Who’s Up Next? Turn Tracker
User’s Guide
Who's Up Next? helps you keep track of turns in group activities. It remembers who went last and whose turn is next for chores, games, meetings, visits, or any repeating event or task.
Contents
Activities
An activity is any task, event, or game where participants in a group take turns performing some action, for example household tasks, such as doing the dishes or taking out the trash; events, such as hosting a monthly book club or driving the carpool; and games, such as deciding who deals first at card night or who picks the next movie.
Creating an activity
On the home screen the Add a new Activity button opens the Create New Activity screen. There is also an additional actions button (…) in the upper right corner of the main screen with an option to Add Activity.
Title, Type and Notes
Each activity must have a unique Title. Activities can be one of three types: Task, Event, or Game. This selection doesn't affect anything about how turns are taken, but simply determines some of the terminology used to describe it or the participants. For example, a game's roster asks you to add players rather than agents. Notes is an optional text field saved with the activity and displayed only in the Activity editing sheet.
Participants
Add people to your activity by tapping in their names, choosing them from your contacts list, or selecting from participants in other existing activities. If you choose from contacts or previous participants, any address info will come along with them. Names need to be unique, even across different activities.
Turn order
There are three ways to decide the turn order:
- Sequential: Turns follow the order as it is shown in the roster.
- Shuffled: The order is drawn at random, but everyone takes a turn before anyone repeats.
- Random: Each turn is determined randomly, favoring participants who took turns least recently.
Shuffled and Random have an additional option: Allow consecutive turns. Normally the app won't queue up the same participant twice in a row. When this option is enabled the same person may be drawn twice in a row, even as a result of being skipped. An activity with only one participant will always take consecutive turns, of course.
Frequency
The Frequency selector determines whether turns have due dates, and how the due dates/times are determined. The are three options:
- As Needed: There is no schedule or due dates.
- Scheduled: Select a repeating frequency - daily, weekly or monthly.
- Fixed Interval: The next turn is due a fixed length of time after the previous one is completed.
Grace period
The optional grace period can be used to allow for a turn to be "due" for a period of time before it becomes "overdue". When set to None a turn becomes overdue the moment it becomes due.
After the activity is created it can be edited either from the popup menu produced by long pressing on the activity card on the main screen or by tapping on the activity to reveal its detail screen, and tapping on the additional actions button menu.
The Activities screen
The main screen shows all activities, including paused ones. The gear button in the upper left opens Settings. The more actions (…) button in the upper right creates a new activity or reorders the activities list.
The Activity Card
The activity card shows its title, and who went last and who is up next.
Activity Card actions
Press and hold an activity card to open an action menu with these options:
- Share status: Sends a short message using the iOS share sheet including the title, and current status of the activity: who went last and who is next.
- Pause/Resume Activity: When paused the app will not send notifications that turns are due or overdue.
- Edit activity:Change its title, type, turn order and schedule.
- Delete activity: Removes the activity. This action is not undoable.
Taking turns
Recording a turn
To record a turn, tap the Next up box, or drag it across onto Did last. You can change the time and date before you confirm that the turn is completed.
A turn can be dated earlier than now, but not in the future, and not earlier than the most recent turn. If you pick a time outside those limits, the dialog says why and OK stays off until you change it. Any skips recorded after the turn's new time move to just before it, so the history stays in the order it happened.
On the Activity Roster screen you can also tap the checkmark button to record a turn.
Undoing a turn
Drag the Did last box back across onto Next up. The dialog names the person, the activity, and the time and day of the turn, so a drag aimed at the wrong card can be caught before it does anything. Confirming deletes that turn from the history and hands the turn back to whoever took it. Any skips recorded after that turn are deleted along with it, and the dialog says how many.
Only the most recent turn can be undone, and only once. After an undo, the turn that now shows in Did last stays put until the next turn is recorded.
Skipping a turn
Tap the Skip button on the Next up box. You can simply pass over the current person and let the app choose the next up, or jump straight to any other participant.
Activity Roster & History
Tap a card to open the activity's roster & history screen. It has two tabs — Roster and History.
Roster
The roster tab lists the participants in their standard order of turns. The participant up next is highlighted and their row also has buttons to record a turn, send a reminder, or skip them in the rotation.
On this tab, the additional actions (…) menu includes:
- Add participant adds a person to this activity.
- Reorder participants shows drag handles on the rows so you can move people up or down the standard turn order. The choice reads Done reordering until you choose it again to put the handles away.
- Shuffle order puts the participants in a random order once, right away.
- Share status - uses the iOS share sheet to share who is up next and who took the last turn
History
This tab lists every recorded turn and it's date and time, newest first by default.
On this tab, the (…) menu includes these options:
- Sort by oldest/newestSorts the event history by date and time.
- Hide/Show skipped - hides or shows skips.
- Share history - uses the iOS share sheet to share how many turns each participant has taken.
To delete an entry, swipe it to the left and tap Delete. Only the end of the history can be deleted: the most recent turn and any skips after it. Deleting an entry also deletes every entry after it, and a dialog asks you to confirm first. Deleting a turn hands it back to whoever took it, and counts as that turn's one undo. Deleting a skip makes the person who was skipped up next again.
Pausing an activity
Choose Pause Activity from the (…) menu. The scheduling is paused and the app stops sending notifications.
Participants
Every participant requires a unique name, even across activities. Participants may also have contact addresses - email, phone or social medial handles - to send them reminders. Contact information is only required if you want to send messages to participants when their turn is due or overdue.
The same person can in participate in multiple activities. Their name and addresses are shared across activities: changing a name or contact info in one activity changes them in every activity.
If two people in different activities were linked by mistake, open the participant screen and tap Unlink from Other Activities. You will be prompted for a new name and the addresses for the new person will be unlinked from the other.
Participant screen
From the Roster tab tap a name to see details about that participant. Here you can edit their name and add or remove contact addresses. You can also pause them in the lineup so their turn is skipped until they are resumed, and you can remove them from the activity.
Contact methods
Addresses holds phone numbers, email addresses and handles — as many as you like, or none at all. For each one you tick which apps will carry it; a mobile number might be Messages, WhatsApp and Signal. Addresses picked up from Contacts arrive with the obvious choice already ticked and the rest left to you.
Pausing and removing
Swipe a roster row to the left for Remove and Pause (or Resume); both are also on the person's own screen. A paused person stays on the roster and keeps their history but is passed over until you resume them.
Removing somebody takes them out of the rotation but leaves their past turns in the history. Add them back later and their turn count comes back with them.
Notifications and Reminders
The app can automatically send you notifications when turns are due and/or overdue, and you can send reminders to participants when it is their turn.
If you enable notifications in the app's iOS Settings and turn them on for an activity, you will get due and/or overdue notifications for scheduled activities. These appear as notifications on your device.
You can also manually send reminders to participants, by using the remind buttons on the activity cards when it is their turn. You must have some form of contact information, either a phone number for Messages or SMS texts, email addresses or social media handles.
Notifications to you
Notifications are enabled on the activity editing screen. Send me due now notifications fires when the turn falls due, and appears only when there is a grace period to distinguish "due" from "overdue". Send me overdue notifications fires once the grace period has run out.
When an activity is paused no notifications will be sent, and an As Needed activity will never send notifications.
Reminding a participant
Tap Remind on the Next up box, or on the up-next participant's 'row in the activity roster. You will be asked to choose the method and a message will be drafted for you to edit and send.
Settings
Open Settings with the gear button in the upper left corner on the main screen.
- About: The app version information, a link to this guide, which also holds the privacy policy, and a button to send mail to the developer.
- Summary: How many activities, paused activities and participants this copy of the app is holding.
- Appearance: System, Light or Dark. System follows whatever iOS is set to.
- iCloud Backup & Sync: The sync switch and everything around it. See the next section.
- Subscription: Whether premium is active and when it renews, with Restore purchases and Manage subscription.
- System Settings: A shortcut to this app's own page in iOS Settings, which is where notification permission lives.
iCloud Backup and Sync
By default all the app's data is stored only on this device. iCloud Backup and Sync will copy the data to your private iCloud and keeps every device signed in to the same Apple Account in sync with each other. This feature requires a premium subscription and devices must be signed in to iCloud.
Enabling iCloud Sync
Enable Sync with iCloud in Settings. This is a premium feature and will require a subscription or in-app purchase. The app needs to reload your activity data before sync can start or stop, and this may take some time, depending on how much data you have.
If both this device and iCloud already hold activities, you will be asked whether to Merge them, and may need to Review entries that are duplicated across devices. Every other device merges its own activities too, so you may need to go through a review on each one.
Merge Review
When two activities on different devices share a title but are not otherwise the same, the app will ask you to choose which to keep, or keep both, renaming each to match the device it came from.
Disabling Sync
Turning the switch off reloads your activities again and then saves to this device only. The copy already in iCloud is kept and nothing is deleted. Settings offers an option to Remove activity data in iCloud.
If a premium subscription lapses while sync is on, the app tells you, stops updating iCloud, and keeps working on this device. Your data in iCloud is left alone, not deleted, and renewing the subscription will start syncing again.
Privacy Policy
Your activity data, including participants names and any contact info, as well as the turn history is stored locally on this device. If iCloud sync is enabled then the data is also stored in your iCloud account.
Contacts
When you add a person from your contacts list the iOS system chooser is used and the app only sees the information for the person you selected. It stores phone numbers, email addresses, and handles for use with the reminder messages that you send manually. The app does not send any messages automatically.
Notifications
Turn notifications are scheduled by iOS on this device and appear only here, or any other device where iCloud sync is enabled.
Messages, Mail and Sharing
Using the Remind button to send someone a reminder about their turn will open either the Messages or Mail app, and present you with a draft to review before you manually hit send. The Share feature also works similarly, opening a share sheet for you to choose how to share information.
No Tracking
There is no advertising in the app, and the app does not track usage metrics, or record anything that happens in the activities or the participants. The app does not follow you across other apps or websites, and never asks for an advertising identifier.
However, premium subscriptions are handled by a third-party framework which tracks some purchase data: which plan you bought and when it renews, what you do on the subscription screen itself, and general information about your device: the model, the iOS version, the app version, your language and your App Store country. The identifier it uses does not link to you personally, and has no name, no email address and no account, and is deleted when you delete the app.
Deleting Your Data
Deleting an activity deletes its roster and its history along with it. Deleting the app removes everything Who's Up? has stored on this device. If iCloud syncing is enabled then copies may remain in your iCloud account. These can be removed from the Settings screen within the app.
Troubleshooting
The Skip button is greyed out
Only one person is taking turns. Add another participant, or resume participants who are paused.
An activity says nothing is due
Either its frequency is As Needed, which has no due dates, or the activity is paused.
You are not receiving Notifications
Check that the activity is not paused, that the due and/or overdue notification switches are on, and that notifications are allowed for the app in iOS Settings. Also, make sure your device is not in a focus that prevents notifications, like sleep or 'do not disturb'.
A name is not in the rotation
They are probably paused; their roster row says Paused. Swipe the row and tap Resume.
The turn went to the wrong person
Drag Did last back onto Next up to undo the turn, then use Skip and its Jump to list to put the turn where it belongs.