Our goal at Fuel Cycle is to release software updates approximately every two weeks, ensuring consistency and constant innovation. While some updates are more "under the hood," others include exciting new features to enhance your experience!

February 2026

FC Survey: Updated Quota Types

Quotas in FC Surveys now use three clear types: Overall Quota, Profile/Group Quota, and In-Survey Quota. The previous “Simple” and “Advanced” quota labels have been retired and mapped into these new options. This structure makes it easier to match the right quota type to your fielding strategy. You can clearly separate overall completes from audience-based limits and question-based limits, which improves control over sample composition and reduces misconfigured quotas on more complex studies.

Overall Quota when you only want to cap total completes. Set the total completes target and save.
Profile/Group Quota to set limits based on existing groups or profile attributes. Define the profile or group criteria, set targets for each segment, and save.
In-Survey Quota to set limits based on answers to specific survey questions. Choose the relevant survey question, set limits for each answer option, and save.

Email Campaigns: Only Scheduled or Published Activities in Picker

When you select an activity as the recipient for an email campaign, the activity picker now shows only scheduled or published activities. Draft or otherwise inactive activities are hidden from the list. This reduces the chance of tying an email to an activity that isn’t ready for participants. It simplifies the selection list so you can quickly find the right activity and avoid sending members to inactive or incomplete experiences.

Quantitative Reports: Filter by Response Status

We've introduced a new Quantitative Report filter for survey response status: Completed, Partial, or Terminated. This new filter can provide insight into all responses received from your survey.

Crosstabs: See Search Result Counts in the Side Pane

When you search in the Crosstabs side pane, you'll now see how many matching items were found for questions and P2. The counts appear in parentheses next to each section, even when sections are collapsed. This update makes it easier to scan long lists of questions and P2 options. You can quickly see whether your search is returning any results and where those matches live, without expanding every section.

Email Campaigns: Emojis Blocked in Critical Fields

The email campaign form now blocks emojis in the campaign name, subject line, and preheader. If you try to paste or type an emoji into the campaign name, subject, or preheader, you won't be able to. Emojis in these fields can cause deliverability and rendering issues. Blocking them at the UI level helps protect response rates, data integrity, and panelist experience.

Community Surveys: Clearer "Allow Retakes" Disabled State

The disabled Allow Retakes checkbox in the community survey setup now follows the platform design system. Its visual state is consistent with other disabled checkboxes. This update reduces confusion about whether respondents can retake a survey. It's now much clearer when the option is unavailable versus when it can be toggled.

FC UX: Third-Party Panel URL Tracking

Introduced enhanced URL tracking for participants sourced from third-party panel vendors, such as NewtonX. The system now captures and stores end-to-end tracking data. This enables more accurate reporting of third-party panel traffic and simplifies reconciliation with panel vendors. Tracking is automatically applied to supported third-party panel URLs. Reporting data can be accessed through existing study reporting workflows.

FC UX: No Last Name in Studies

Participant last names no longer appear in Moderated and Unmoderated studies. The platform now displays names as First Name and Last Initial. This update reduces exposure to personally identifiable information and strengthens participant privacy. It also supports General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other compliance requirements.

FC UX: Clips and Highlight Reels

Highlight Reels are now available in every workspace in the BETA release. To accomplish our MVP offering, users can Duplicate an existing reel, edit it, and save it as a new reel, and they can Delete clips and highlight reels that are no longer needed. Clips and Highlight Reels turn long recordings into concise, shareable evidence, which means less time scrubbing video and more time socializing clear, compelling findings.

FC UX: Unmoderated Session Increase

The session limit for unmoderated studies has increased. Users can now conduct up to 100 sessions per study, compared to the previous limit of 50. You can now onboard bigger client teams and more stakeholder groups in a single onboarding wave, without splitting them across multiple sessions. Fewer workarounds and duplicate onboarding configurations mean less admin time and a cleaner setup.

Platform: Updated Share Icons

Icons in the Share modal have been swapped so that the modal header now uses the standard "share" icon and the Share tab now uses the "chain link" icon.

This applies to:
•    Quant Report
•    Qual Report
•    Crosstab Report
•    Member Composition Dashboard

You can now quickly distinguish between sharing content and copying a link:

•    Reduces misclicks when sending reports to stakeholders.
•    Aligns with common UI patterns, so new users recognize actions immediately.

Activity Listing: Audience Subtype Column

The Activities listing page now restricts the Audience column to show only Community, Panel, and External. There is a new Audience Subtype column (non-sortable) for more detail. The Audience column remains sortable. You can now quickly see the overall audience type (for high-level targeting) and the specific subtype (for deeper operational clarity). This helps validate targeting and prevents launching activities to the wrong audience type.

Quant Report Charts & Question Reordering

Quant report charts now correctly refresh when you hide and re-show questions or reorder survey questions in the chart slot. The chart no longer gets stuck rendering the wrong question type after these actions. Previously, chart caching could show a grid question where a single-choice question should appear, confusing stakeholders reviewing data. Now, charts correctly reload, preserving data accuracy and interpretability.

Platform UI and Bug Fixes

This release delivers focused UI and behavior improvements across:

Search and navigation
Group Builder and activity listing
Community surveys and FC Surveys
Quant and Qual reporting
Comment and media settings
Quick Question authoring
Sharing and export flows
Fixed some visual issues on the Review step of email campaigns.
Fixed some behavior of the Custom Answer dropdown in quant reporting.
Fixed an edge case in Qual reports where, after generating AI tags, deleting them, and converting the category to Manual, the interface still showed a “generate tags” option.
Fixed an issue in Qual reports where a disabled "Add New Tag Category" button could still be clicked to open tag options and allow new categories.

FC UX: Consistent Recording Controls

In moderated sessions on web staging, the "Recording" call-to-action now looks and behaves the same for Moderators, Participants, Observers, and Support. Everyone sees a consistent recording control in the session interface. Start or join a moderated session on web staging as you normally would, in any role (Moderator, Participant, Observer, or Support). Look for the unified Recording control in the session interface; it has the same label and visual pattern for all roles. When every role sees the same recording control, it's much easier to explain what's happening in the session and what to click. Moderators can confidently say "we're recording now" and know that participants and observers see a matching indicator. This reduces misclicks, prevents missed recordings, and makes it easier to train teams and clients on how recording works on the platform.

FC UX: Moderated Session Live Support Offer Email

After creating a Moderated session, you'll receive a second email from fc_ux_livesupport@fuelcycle.com asking if you want Live Support; request support by replying to that email. After the creation email, look for one from fc_ux_livesupport@fuelcycle.com. Reply with session details if you want support; otherwise, ignore the email. If yes, Product Solutions joins early, runs tech checks, and stays until things are stable, letting you focus on moderating.

FC UX: Participant Welcome Copy Change

The default participant welcome message for moderated sessions has been rewritten to improve clarity and reflect current platform workflows. Schedule your Moderated session as usual. Invited participants automatically see the new welcome message. Add special instructions in the standard fields; the welcome message will appear alongside them. Clearer welcome language means fewer participant questions and better-prepared attendees, allowing research to begin quickly and yield higher-quality feedback.

January 2026

Activities: Consistent Incentive Displays on All Publish Steps

Incentive details are now displayed consistently across all Activity Publish steps, following the improved format from the discussion board flow: "Completing a quick question: X points."

Platform Bug Fixes

In the External Survey flow (internal and standalone), editing the activity name on Step 2 no longer disables the Confirm & Continue button after you have already selected an audience.
Hovering on chart bars in Quant Reports, Dashboards, and the Overview page no longer triggers console errors and now correctly shows the standard tooltip.
When you move from the Details page to the Publish page in the activity creation flow for external activities, the page now loads with the top content in view, rather than placing you below the fold.
In Qual Reports, when you add multiple P2 points to a table and choose a custom order, the report now respects that order instead of sorting columns alphabetically.
Export notifications now correctly handle filenames with no spaces. Long continuous names will wrap within the notification area instead of spilling outside the border.

FC UX: Highlight Reels

Researchers can create a reel by combining multiple clips. Combining multiple clips into one reel lets you manage and share a single file. This helps others quickly find key moments without having to watch long videos. It also makes it easy to share highlight reels with clients and your team.

Quick Question: Graph Preview

Quick Question now includes a Card Preview block in the Setup step. As you configure a Quick Question, you can see how the card will look on the community homepage and, when results are shown, choose the chart type. You can design Quick Question cards with clear expectations of how members will see them.

FC UX Bug Fixes

The "Join Now" button in email notifications to moderators, participants, and support now correctly includes each recipient's unique link. The attached ICS calendar file also contains the right link in its location field. While links are always available on the admin side, this fix ensures you can easily access your session directly from your calendar and receive timely reminders.
You can now manually enter start and end times in the scheduler, and the dropdown menu displays time options in 15-minute intervals. This resolves previous issues with scheduling flexibility and improves usability.

FC UX Scheduling: Time Zone Visibility

Researchers can now view both the scheduled FC UX moderated session time and their local time while setting up or reviewing sessions. A new time zone selector on the dashboard also lets users view all sessions in their preferred time zone.

Discussion Board: Activity Refresh

Our team has made significant strides to ensure the experience around building activities is consistent, concise, and less error-prone. This latest development is another step toward a more unified approach to building activities on the platform. When Moderators create a new discussion board activity in the platform, they will be taken through the new activity builder flow.