April 2026 Release
A round-up of the user-facing improvements and fixes that shipped to SyRF in April 2026.
Data export & annotations
Include annotation comments in quantitative exports
When exporting outcome data in quantitative format you can now tick the new Include comments option to bring reviewer comments out alongside the values. This is useful if your team uses annotation comments to record context (discrepancies, caveats, coding notes) that you want to keep next to the numbers in R, SAS, or Excel.
Annotations in stages with shared questions no longer disappear
A small number of projects used annotation questions that were shared across multiple stages. In those projects, outcome-level annotations could go missing after a reviewer marked a stage as complete, and wide-format data exports could then fail with an error before producing a file. Both issues are fixed. If you were affected you should no longer see the problem, and annotations captured before the fix are also recoverable on request: contact the SyRF team via the in-app Contact Us form and we’ll help.
Bulk study update
The Bulk Study Update feature has had a round of quality-of-life improvements.
More flexible screening values
The screening-decision columns used to require 1 (include) or 0 (exclude). They now also accept:
| Include | Exclude |
|---|---|
1 | 0 |
include / included | exclude / excluded |
yes | no |
true | false |
All values are case-insensitive, so Include, INCLUDE, or yes all work. This makes it easier to drop in a CSV produced by another tool without first normalising the values.
Clearer error messages
If a CSV row contains an invalid value or a column is missing, you now see a precise message that names the row, the column, and the values SyRF was expecting, instead of a generic “could not parse” error. The bulk-update dialog also shows the accepted values up-front so you can check your file before uploading.
No more stuck “validating” jobs
Previously, some CSV uploads could get permanently stuck in the Validating on server state if an unexpected problem occurred. They now fail cleanly with a visible error so you can fix the file and retry.
Reliability
- All Studies page no longer crashes for non-admin members. Project members with limited permissions could hit an error loading the All Studies page. The page now loads correctly for every role.
- Numeric timepoint spreadsheet loads reliably. A small number of users occasionally saw the numeric timepoint spreadsheet fail to appear on first load, requiring a refresh. It now initialises correctly on every visit.
- Large literature searches no longer create duplicate imports. Projects with thousands of annotation questions could occasionally create duplicate import jobs when AWS re-sent upload notifications. Imports are now fully de-duplicated end-to-end.
Behind the scenes
- Groundwork has been laid for a modernised sign-in system. You’ll continue to sign in exactly as before: the new infrastructure runs alongside the existing provider while we validate it. Future releases will build on this to deliver improvements like better session management, clearer “keep me signed in” behaviour, and single sign-on options.
- Security patches were applied across the platform’s dependencies.
- Under-the-hood database and build optimisations keep the application fast and costs predictable for the CAMARADES team.
Questions, feedback, or want to report something that still isn’t working as expected? Please use the in-app Contact Us form, or email your usual SyRF support channel.