicated guide to what to check on every card, how review status differs from what staff see, requesting changes or taking a card out of use, AI drafts, bulk approval and periodic review.
• Running your toolkit. One page for each admin job, from cards and your team to the Practice Handbook, workflows, analytics, suggestions and Surgery Health.
• Governance and safety and Reference. The Reference section has a roles and permissions table, the optional features and who switches them on, a glossary, FAQs and troubleshooting.
• Checked, and old links still work. Every page was checked against the toolkit again. Old links and bookmarks still work: they take you to the page that replaced them.

A redesigned help site — 30 September 2026

These guides now look and work like the rest of the Signposting Toolkit, with a new home page and a printable card for the reception desk.

• A new home page. Search the guides from the top of the page, then start from what you do: answering patient calls, running your practice’s toolkit or reviewing clinical content. Popular tasks and the latest updates sit underneath.
• A printable reception quick reference that fits on one A4 page, with space for your practice’s own numbers.
• Every page has a clear title, a one-line summary and who it’s for, and browser tabs, bookmarks and shared links now show the page’s name.
• Dark mode works properly, and the site matches the toolkit’s website: the same logo, fonts and colours, with links to the website, the online demo and the toolkit itself.
• Clearer notes and screenshots. Patient-safety notes stand out from ordinary tips, and screenshots can be enlarged by selecting them.

See Quick reference card.

Corrected guidance — 30 September 2026

We checked every page of this guide against the toolkit and corrected the wording where it was wrong or out of date. Nothing in the toolkit itself has changed, and new screenshots will follow.

• AI suggested questions are not clinically reviewed. The guide said they were. They are created when someone selects Get Questions to Ask, from that card’s wording, and are not saved or checked by a clinician. Use them as prompts; the card’s instructions always come first.
• Request re-review resets every card. The guide suggested it for re-checking a few cards. It sets every reviewed card in your practice back to Pending, and replaces each card’s reviewer details with your name and the date of the reset. Editing a card already sends it back for review.
• Staff see cards awaiting review. Some pages said staff only see approved cards. Pending cards that are switched on are shown to everyone, with a warning, until they are approved. A new symptom your practice adds starts switched off, so staff don’t see it until you switch it on.
• Customised workflows are hidden until approved. Customising a Global workflow creates a Draft copy that replaces it, so staff can’t see that workflow until an admin chooses Mark as Approved. Changes to the steps of an approved workflow go live as soon as they are saved.
• High-risk buttons and quick access buttons are separate features, and the guide for practice admins now describes each correctly. Quick access buttons (up to six) are saved with Save, not automatically.
• Highlight colours don’t have fixed meanings. Each practice decides what its colours mean. The guide no longer claims that every highlight colour meets WCAG AA contrast.
• Screen and button names now match the toolkit: Signposting settings and Practice settings (not “Admin Dashboard”), Users & access, Suggest an improvement, Add Symptom, Mark Done and Decline, and the AI customisation steps.
• Removed features the toolkit doesn’t have, including “Smart Symptom Updates”, a choice of high-risk button styles, appointment status filters and a CSV import preview.
• Who switches features on. Only the Signposting Toolkit team can switch features on for a practice. Practice admins can switch AI instruction editing and AI suggested questions off or on for individual staff.
• New symptoms and What’s changed. Symptoms your practice creates start switched off as well as Pending, and What’s changed covers the last 14 days.

See Staff guide, Clinical governance and Running your toolkit.

Search from the keyboard, and see why a card matched — 30 September 2026

The signposting page is now quicker to use from the keyboard, shows why each card matched your search, and fits better on narrower windows and phones.

• Keyboard. Press Enter in the search box to open the only matching symptom, or to move to the first card when several match; you don’t need to wait for the results to update first. The down arrow also moves to the first card, the arrow keys move between cards as they sit on screen, and the up arrow from the top row goes back to the search box. Esc clears the search. A / in the search box reminds you it jumps there from anywhere, and the focused card now has a clearer outline.
• Why a card matched. Your search is marked in yellow on each card: in the name, the brief instruction and the red notice. When a symptom matched only on its full instructions, which the card doesn’t show, the card quotes the sentence that matched under In instructions.
• Tips no longer get in the way. A first-time tip, such as the one pointing out the navigation menu, closes when you click elsewhere and your click still reaches what you clicked, such as the search box. A tip that appears while you’re typing leaves you typing.
• Nothing hidden off the edge. On a narrower window, such as half a screen, the red high-risk buttons and the A–Z letters wrap onto another row instead of disappearing off the right-hand side, and the pinned bar’s letters fit on one row on a desktop screen.
• Better on a phone. The search box has a row of its own, the age groups and Changes sit beneath it, and nothing runs off the side of the page. The pinned bar shows just the search box, rather than letters covering most of the screen.

See Finding a symptom.

Quicker to the right symptom — 30 September 2026

The signposting page now lists the best matches first and keeps your search when you go back to it.

• Best matches first. Symptoms whose name matches your search now come first: searching “rash” lists the Rash cards before others that only mention a rash, instead of listing every match A–Z.
• Back returns to your results. Your search, letter and age group are kept in the page address, so going back after opening a symptom shows the same results in the same place. A filtered list can be bookmarked or shared.
• No hidden filters. Starting a search clears a letter left selected from browsing, so a search always looks across every letter. The age group you last chose is still remembered, and now shows above the cards (for example Adult only) and in the pinned search bar; select × to show all ages. If nothing matches in that age group but a symptom does in another, the page names it and offers Show all age groups.
• More of the list on screen, complete straight away. The count of symptoms showing sits just above the cards, replacing the page heading, and an empty strip under the toolbar has gone, so the first row of cards now fits on a typical laptop screen. The red high-risk buttons, highlight colours, New and Updated badges and the What’s changed count appear with the page rather than a moment after it.

See Finding a symptom.

Live practices stay live — 28 September 2026

Editing cards after go-live no longer sends a practice back into setup.

• The Setup Checklist stays on Surgery Health. A live practice’s Setup Checklist stays on Surgery Health when an edited card goes back to clinical review, and shows how many cards are waiting. Previously the page switched back to “Set up your practice”.
• Practice settings shows Live. Practice settings now shows a live surgery’s setup as Live, instead of asking it to complete setup while cards are waiting for review.
• Fixed: a practice that chose to keep its existing wording was still counted as having AI customisation outstanding on the Practice settings page.

See After go-live and Setup checklist and Surgery Health.

Sources for customised cards, and Knee and Shoulder injury routing — 27 September 2026

Clinical reviewers can now see a card’s global sources after the practice has changed its wording, and the global Knee Pain and Shoulder Pain cards now match the NHS on injuries.

• Global sources on customised cards. Clinical reviewers can now see a card’s global sources after the practice has changed the wording, for example with AI customisation. Previously the sources only appeared when viewing Base wording. They now also appear alongside Local wording in the Symptom Library and Clinical Review previews, and on the card itself when an administrator opens it for review. They are labelled Global template references (original wording), because they were checked against the global wording, not the practice’s changes.
• Who sees them. Practice administrators now see these sources when opening a card for review, as they already could in the previews. Reception staff do not see them.
• Chest Pain and Conjunctivitis show global template references again. Their NHS sources were checked against the reformatted wording on 27 September 2026.
• The global Knee Pain and Shoulder Pain cards now match the NHS on injuries. They previously sent any recent injury to urgent care or A&E. As on the NHS joint pain page, they now send the patient to A&E or 999 if they cannot walk or bear weight on the leg (knee) or cannot bear weight on the arm (shoulder), or if the joint looks out of place. After a fall or injury, they also do so if the pain is very bad or there is tingling or no feeling around the joint. Other recent injuries go to urgent care or a same-day clinician assessment. Both cards show the NHS joint pain page as their reference again.
• Your own wording is kept. Practices keep their own wording on these cards; administrators can compare it with the new global wording using Base wording. A practice that uses the global wording on one of these cards and has not approved that card gets the new wording. Its clinical review status is unchanged, so the card still needs review. A card the practice has approved, for any age group, never changes.

See Cards.

Global library tidy-up and Meningitis Rash button fix — 26 September 2026

The red Meningitis Rash button now opens the approved Meningitis Rash card, and links no longer open deleted global cards.

• The red Meningitis Rash button now opens the approved Meningitis Rash card. It previously linked to an older card that used the same name. Practices that have their own Meningitis card behind the button keep it. Saved button settings that still point at the old card are updated when this release’s library changes are applied.
• Links and addresses no longer open deleted global cards. Five leftover cards (a placeholder card, a test card, and older duplicates of Meningitis Rash, Professionals and Insect Bite/Sting that contained one practice’s local wording) had already been deleted, but a link that named one could still open it.
• Global template references are shown again for Hay fever, Coughs and Ear Ache / Ear Infection, whose recent reformatting did not change the instructions. Chest Pain, Conjunctivitis, Knee Pain and Shoulder Pain show references again once their sources have been checked against the new wording.

See Cards.

New public website and online demo — 26 September 2026

The public website has been redesigned and you can now try the toolkit online; nothing changes inside the toolkit itself.

• Redesigned public website at signpostingtool.co.uk: new homepage, platform, why-us, FAQs, demo request and privacy pages, with the same content, pricing and governance commitments as before.
• Try the toolkit online at signpostingtool.co.uk/try: a hands-on version of the signposting screen with search, age filters, red high-risk buttons and full instruction cards. It uses 21 cards from the approved global library, clearly marked as a demo; nothing entered is saved. Cards with alternative advice panels, such as Stroke, show them as the toolkit does. Three cards (UTI, Toothache and Sore Throat) also show an example smart visual, and cards show the sources a clinical reviewer would see, as in the toolkit.
• Searchable FAQs. The FAQs page is now searchable.

AI setup selection and confirmation clarity — 25 September 2026

AI setup now customises all symptoms by default, shows one clear summary of what will be rewritten, and asks before saving on every run.

• Customise all symptoms is the default, including for practices with local wording. Approved cards, change requests and other human review records remain excluded unless deliberately included. Existing manual choices and failed-card retry selections are retained.
• One clear selection summary appears on the page and in confirmation: cards included for rewriting, cards excluded by review choices, and any cards outside the chosen scope. Expandable lists show actual review statuses without double-counting cards with several age-group statuses. Having a note is not described as proof of completed clinical review. AI-only setup notes do not, by themselves, trigger review protection; the summary distinguishes these with No human review recorded.
• Every run asks before saving, including a single manually selected card. Review selection opens the dialog; Back to selection writes nothing; Replace wording on N cards starts generation. The warning applies explicitly to included cards, not the excluded group.
• Wording, review status and history are distinguished. Included wording is replaced; excluded cards remain unchanged. Successfully rewritten cards return to Pending. Earlier notes and decisions remain available, but an old approval does not apply to new wording and change requests are not automatically resolved.
• Previews and feedback are explained separately. Practice-detail confirmation, optional sample previews and confirmed questionnaire feedback are explained separately from saved card rewrites. Skipped previews are not ticked as completed, and partially successful generation is labelled as partial.
• Safeguards unchanged. Existing safeguards, clinical-review requirements, staff visibility and pilot features are unchanged. No practice content is automatically regenerated by this release.

See Customise your cards.

Setup checklist counts what your practice can do — 24 September 2026

The Setup Checklist now counts only the steps your practice can take, and uses the same rules as the Signposting Toolkit team’s tracker.

• Clearer completion rules. Clinical review counts as done only when no cards are pending, no changes are outstanding and at least one card is approved. AI customisation also counts as done when your practice chose to keep its existing wording.
• Honest step totals. Steps for features your practice doesn’t have, such as AI customisation or the Practice Handbook, are left out of the totals rather than ticked, so the counter matches the steps listed.

See Setup checklist and Surgery Health.

AI customisation protects previous clinical reviews — 23 September 2026

AI customisation now leaves previously reviewed cards out by default.

• Reviewed cards are excluded by default. Practice administrators can explicitly include approved cards, cards with changes requested, or other cards with reviewer activity.
• New AI drafts need fresh approval. Existing change-request notes remain visible, and earlier review decisions, reviewers and notes are retained in the clinical review preview.
• Cards whose review changes are skipped. Cards are skipped if review activity changes after selection or during generation. The protection also applies to Smart re-run and direct generation requests.

See Customise your cards.

Sample feedback pilot and clearer generation progress — 22 September 2026

Sample generation now shows its progress, and a pilot lets selected practices correct a local arrangement from their sample previews.

• Clearer progress. Sample generation now shows progress, retains labelled previous examples while replacements arrive, and supports retry after failures or slow requests.
• Feedback pilot. A practice-by-practice feedback pilot lets administrators describe an incorrect local arrangement, clarify the request, review a suggested questionnaire change and explicitly save it before previewing again.
• History and undo. Confirmed changes have history and undo. Feedback does not rewrite saved cards or change review decisions.
• Pilot only. Feedback is disabled by default and available only to practices selected for the pilot.

See Customise your cards.

Setup and clinical review guide refreshed — 22 September 2026

The Getting Started guide now follows the current four-stage setup journey, and the review guidance matches the toolkit.

• The current setup journey. The Getting Started guide now follows the current four-stage setup journey, with new screenshots and the eight questionnaire sections.
• AI steps explained separately. Sample previews, saved AI drafts and the explicit existing-wording choice are explained separately.
• Review guidance. Review guidance now covers the actual filters, alphabetical Previous/Next navigation, sharing work and resolving requested changes.
• Corrections. Completion criteria and the distinction between review status and card visibility are corrected in the setup and governance guides.

See Set up your practice and Clinical reviewer guide.

Clearer setup progress — 22 September 2026

Starting clinical review no longer marks AI customisation complete, and practices can explicitly choose to use their existing wording.

• AI customisation isn’t marked done too early. Starting clinical review no longer marks AI customisation complete.
• Links open the right practice. Setup and health links open the selected practice’s clinical review, including for administrators who manage more than one practice.
• Use existing wording. Practices can explicitly choose Use existing wording, with that choice saved for the practice and shown separately from generated AI drafts. Choosing existing wording leaves questionnaire answers, cards and review decisions unchanged.
• A notice in clinical review. Clinical review includes a notice when AI customisation or the existing-wording choice is outstanding. The notice offers clear next steps while keeping review available.

See Customise your cards.

Global symptom library review completed — 14 September 2026

All 221 active global symptom cards have been reviewed and updated; your practice’s own content and review status are unchanged.

• All 221 active global symptom cards have been reviewed and updated, drawing on wording used by existing practices to provide a clearer starting point for future onboarding.
• Clearer instructions. Instructions use clearer appointment types and timings in place of practice-specific coloured slots, with helpful emojis and reviewed escalation guidance. Relevant support panels, including Stroke and Sepsis, have also been updated.
• References kept separately. Supporting references are kept separately with the relevant global template revision. They are not copied into practice instructions.
• Existing practice content and clinical review status are unchanged. This release does not automatically replace your team’s local guidance.
• New customisations start from the revised templates. AI helps prepare the wording; your clinical reviewer finalises each card for your practice. No additional onboarding questions have been added.
• Pending cards stay visible. Pending cards remain visible to staff with their existing warning banner.

See Cards and AI tools.

Onboarding safeguards (v1.11) — September 2026

Onboarding is now a guided four-stage journey, with a clearer questionnaire, optional highlight and handbook starters, and extra safeguards on AI-generated cards.

New

• Setup progress. Setup progress is visible above the journey cards, with a core-stage progress meter and completed ticks. Optional tasks do not reduce the total.
• Four setup stages. The setup landing page groups onboarding into four stages with a prominent Continue setup action, role guidance and clinical review counts. Sample previews remain optional; detailed tasks and optional configuration are expandable below.
• Guided AI customisation. AI customisation is clearly named in the setup journey, with a guided flow for checking practice details, previewing samples, generating cards and continuing to clinical review. Progress recognises existing customisation and reviews. At this release, practices with local wording started with individual card selection; see the later selection-clarity entry for the change to that default. Generation results distinguish saved cards from cards needing attention. Sample previews remain optional. The preview guidance explains that examples check the overall approach, individual wording can be edited during clinical review, and repeated appointment or routing issues should be corrected in the practice answers.
• A clearer questionnaire. A clearer eight-step questionnaire now has expandable appointment details and optional sections, a review summary, and Save and finish later. Navigation waits for a successful save; returning on the same browser resumes the saved section.
• Optional questions. Optional questions now capture patient messaging software, pharmacy referral routes and routine medication requests. Practices can also clarify how to contact the escalation team and what happens when an appointment is unavailable. Blank answers retain generic wording or existing workflow details; no extra answers are required to complete onboarding.
• Highlight setup. Highlight setup has its own optional landing-page card, coordinated automatic colours and a Before / After preview. Practices can choose phrase highlights from their onboarding answers, preview them on sample cards and apply selected colours. Existing highlight rules are preserved. Practices already partway through setup see a continuity message and keep their existing progress.
• Practice Handbook starter. An optional Practice Handbook starter reuses onboarding information and lets administrators select topics, paste procedures, edit drafts and explicitly add reviewed pages. AI organisation is available where AI customisation is enabled. The handbook starter is also directly accessible.
• Bring in existing handbook information. Existing handbook information can be pasted or imported from Word, PDF or text on the first page. Administrators check extracted text and confirm suggested topics before proceeding. Existing topic choices and saved drafts are preserved.
• Editing in the starter. The handbook starter has consistent line icons, page-by-page rich-text editing, a formatted reading preview and clear saved/unsaved feedback. AI can organise supplied facts into headings and practical lists.
• Practices with a handbook already. Existing practices can access the starter from Manage handbook. Empty or untouched starter handbooks receive an invitation; uncertain older handbooks receive a neutral offer. Administrators can save and return or dismiss the invitation. Draft pages are not visible to staff.

Improved

• Check booking routes before generation: AI Setup asks practices to confirm the appointment summary already provided during onboarding, with a link to correct it.
• Optional sample preview: preview up to five representative cards before generating the library. Previews include notices and support panels and do not save card changes or change review status. Generating the library creates fresh drafts.
• Targeted reviewer checks: drafts flag possible missing urgency or emergency wording, changed patient-facing links, missing visual cues, unresolved placeholders and unsupported appointment colours in support panels. Notes are saved for clinical review. These checks are advisory and do not replace the clinical reviewer.
• No invented local details. AI instructions now explicitly reuse the supplied practice rules and avoid inventing local services, contact details or turnaround times. No extra questionnaire has been added.
• Trial follow-up. Stronger instructions and advisory checks for explicit assessment deadlines, emergency summaries and added pregnancy testing. Preserved support panels now always carry a reminder to check their local routes, including coloured appointment names. No extra onboarding questions or automatic edits to existing practice cards.
• Your wording stays yours. Existing practice wording is not bulk rewritten. New AI output still requires clinical review. No additional onboarding questions have been added.

Fixed

• Complete local copies. Successful AI customisation now saves a complete local copy, including notices, related links and age variants. Intentional local blanks remain blank. Later global edits do not fill these fields automatically.
• Appointment fallbacks preserve urgency: a missing same-day slot no longer maps to a routine or 48-hour appointment. Generic escalation wording retains the original timeframe.
• Edited cards are not overwritten. A card edited while AI customisation is running is skipped rather than overwritten. Safe bulk re-runs can include local copies while keeping the existing human-edit checks.

See Set up your practice and AI tools.

Global template library (v1.10) — September 2026

Staff cards no longer show the Practice Customised or Practice Created pills, and references for the reviewed global templates appear in the Base wording preview.

• No more repeated pills. Staff symptom cards no longer show the repeated “Practice Customised” or “Practice Created” pills. Editors and review tools retain the distinction between local and global wording.
• Template references. References for the reviewed global template appear separately in the administrator’s Base wording preview. They are not added to local instructions or AI customisation prompts. References disappear if the global text changes, pending a new reference review.
• Setup is unchanged. New practices still need their usual local customisation and clinical review. No additional onboarding questionnaire has been introduced.

See Cards.

Account security (v1.9) — September 2026

Changing a password or someone’s access now signs them out everywhere, and account changes are recorded in an audit trail.

New

• Account audit trail. Account creation, membership and role changes, password resets, provisioning, and logins (successful and failed) are recorded to a durable audit log kept for later investigation.

Fixed

• Account security: changing a password or someone’s access now signs them out everywhere. A routine security screening found that resetting or changing a password did not end the sessions the old password had already opened, and that a practice administrator could, in principle, take control of another account. Both are now closed:
  • Password resets and changes revoke existing sessions. When you reset a member’s password, change your own password, or a practice is provisioned with a temporary password, every session that account holds ends immediately. The user signs in again with the new password. Changing your own password signs you out and returns you to the login page.
  • Role and access changes take effect at once. Changing a member’s role, or removing them from a practice, applies immediately — every page re-checks membership and role on each request, so a removed member cannot keep acting in the practice on an open session. A change to a system-administrator role (or a password reset) additionally signs the account out everywhere.
  • A practice cannot reach across to another account. A practice administrator manages memberships of their own practice. They can add an existing account to their practice (which only grants access to that practice, and never changes the account’s password), but they cannot attach or reset a system administrator’s account, nor reset an account that also belongs to a practice they do not run. Those are managed by the account holder or a superuser. The member panel shows a System administrator badge and explains when an account is managed elsewhere.
  • Shared image icons are superuser-only. Image icons are global — shown to every practice — so only superusers change them. A practice that wants no icons still turns them all off with its own Image Icons setting.
  • Highlight-rule and analytics permissions are checked against live membership. Creating a highlight rule, or viewing a practice’s engagement analytics, now confirms current admin rights for the practice in question rather than trusting a cached session, so a standard user cannot reach an admin-only write and an admin of one practice cannot act on another.
• Everyone signed in once more. Existing sessions were treated as out of date the first time the toolkit loaded after this release, so everyone signed in again once. This was expected and happened only once.

See Roles and permissions.

Smart visuals for symptoms (v1.8) — August 2026

Smart visuals arrived for symptom instructions, AI wording suggestions became editable before you apply them, and Engagement Analytics now reports on real use only.

New

• Smart visuals for symptom instructions: the infographic-style view introduced for the Practice Handbook is now available in the signposting module. Practice admins can click Generate smart visual on a symptom to have AI reorganise its triage guidance into a scannable layout built for a live call — escalation criteria in a dedicated red flags block with the single action to take, “if X, book Y” decisions as routing rows with colour-coded urgency, and time frames and phone numbers as key-fact tiles. As in the Handbook, the output is real, selectable, accessible app content rather than an image, and the written instructions remain the source of truth: edit them and the visual is hidden until it is regenerated.

  Two things work differently from the Handbook, because signposting content is clinical rather than operational:

  • Saving a visual sends the symptom for clinical review. Staff continue to see the standard instructions until a clinician approves it. Admins can see the unapproved visual in the meantime, badged as pending.
  • Visuals are stored per age-group variant. Switching between Under-5 / 5–17 / Adult swaps to that variant’s own visual, so a visual is never shown against wording it was not generated from.

  Where an approved visual exists the symptom opens on it, since that is the faster read while a patient is waiting; the written instructions stay one click away on the Standard tab. Your practice’s highlight rules apply inside the visual as well, so the same phrases are coloured in both views.

  This is an optional feature — contact us to enable it.

• AI wording suggestions are now editable before you apply them: the “Suggest improved wording” preview used to be accept-whole-or-discard — the only way to adjust the AI’s wording was to apply it first and then edit. The right-hand pane is now a full editor, so you can tweak both the brief routing label and the full instruction in the preview and apply exactly what you want. The buttons are now Apply Brief, Apply Full and Apply Both. Applying still records which AI model produced the draft and still sends the symptom for clinical review.

Improved

• Engagement Analytics is clearer about what it is showing, and quicker to load. A line under the heading now names the scope, date range and whether test practices are included, so the tab no longer relies on the page header. “Symptoms accessed” is now Symptoms viewed and carries the library total beneath it, the busiest hour is named in text rather than left to the heatmap’s colours alone, the trend chart calls out its peak day and shows each day’s figure as you move across it, and the date-range controls stay usable while data loads. The summary row also reserves its full width while loading, so the page no longer jumps.
• Rewriting your whole symptom library now asks first: on Admin → AI Setup, the Customise ALL symptoms scope started immediately on the first click. It is the one scope that replaces wording your practice has edited by hand, and it returns every symptom — including ones a clinician has already approved — to pending review. It now shows what it is about to do, and how many symptoms that is, before it starts, and points you at Smart re-run or Select symptoms manually if you wanted to keep your own wording. Nothing about the customisation itself has changed, and previous wording is still kept in each symptom’s history.

Fixed

• Engagement Analytics now reports on live practice usage only, and its figures reconcile. Several things were counted in ways that overstated or understated real use of the directory:

  • Opening a symptom from Clinical Review’s Open symptom page button was recorded as a reception-desk lookup. Review and triage traffic is now excluded, as it always was from the Clinical Review symptom list.
  • Symptoms accessed counted retired symptoms, so it could disagree with the “X of Y symptoms had no views” line beneath it. Both figures, and Most Viewed Symptoms, are now measured against the same library, and equal-ranked symptoms no longer reorder between refreshes.
  • Date ranges ran from the current time of day rather than midnight, so “Last 7 days” charted eight days with a short first bar, and the window was built from the viewer’s own clock. Ranges now cover whole UK calendar days and are the same for everyone. Percentage changes compare against the same elapsed stretch a period earlier, so a partly-finished day never drags the comparison down.
  • Active users silently omitted anyone signed in through the shared practice login, while their views still counted in the total. The tile now says how many of the period’s views were signed in, so the gap is visible.

  Historical figures may look lower than before — that is the review traffic coming out.

• The “use built-in highlighting” practice setting is now respected on symptom pages. Turning built-in slot highlighting off for a practice had no effect on the symptom instruction view — Green/Orange/Red Slot and pink/purple were still colour-coded. The setting is now applied there, and to smart visuals.

See AI tools, Analytics and engagement and Customise your cards.

Images, suggestions and age-group variants (v1.7) — July 2026

Images can now be added to symptom instructions, handbook pages and appointment notes, and anyone can send feedback and suggestions from inside the toolkit.

New

• Click an image to view it full-screen, then zoom in: images in appointment notes, symptom instructions and Practice Handbook pages can now be clicked to open full-screen. The image opens fitted to your screen and can be zoomed up to 6x — with the + / − buttons, the scroll wheel, a pinch on a phone or tablet, or a double-click — and dragged to move around. This matters most on appointment cards, where the card width leaves an inserted image too small to read, and on phones, where a wide diagram needs zooming to be legible at all. Close with Esc, a click on the background, or the close button; the viewer is fully keyboard-operable (tab to an image and press Enter, then +, − and 0). Available to everyone, not just admins.
• Misdirected suggestions can now be passed to your practice: the suggestion form no longer pre-selects a destination — the form only appears once you’ve chosen who your message is for, with your practice’s own teams listed first, so requests meant for your practice stop landing with the toolkit developers. And when one does slip through, the Signposting team can now redirect it to your practice’s toolkit administrators: it appears on their Suggestions tab marked “Redirected from the toolkit team”, and the submitter sees a “Passed to your practice’s administrators” badge and a short note on their My suggestions page.
• Rich-text notes and images in the Appointment Directory: appointment notes now use the same rich-text editor as symptom instructions and the Practice Handbook — admins can format notes with headings, lists and links, and insert JPG/PNG images (up to 2MB) with optional alt text and resizing. Images are private to the practice and appear on the appointment’s card. Note that CSV imports still write plain-text notes and replace rich formatting on the entries they update.
• Share practice content with every practice: system administrators can now push a practice’s excellent work up into the shared library — Update base to match replaces a base symptom’s shared content with a practice’s customised version, and Promote to shared library turns a practice-created symptom into a shared one. Promoted symptoms start disabled for every other practice and appear in their Symptom Library’s Available folder with a green New badge, ready to adopt in one click.
• AI customisation on adoption: when a practice adopts a newly promoted symptom and has AI customisation enabled, it is offered the option to have AI adapt the instructions to the practice immediately, based on its onboarding questionnaire. The result goes to Clinical Review before staff see it.
• Resizable images: images inserted into symptom instructions or Practice Handbook pages can now be resized — select the image and choose Small, Medium, Large, or Original size from the editor toolbar.
• Multiple related-symptom links: a symptom is no longer limited to one “Link to Related Symptom” — editors can now add up to 10 links using a search-as-you-type picker in the Customise All Fields dialog. The symptom page shows one button per link in the Related Information panel, and cards show the first link with a “+N more” hint. Practices customising a base symptom can keep the standard links, replace them, or clear them entirely for their surgery.
• Images in symptom instructions: the same inline-image support recently added to the Practice Handbook now works in the signposting module — editors can insert JPG/PNG images (up to 2MB) into symptom instructions and age-group variants via the image button in the editor toolbar, with optional alt text. Images on base symptoms are visible to every practice; images on a practice’s own customisations or practice-created symptoms are private to that practice. Image edits go through clinical review like any other instruction change.
• PDF attachments on Practice Handbook items: alongside link attachments, handbook editors can now upload a PDF (up to 4MB) directly to an item’s Attachments section — the document is stored with the practice’s handbook content, opens in the browser’s PDF viewer, and is served only to signed-in surgery members, respecting category visibility rules. Uploaded PDFs can also be linked from a page’s intro text or additional notes.
• Images in Practice Handbook pages: handbook editors can now insert JPG/PNG images (up to 2MB) into a page’s intro text and additional notes via a new image button in the editor toolbar, with optional alt text for screen readers. Images are private to the practice — served only to signed-in surgery members and respecting category visibility rules.
• Smart visual refinements: editors can now steer a smart visual with a short instruction (e.g. “group by site”) when regenerating, reorder or remove sections in the preview before saving, and print just the visual for the noticeboard with a new Print visual button. Regenerations now keep the previous structure wherever the content still supports it, and saving an edit to a page that has a visual immediately offers one-click regeneration.
• Practice Handbook smart visuals: handbook editors can now click Generate smart visual on any handbook page to have AI turn its content into a polished, infographic-style view — contact cards, numbered steps, checklists, buddy pairings, role cards, key-fact tiles and warning callouts — rendered as real, selectable, accessible app content (not an image). Editors review a preview before saving; staff then get a Standard / Smart visual toggle on the page. The page content remains the source of truth: if it is edited later, the visual is automatically hidden until an editor regenerates it. This is an optional feature — contact us to enable it.
• Clearer suggestion routing: the suggestion form now starts by asking who your message is for — the Signposting Toolkit team (features, improvements, bugs), your practice’s toolkit administrators (local guidance and symptom content), or your practice’s management or clinical team. It states exactly who will receive your message before you write it, and if your question is really for your own practice’s managers or clinical leads it explains that this form can’t reach them and to contact them directly instead. Local guidance suggestions no longer e-mail the central team — they surface to the practice’s own admins via the pending-count badge on their Suggestions tab.
• Never miss a response to your suggestion: when the Signposting team responds, a “new” badge with the number of unread responses now appears next to My suggestions in the navigation menu, and answered suggestions are highlighted with a New response badge on the My suggestions page until you’ve read them.
• In-app feedback & suggestions: anyone can now suggest new features, improvements, or bug reports from the navigation panel (“Suggest a feature”), the Help panel, or any symptom page — and track their status and read responses from the Signposting team on a new My suggestions page. Symptom-content suggestions continue to be reviewed by practice admins; app-level feedback is triaged centrally by the Signposting team.
• Rich-text editor rebuilt: everywhere you edit instructions or handbook content, the editor now has a cleaner, more capable toolbar — section headings, links (web and e-mail), underline, and background highlights in soft NHS tints, alongside the existing bold, italic, lists and text colours. Content pasted from Word or Google Docs is automatically cleaned up, the editor no longer flashes a loading placeholder, and a bug that could corrupt content starting with a list or heading has been fixed.
• Variants in previews. Symptom previews (in the Symptom Library drawer and Clinical Review) now show the symptom’s age-group variants, so reviewers see everything staff will see.
• Practice-level control over age-group variants: when a symptom carries shared age-group variants, practice admins can now choose per symptom whether to use the shared variants, customise them with practice-specific wording, or hide them entirely — so customised instructions are no longer shown next to uncustomised shared variant text. Changes only affect your practice.
• Stronger clinical governance: any manual edit a practice makes to a symptom’s content — instructions, notices or age-group variants — now returns that symptom to Pending in Clinical Review, so edited advice is always re-approved before it counts as clinically reviewed. (Previously only AI-made changes and newly created symptoms required review.)
• Base wording covers variants. In Clinical Review previews, the “Base wording” toggle now applies to age-group variants as well as the main instructions, so reviewers comparing against the shared library see the shared variants too.
• Variants when creating a symptom. Age-group variants can now be added when creating any symptom from the Add Symptom dialog — shared-library symptoms and practice-created symptoms alike — and edited later from the symptom page. Practice-created symptoms carry their own variants, visible only to that practice.

Fixed

• The navigation panel now always shows your practice’s name: after signing in, the slide-out navigation panel could greet you with “No surgery selected” even though you were working inside your practice and the page header showed the right name — and once it happened, it stuck until a full page refresh. The panel now picks up your practice from the page you are on immediately after signing in.
• “New” badges now clear once you’ve had a look: the green New badge on Suggest a feature and My suggestions now disappears as soon as you open either of them — on all your devices — rather than running on a fixed timer. A connection hiccup while the app checked what you’d already seen could also bring long-expired badges back; that can no longer happen.
• Practice records are no longer exposed in page source: pages embedded a list of practices for the surgery selector, and that list was reaching the browser with more of each practice’s record than the selector needed. On the application’s public pages (a symptom page opened from a direct link, and the anaphylaxis and stroke pages) the embedded records included each practice’s stored administrator email address and its hashed administrator password. Every page also carried the full list of practices on the platform — names, internal identifiers and live/test status — regardless of who was viewing. Pages now include only the practices the viewer belongs to (system administrators still see all), and only the four fields the selector displays; administrator credentials are excluded from these queries everywhere. No patient data or practice content was involved, and no practice’s pages could be opened without a valid membership. No practice had a stored administrator password at any point, so no practice password needs changing; the separate practice-level login this field belonged to has since been removed altogether.
• AI suggestions no longer lose inline images: when instructions containing an image are rewritten by AI (“Suggest improved wording” or surgery customisation), the image is now preserved in place — and if the AI moved on without it, it is re-attached at the end of the instructions rather than lost.
• Highlight rules no longer corrupt formatting: a highlight phrase that matched text inside a link or image attribute (for example alt text) could break the surrounding formatting. Highlighting now only applies to visible text.
• Brief instructions and important notices now always display exactly as typed: both fields are entered as plain text, but anything tag-shaped in them (for example a bold tag, or a snippet pasted in from a web page) was being interpreted as formatting instead of shown. They now render character for character, on symptom cards, symptom pages and the admin symptom list alike. Highlight rules still colour matching phrases in both fields, including phrases containing ”&” such as “A&E”.
• Age-group variants no longer disappear from the editor once a practice has customised a symptom — variants are shared content on the base symptom, and system administrators can now view and edit them from any practice’s view of the symptom, with changes saved to the shared base copy.
• Variants are kept when a shared symptom is edited. Fixed the system admin Edit Symptom form silently clearing a symptom’s variants on save: existing variants now load into the form (shown expanded rather than hidden behind “Add Variants”), the variant position (before/after the main instructions) is preserved, and variant instructions now use the rich-text editor rather than a raw HTML box.
• Variant edits are saved. Fixed variant edits made in the symptom page’s “Edit Instructions” mode being silently discarded, and cancelled edits leaking half-finished variant changes into later saves.
• The “You’re viewing” surgery selector in the header now always matches the surgery in the page address. Previously, opening a surgery page from a link or bookmark could leave the header — and the navigation panel — showing the last surgery you had selected, even though the page content was for the surgery you opened.

See Cards, Practice Handbook, Appointments directory and Sending feedback.

Symptom Library redesign (v1.6) — June to July 2026

The Symptom Library has a simpler grid with previews in a slide-out drawer, and the engagement analytics and Users pages have been redesigned.

New

• All-ages mode: surgeries that don’t use age-group variants can now hide the Under 5 / Over 5 / Adult age bands entirely, showing a single instruction per symptom. This is an optional feature — contact us to enable it.
• A “Hide disabled” filter in Clinical Review, so disabled symptoms no longer clutter the review queue, with symptom counts that now reconcile correctly against what’s shown.
• The pending-review notice is shown to everyone. In Clinical Review, the pending-review notice is now visible to all roles (not just admins), with a clearer message that adapts to how many symptoms are awaiting review.

Improved

• Symptom Library redesign: a simpler, faster symptom grid, with symptom previews now opening in a slide-out drawer instead of a pop-up window — easier to browse and compare.
• Surgery selection. In Signposting settings, surgery selection now works from a single source of truth, fixing inconsistencies between the settings page and the symptom library.
• AI customisation rewrites Important Notices. When adapting instructions to your surgery, the AI now also rewrites the Important Notice using your local terminology — and if you’ve deliberately cleared a notice, it will never be brought back by a later AI run.
• Consistent dialogs. Consistent confirmation dialogs and success/error notifications across the admin areas.
• Engagement analytics redesign (Signposting settings → Engagement): a new daily views-over-time chart, summary tiles with change vs the previous period, least-viewed symptoms and busiest days & times insights, proportional bars on the ranked lists, and a cleaner look consistent with the rest of the admin area.
• Users page revamp: at-a-glance member stats (total, practice admins, 30-day active, never signed in), sortable name/last-active columns, filters for role, Handbook access and inactivity, and a consolidated member panel (details, permissions, default surgery, password reset, remove access) replacing the separate pop-up dialogs. The Practice Handbook permissions column now only appears for surgeries with the Handbook enabled.

Fixed

• “Add symptom” no longer fails with an “Invalid input” error for some practices when creating a surgery-specific symptom — the server rejected practices with older-style surgery identifiers. Error messages from the add-symptom dialog now also say which field was rejected, rather than just “Invalid input”.
• Accepting an AI wording suggestion on a practice-customised symptom now works. It appeared to do nothing — the accepted wording was saved to the wrong place (the shared library copy) instead of the practice’s own version, so the page never showed the change. Accepted suggestions now update the practice’s customised version, and symptom lists refresh straight away instead of showing stale text for a few minutes.
• Bulk approve respects Hide disabled. Bulk approve in Clinical Review now respects the “Hide disabled” filter — you can no longer accidentally approve symptoms you’ve hidden.
• Highlights and search. Fixed highlight colours occasionally “leaking” between symptoms after AI customisation, and search results matching against out-of-date base content.
• Engagement analytics figures. Export Data now downloads the real figures as CSV (it previously produced placeholder sample data), the Total Symptom Views tile now counts every view in the period rather than only the top-listed symptoms, and the engagement data now requires sign-in and is scoped to your own surgery.

See Cards, Analytics and engagement and Team and access.

Custom symptom names (v1.5) — April to May 2026

Practice admins can now customise symptom display names for their surgery.

• Custom display names. Practice admins can now customise symptom display names for their surgery — useful for local terminology — without affecting the underlying clinical content.
• Deliberately blank fields stay blank. Clearing a field in a symptom override is now remembered as deliberately blank, rather than falling back to the base content unexpectedly.
• Genuine front-desk use. In engagement analytics, views generated by clinical review activity are now excluded from usage counts, so your analytics reflect genuine front-desk use.
• Fixed: the Practice Handbook link in the in-app help dialog.
• Fixed: a clinical review issue where a background data update could silently mark symptoms as approved without review.

See Cards.

Setup Checklist and Surgery Health (v1.4) — February to March 2026

New surgeries get an enhanced Setup Checklist, and admins see a Surgery Health dashboard once essential setup is complete.

New

• Enhanced Setup Checklist: setup steps are now grouped into essential and recommended items with a progress bar, so new surgeries can see exactly what’s left to go live.
• Surgery Health dashboard: once the essential setup steps are complete, admins see governance, usage, and content health cards summarising how the surgery is doing.
• Back to Setup Checklist. Admin pages opened from the Setup Checklist now show a “Back to Setup Checklist” link so you don’t lose your place.

Improved

• Smarter review order. The Clinical Review tab now sorts symptoms intelligently (items needing attention first) and includes a direct help link.
• AI customisation. Clinician archetypes now support restrictions and correct handling of under-5s instructions.
• Clearer AI setup errors. Configuration problems now produce clear, actionable error messages instead of a generic “AI service is not configured”.
• Navigation menu. Improved the visual design of the navigation (hamburger) menu.

Fixed

• Setup Checklist links. Fixed broken links from the Setup Checklist to the Appointment Directory and Highlight Rules pages.

See Setup checklist and Surgery Health.

Practice Handbook engagement and audit (v1.3) — January 2026

The Practice Handbook gained Engagement and Audit tabs, category visibility controls and per-item editing permissions.

New

• Handbook Engagement tab showing most viewed items and most active users, filterable by time period (7d / 30d / 90d / all time) — helps admins understand what content is being used.
• Handbook Audit tab showing a chronological feed of recent changes (who changed what, when), filterable by time period and change type — supports governance and troubleshooting.
• Collapsible operational info panel. In the Practice Handbook (formerly Admin Toolkit), the operational info panel at the bottom of the staff front page is now collapsible (defaults to collapsed). The panel automatically expands when the on-take GP changes, and remembers your preference.
• Visibility and editing permissions. Category visibility controls and per-item editing permissions, so you can safely share sensitive guidance with the right people and let standard users edit specific items without access to the admin dashboard.
• Intro text and notes. PAGE items now support optional Intro text above Role Cards and Additional notes below.
• Lists. LIST items (simple editable tables) for storing structured information.

Improved

• In-app Help panel. Help & Documentation now opens an in-app Help panel with quick links and simple search, designed for task-focused, in-the-moment support. The full documentation site remains available via a clear external link (opens in a new tab).
• Handbook Quick Access settings make it simpler to choose up to 6 buttons for the staff home screen.
• Handbook admin page reorganised into Items / Structure & Settings tabs for clarity.
• Handbook settings cog moved to the page header (consistent with the main signposting tool) and opens the shared preferences dialog; blue cards mode now only affects individual item cards, not the surrounding container.
• Handbook Items picker improved with search, type filters, and grouped (collapsible) sections by category.
• Handbook editor now opens ready to create a new item by default (no previous item auto-selected).
• Structure & Settings is now laid out as a cleaner settings dashboard with section navigation.
• Handbook categories are searchable with clearer hierarchy and controls; the pinned panel includes a preview; rota “upcoming weeks” is now collapsible.
• Handbook front page has its sticky categories sidebar and pinned bottom panel back (with natural page scrolling).
• Handbook Quick access buttons improved with a scalable searchable picker and optional labels (defaults to the target item title), and now auto-save changes to avoid an extra “Save” step.
• Handbook Role cards now respect blue-cards mode and the editor auto-expands when populated.
• Workflow diagrams. The workflow diagram viewer restores connector lines, arrowheads, and labels for saved and newly created edges, and its details panel can be collapsed to give more space for the diagram.
• Landing page now frames AI as optional tools, adds onboarding and support copy, and links to the FAQs for common governance questions.
• AI questions panel now titled “Suggested wording for questions to ask” with supporting text to encourage safe, consistent phrasing.
• The logo keeps you in your surgery. Clicking the Signposting Toolkit logo now keeps you within your current surgery, using a safer signed-in entry route.
• Symptom page links now use the same surgery identifier as the main surgery pages, with older links automatically redirected.
• AI wording suggestions. Surgery admins can now apply AI wording suggestions within their own surgery (superusers remain supported).
• No more slugs. Admin forms no longer ask for symptom slugs — slugs are generated automatically, and high-risk buttons now link to symptoms via a searchable list.
• Instant refresh. Symptom search and clinical review counts now refresh immediately after creating, approving, enabling, or deleting symptoms.
• Editable highlight rules. Highlight rules in the Admin Dashboard can now be edited (instead of delete-and-recreate), with clearer guidance when a phrase already exists.
• Separate website and app addresses. www.signpostingtool.co.uk shows the public site while app.signpostingtool.co.uk routes straight into the toolkit entry screen.

Fixed

• Handbook Role cards and Quick access. Fixed Role cards auto-expand when opening via “Edit”, and fixed Quick access button reordering persistence.

See Practice Handbook.

Workflow Guidance (v1.2) — January 2026

The Workflow Guidance module arrived, alongside a public FAQs page and a redesigned landing page.

• Workflow Guidance Module. Visual workflow guidance engine with global default workflows, per-surgery customisation, draft/approved governance lifecycle, and feature-flag controlled rollout.
• Public FAQs. Added a public FAQs page covering setup, governance, and optional AI tools (linked from the marketing navigation).
• Landing page. Redesigned marketing landing page with clearer hero, benefits strip, and 3-step “How it works” section.
• Trust section. Added a trust section highlighting GP-built origins and local clinical control.
• User Guide link. User Guide link restored in marketing site navigation alongside Docs link.

See Workflows.

AI Suggested Questions (v1.1) — December 2025

The AI Suggested Questions panel arrived, with a new symptom page layout and personal display preferences.

• AI Suggested Questions panel added.
• New symptom detail page layout.
• Appointment Directory promoted to top navigation.
• Preferences system added: Modern vs Classic cards, Quick-scan mode, Header layouts, High-risk button selection.
• Highlight engine improved (orange/red/pink/purple/green).
• Symptom library list: improved table, new badges, cleaner actions.
• Admin dashboard reorganised.
• Filters. Improved age filters and high-risk filters.
• User roles. Revised user roles display.
• Documentation links. Added clear links from the main app to the documentation site.
• Retired. Removed old AI Training Mode / quiz module.

Web release (v1.0) — October to November 2025

The first full web version of the Signposting Toolkit.

• Clinical Review workflow.
• Multi-surgery tenancy.
• Engagement tracking.
• Feature flags.
• AI Instruction Editor.
• Improved admin dashboard.
• User management redesign.

Beta and prototypes — before 2025

A PowerApps version was used as an internal prototype at Ide Lane Surgery.