# Iterations (/crew/iterations)



Once your data app is in production, you ask your Crew for what you need, and it keeps improving your data apps. Each change to a data app follows the same loop: you make a request, you review a preview, and your Toucan expert validates the release before it goes live.

## Make a request [#make-a-request]

A request is how you talk to your Crew, and it covers more than your data apps. You can ask for:

* **A change or an improvement** to one of your data apps.
* **An analysis** of your data.
* **Your users:** add someone, remove someone, or change what a user sees.
* **Your metrics:** change the definition of a metric, a calculation method or a business rule.

During the first month, you make your requests to your Toucan expert, who passes them on to the Crew. Then the Requests page appears in Toucan AI, and there are two ways to ask, both in Toucan AI:

* **From the Requests page.** Select **New request**, give it a title, and describe what you need, who it is for, and by when. You can set a priority and attach up to five files.
* **From the data app itself.** To change a screen, open it and select **Comment** or **Annotate**: point at the element, or draw on the screen, and say what should change. Your comment is sent as a request, with a capture of the screen. On some data apps, **Annotate** is not available: use **Comment** to comment on the whole page.

Ask in business terms: what you want to see or decide, who it is for, and which data it concerns. You do not need to say how to build it. A good request states the outcome. For example, "Regional managers need to compare this quarter's results with the previous one before the Monday meeting" is easier to deliver well than "add a second chart".

Your Crew's project management agent follows your request and keeps you posted, while the other agents do the work on your real data.

## Follow your requests [#follow-your-requests]

The Requests page has two tabs:

* **To handle** lists what waits for you: a question from your Crew to answer with **Reply**, or work to review with **Accept** or **Reject**.
* **All Requests** shows every request in five columns: **To do**, **In progress**, **Blocked** (your Crew needs an answer from you), **To Review** and **Done**.

Open a request to read its detail and to exchange comments with your Crew.

## Review the preview [#review-the-preview]

When you create a request from the Requests page, tick **Needs validation** if you want to sign the work off yourself. When the work is ready, your Crew moves the request to **To Review** and waits for your answer. Requests sent with **Comment** or **Annotate** do not ask for your validation.

* **The preview** is a draft version of your data app. Your end users do not see it. Open the data app and switch from **Published** to **Draft** to see it. Use **View as** to see it as one of your users would.
* **Accept** signs the change off. **Reject** sends the request back to **To do**, with a comment that says what is missing or what to change.

Pilots, the people in your organization who steer the Crew, make requests, review them and accept them. Explorers, your end users, only see the published data app: they do not see requests or drafts.

## Publish [#publish]

Once you have approved the preview, your Toucan expert validates the release, and only then is it published to your users. A preview usually comes the same day, and the release usually goes live the next business morning, after the Crew's overnight checks. If a check finds a wrong number, the release does not go out: the previous version stays live and your Crew tells you why.

## What stays under your control [#what-stays-under-your-control]

* Nothing new reaches your users without your Toucan expert's validation, and without your approval when you asked for it.
* Every version of the data app is kept, and your Crew can put an earlier one back.