Handbook

How DogPilot works today

This handbook explains the current product structure: login-first access, guided onboarding, the five main tabs, the invite flow, trainings and reviews, the exercise catalog with automatic AI translation, announcements, polls, credits, progress insights, appearance customisation, and Basic vs. Premium.

Five tabs: Home, Training, Chat, School, More
Login-first with email/password, Google, or Apple
Invite-based school onboarding (link, code, QR)
Real conversations with live messaging and push notifications
Post-training reviews, progress insights, and an on-demand AI dog insight
Six interface languages with automatic AI translation of public exercises

Quick start

Three steps to be productive right after sign-in.

Sign in

Open DogPilot and sign in with email/password, Google, or Apple. Legacy anonymous profiles are guided through an upgrade first.

Finish onboarding

A short, role-aware onboarding helps you set up or join a school via an interactive checklist. You can restart it later from More > App & help.

Open Home

The Home tab shows announcements and your personalized insights feed. From there you navigate to Training, Chat, School, or More.

Chapters

Pick a topic and jump straight to the details.

01 · Launch

1. Launch & sign in

Login-first access, supported methods, guided onboarding, and legacy profile handling.
02 · Tabs

2. Navigate the five tabs

Home, Training, Chat, School, More — what each tab is for.
03 · Invites

3. Join a school

Invite formats, sharing, QR, validity, and what happens after redemption.
04 · Home

4. The Home tab

Announcements, a personalized insights feed, pinned next training, open polls, and review prompts.
05 · Training

5. The Training tab

Planning, editing, audience targeting, registration, credits, templates, and post-training reviews.
06 · Chat

6. The Chat tab

Real conversations with live messaging, four conversation types, and a one-year archive.
07 · School

7. The School tab

School details, groups, members, exercise catalog with AI translation, announcements, polls, credits, and invites.
08 · More

8. The More tab

Profile, progress insights, weekly report, memberships, appearance, notifications, and account.
09 · Premium

9. Basic and Premium

What Basic covers, what Premium unlocks (including the AI dog insight), and how to upgrade.
10 · Platforms

10. Languages, platforms, widgets, deep links, and push

Six languages with AI exercise translation, supported targets, native home screen widgets, deep links, and mobile push notifications.

1. Launch & sign in

Login-first access, supported methods, guided onboarding, and legacy profile handling.

Open

Highlights

Visible login before the live app can be used
Email/password, Google, and Apple on supported platforms
Forgot-password link sends a Firebase reset email
Legacy anonymous profiles are upgraded via a guided flow
A short role-aware onboarding with an interactive checklist runs after first login

How it works

Supported login methods

  • Email/password
  • Google
  • Apple on supported devices
  • Use "Forgot password?" on the login form to receive a reset email

Complete onboarding

  • Choose whether to join an existing school or create/manage one
  • Work through the interactive checklist — set up a school and invite members, or complete your profile and join a school
  • Finish on the overview of the five tabs; restart anytime from More > App & help > Start onboarding

Legacy anonymous profile

  • If an older build created a local anonymous profile on the same device, DogPilot asks you to attach a visible login before continuing.
  • Do that upgrade before reinstalling or wiping the device.

2. Navigate the five tabs

Home, Training, Chat, School, More — what each tab is for.

Open

Highlights

Home: announcements plus a personalized insights feed with pinned polls and next training
Training: upcoming and past sessions, editing, and reviews
Chat: real conversations with live messaging
School: details, groups, members, exercises, announcements, polls, credits, settings
More: profile, progress insights, memberships, appearance, notifications, account

How it works

Choose a tab

  • Tap an icon in the bottom bar to switch tabs. The same navigation applies on every platform.

3. Join a school

Invite formats, sharing, QR, validity, and what happens after redemption.

Open

Highlights

Invite link, compact code, or QR code
Default 30-day validity; invites can be revoked
Creates or reuses the school membership
Group membership is managed by managers after joining
Changing a group refreshes upcoming trainings that reference it

How it works

Share an invite (manager)

  • Open school settings
  • Open the invite actions for the school
  • Share via system dialog, copy the link, or present the QR code

Redeem an invite (member)

  • Open the School tab and tap the + button
  • Choose "Join existing school"
  • Enter the compact code or tap "Scan QR code"
  • Sign in if required; DogPilot validates the invite and links your profile to the school

4. The Home tab

Announcements, a personalized insights feed, pinned next training, open polls, and review prompts.

Open

Highlights

Published announcements appear at the top, newest first, until their optional display-until date
Pinned band: next upcoming training, open polls, and recent poll results
Post-training review prompt: "How was it with {dog}?" deep-links into the review wizard
Training count milestones (10, 25, 50, 100, 250, 500) and exercise-variety milestones
"Time capsule" memories from 3, 6, 12, or 24 months ago and membership anniversaries
Current credit balance with a low-credit notice at 3 or fewer credits

How it works

Respond from the pinned band

  • Open Home
  • Answer an open poll directly from its pinned card
  • Open a result card to review a published outcome
  • Tap the review card to start or continue a post-training review

No schools yet?

  • Create a new school from the School tab, or
  • Open the School tab, tap the + button and redeem a valid invite link or code

5. The Training tab

Planning, editing, audience targeting, registration, credits, templates, and post-training reviews.

Open

Highlights

Upcoming and past training sessions across all your schools
Managers schedule via the floating action button and can edit title, date, start/end time, groups, exercises, and registration requirement
Audience targeting: no groups = whole school; selected groups restrict visibility to those members
Releasing deducts credits from billed participants; cancelling refunds them automatically
Ended trainings become read-only and invite a post-training review
Reusable training templates with weekday, times, groups, exercises (Premium)

How it works

Create a training

  • Open Training
  • Tap the floating action button
  • Optionally select a template to prefill the planning form (a weekday proposes the next matching date)
  • Set the audience and registration requirement, then release — the dialog summarises who will see it before credits are deducted

Edit a training

  • Open the training from Training or Home
  • Tap edit
  • Adjust title, date and time, groups, exercises, or registration requirement
  • Save — affected members see the update on next sync

Review an ended training

  • Open the review wizard from the Home prompt, the push reminder, or the Your review section of the training detail
  • Rate the training overall (1–5 stars, optional note up to 500 characters)
  • Rate each exercise and your dog's performance, then each participating dog
  • Input saves after every step; resume later if you skip the rest

6. The Chat tab

Real conversations with live messaging, four conversation types, and a one-year archive.

Open

Highlights

Live conversation inbox with an unread badge on the tab
Four conversation types: school chats, training chats, direct messages, topics
School and training chats are created automatically; training chats archive when the training ends
Any member can start a direct message; managers can create topics
Mute (optionally time-limited), hide, and archive conversations
Push notifications on Android and iOS for new messages
Archived conversations stay reachable and are kept about one year (365 days)

How it works

Start a conversation

  • Open Chat
  • Tap new conversation
  • Pick a school member for a direct message, or let managers create a topic
  • Send your first message — delivery is live

Mute or archive

  • Open a conversation
  • Tap the detail/settings icon
  • Choose Mute (optionally for a limited time), Hide, or Archive
  • Archived conversations remain reachable from the archive screen

7. The School tab

School details, groups, members, exercise catalog with AI translation, announcements, polls, credits, and invites.

Open

Highlights

School list with a + button to create a school or join an existing one; drag to reorder, top school is the default context
School details, groups, and member roles in one place; owners promote or demote managers
Exercise catalog with categories, levels, ratings; texts auto-translate into all six app languages via AI
Announcements with audience targeting (whole school, a group, or a training's participants) + push
Polls: managers create them (Premium), every member responds on Home; results can be shared to the school chat
Credit settings and history; invite actions to share a link, copy, or show a QR code
AI manager tools (Premium, manager-only): AI assessments saved with a history, AI-drafted announcements, an AI next-training focus, and an AI exercise generator — output can be inaccurate, under a fair-use daily AI limit per school

How it works

Manage groups and members

  • Open the School tab
  • Pick a school
  • Open Groups to define fixed members, dynamic slots, and max count; open Members to manage roles

Publish an announcement

  • Open the School tab and pick a school
  • Compose an announcement with title, message, and optional cover image
  • Choose the audience: whole school, a single group, or a training's participants
  • Publish — targeted members get a push and the announcement appears on their Home
  • Premium managers can let AI draft the title and message from a few keywords, then edit before publishing

Create a poll (Premium)

  • Open the Polls section (managers)
  • Choose single-choice, multiple-choice, text-answer, or rating question
  • Publish — it appears to every member in the Home pinned band
  • Close, publish results, or share a result summary to the school chat (these management actions stay available without Premium)

Maintain the exercise catalog

  • Open the School tab and select Exercise catalog
  • Create or edit a school-specific exercise with category, level, and step-by-step description
  • Optionally publish it to the global public catalog
  • Texts are translated automatically into all six languages; editing the original regenerates translations
  • Premium managers can use the AI exercise generator: describe a goal and AI proposes name, description, category, and level to edit

Use the AI manager tools (Premium, manager-only)

  • Generate an AI assessment of a single past training (from its detail screen) or of the whole school (from the School tab), based on aggregated post-training ratings and attendance — assessments are saved with a history so you can compare progress over time
  • Let AI draft an announcement title and message from a few keywords, then edit before publishing
  • Ask AI for a next-training focus derived from your weakest-rated disciplines (this suggestion is not saved)
  • Describe a goal and let the AI exercise generator propose a name, description, category, and level, auto-translated into all six languages
  • All tools run via Google Gemini, share a fair-use daily AI limit per school, and can be inaccurate — always review the output

8. The More tab

Profile, progress insights, weekly report, memberships, appearance, notifications, and account.

Open

Highlights

Profile header with avatar, premium/basic chip, and a dogs strip; edit name and manage dogs
Progress & insights hero with an 8-week sparkline and a training-morale doughnut (Premium unlocks the full screen)
Security & login: review, add, and remove visible login methods; request an email change or update the password
Notifications: toggle trainings, chats, and review-reminder pushes independently
Appearance: custom background image (9:16, max 200 KB), overlay-brightness slider, and five color schemes synced via your account
Account: switch language, sign out, or delete account

How it works

Open progress insights

  • Open the More tab
  • Tap Open insights in the premium hero card
  • Review the overview score cards, per-dog and per-exercise rows, and (Premium) history and recent notes

Set a background image

  • Open the Appearance section
  • Tap Background image
  • Pick a photo and confirm the 9:16 crop
  • The image uploads automatically and appears behind all five main tabs

Manage login methods

  • Open Security & login
  • Add email/password as an additional login
  • Link supported providers to the same profile
  • Request an email change or update the password; you can remove a method while another visible one remains

9. Basic and Premium

What Basic covers, what Premium unlocks (including the AI dog insight), and how to upgrade.

Open

Highlights

Basic: all core features for one school including reading and answering polls, ad-supported
Premium: no ads, unlimited schools, recurring training templates, create polls, full progress analytics with weekly PDF report
Premium AI dog insight: an on-demand, AI-generated summary of a dog's progress (with a note that AI can be imprecise)
Premium AI manager tools (manager-only): AI assessment of a training or the whole school (saved with a history), AI-drafted announcements, an AI next-training focus, and an AI exercise generator — via Google Gemini, output can be inaccurate, under a fair-use daily AI limit per school
One-time purchase via the App Store or Google Play; the price lives in the store listing
Premium status persists across reinstalls when purchases are restored

How it works

Upgrade to Premium

  • Open the More tab
  • Tap Upgrade to Premium
  • Complete the one-time purchase in the store; Premium activates immediately

Generate an AI dog insight

  • Open insights from the More tab
  • Open the per-dog section
  • Tap AI insight to generate an on-demand summary of that dog's training progress
  • Treat the result as guidance — the sheet notes that AI can be inaccurate

Use the Premium AI manager tools (manager-only)

  • Generate an AI assessment of a single training or the whole school, saved with a history to track progress over time
  • Let AI draft an announcement from a few keywords, then edit before publishing
  • Ask AI for a next-training focus from your weakest-rated disciplines (not saved)
  • Describe a goal and let the AI exercise generator propose an exercise, auto-translated into all six languages
  • They run via Google Gemini, share a fair-use daily AI limit per school, and can be inaccurate — always review the output

Restore a purchase

  • Open the More tab
  • Tap Restore purchase
  • The store confirms the existing purchase and re-activates Premium

10. Languages, platforms, widgets, deep links, and push

Six languages with AI exercise translation, supported targets, native home screen widgets, deep links, and mobile push notifications.

Open

Highlights

English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Public exercise texts are auto-translated into all six languages via AI
Android and iOS are the live targets; other platforms may show backend-unavailable states
Native Dog and Activity widgets are available on Android and iOS
Deep links for invite URLs when DogPilot is installed
Push notifications via Firebase Cloud Messaging for messages, trainings, review reminders, and announcements

How it works

Switch language

  • Open the More tab
  • Use the language switcher
  • The change applies to all tabs instantly

Add a widget

  • Add the Dog widget or Activity widget from the Android widget picker or the iOS widget gallery
  • Open DogPilot after sign-in or after changing dogs, language, or schools so widget data refreshes

Push notifications

  • Grant notification permission when DogPilot asks after sign-in
  • Receive pushes for new messages, trainings that target you, review reminders, and new announcements
  • Tap a notification to open the related screen directly
  • In Notifications, toggle trainings, chats, and review reminders independently; mute a conversation to silence its messages