Currently apps rely on operator Twitter feeds for service updates. Displaying tweets in the app requires us to request them from Twitter’s API, which can be slow, especially at times of high traffic. When the weather takes a turn for the worst and everyone is trying to find out whether your services are running is one of these scenarios. In extreme cases Twitter stops providing a response to our requests, where we have gone over the account limit. In simple terms, this means the apps can’t display any service update information at a time when it is needed most. Understandably this causes huge frustration for users as ‘the system’ buckles under the strain.

As the next step in the roll out of our improvements to tackle this, apps will soon stop using Twitter as the source of this information, as our Passenger-powered websites already have. More detailed service updates, coming straight from Passenger Cloud, will replace the tweets in the Service Updates section part of the app.

This update will make it clearer for users to see which services are affected and the timings for each update, if they are known. It is the first step of several that we have planned to use this information more widely throughout the apps. This app change follows our roll out of the operator tools to manage disruption information at the end of April 2018.

This update only affects those of you that are already using Passenger Cloud to manage your service updates. If you’re not yet and would like to be, please get in touch with your account manager. We’ll work with you to roll out the admin tools before updating your app to include the updated approach.