Support

1. I have the app but I am not in a group

This is the ordinary state of a new account, and it is deliberate. Wolfpak has no public groups and you cannot search for one: a farm watch or a CPF decides who is in it, so somebody in the group has to invite you. Until then the app has nothing to show you, which is why it says so on the first screen rather than pretending to load.

An invitation arrives one of two ways.

• A link, sent to you by an administrator over WhatsApp, email or anything else. Open it on the phone you will use. It will help you install the app if you have not already, and it knows which group it is for.
• An email from us, if the administrator entered your address. Opening the app while signed in will also show any invitation waiting for that address, so you can accept it without the link.

Either way you will be asked for a short code sent to your email address. The link says who you are; the code proves the address is yours. That is the only step we insist on, and it exists because a watch group cannot have strangers appearing on its roster.

If the link has expired, or nothing has arrived, ask the administrator to send it again - they can generate a fresh one. If you do not know who your administrator is, ask whoever told you about Wolfpak. We cannot add you to a group ourselves.

2. Signing in and passwords

You sign in with your email address and password. If you have forgotten the password, tap Forgot password on the sign-in screen; we email you a code, and you enter that code together with your new password.

If the email does not arrive within a few minutes, check the junk folder, and check that the address you typed is the one your group invited. We will not say whether an address has an account - that would let anybody test addresses - so a reset request looks the same either way.

Signing out on a device unregisters it from push notifications, so you will stop receiving taskings on it until you sign in again. That is intended.

3. Going on shift, and going off it

Your control room can only dispatch you while you are on shift. Going on shift is what tells them you are available and starts reporting your position; going off shift stops both. Nobody can put you on shift but you.

While you are on shift the app reports your position in the background, with the screen locked and the app closed. On iOS you will see the system's location indicator; on Android there is a permanent notification. That is the app working as intended, not something running without your knowledge.

A shift left open is closed for you. If the app stops reporting for two hours - the phone died, or you simply forgot - your shift is closed automatically at the last position we had, and it is marked as automatically closed in your group's records so nobody mistakes the figure for a measurement. You get a notification an hour before that happens, which is your chance to sign off properly or carry on.

You do not have to be moving to stay on shift. Sitting at a gate for four hours is four hours on shift; the distance figure will simply be small.

4. Permissions the app asks for

Wolfpak asks for the least it can, and every prompt is tied to something you have just tried to do. If you refuse one, the app keeps working - the part that needed it does not. Each message in the app that reports a blocked permission also has a link straight to the right settings page, so you should not have to hunt.

• Location, including in the background. Needed for the whole point of the product: a control room that cannot see you cannot send you anywhere, or tell whether you reached it. Only reported while you are on shift, and only to your own group. Choose Always on iOS, or Allow all the time on Android - While using the app means your position stops the moment you put the phone in your pocket.
• Precise location. An approximate position is a suburb, which is no use for dispatching the closest unit or for deciding that you have arrived.
• Microphone. Only for recording a voice note on a report, so you can describe a scene without typing. Nothing is recorded unless you hold the record button.
• Camera and photographs. Only for attaching a picture to a report.
• Notifications. How a tasking reaches you when the app is not open. With these off you will not know you have been dispatched until you open the app, which defeats the purpose - this is the one permission worth going back for.

You can change any of these at any time in your phone's settings, under Wolfpak. On Android most of them sit under Permissions; notifications are listed separately. On iOS they are all on the app's own settings page. Turning location off does not remove the history already recorded - see section 8.

5. I am not receiving taskings

Work down this list before writing to us, because it is nearly always one of the first three.

• Are you on shift? Off shift, your control room cannot dispatch you at all.
• Are notifications allowed for Wolfpak in your phone's settings?
• Have you got the right group selected, if you belong to more than one?
• Is the phone in a battery saver mode? Aggressive power saving on some Android handsets delays or drops background notifications. Excluding Wolfpak from battery optimisation fixes it.
• Do you have signal? A tasking needs a data connection to arrive. It will be waiting when coverage returns.
• Did you sign out on this device? Signing out unregisters it.

If all of that is right and taskings still are not arriving, tell us - and include the detail in section 7, particularly your platform and the time you were expecting one, so we can look for it.

6. Battery and data

Reporting a position continuously uses battery, and there is no way around that. The app reduces it where it can - it reports when you have moved rather than on a fixed timer, and it stops entirely when you go off shift. A long shift still wants a car charger.

Data use is small: positions are a few bytes each. Photographs and voice notes on a report are the only sizeable thing the app sends, and those are only sent when you attach one.

7. Reporting a fault

Email support@wolfpak.co.za. What helps most, in rough order:

• What you tapped, and what happened instead of what you expected. One sentence is plenty.
• When, roughly, including the date - it lets us find the request in our logs.
• Your callsign and your group, so we know where to look.
• Phone and operating system version - iPhone 13 on iOS 18, Samsung A54 on Android 14, that sort of thing. Most problems that affect only some people are one platform or one version.
• A screenshot, if there was something on screen.

Please do not send us passwords. We never need one, and we cannot read the stored form of yours in any case.

8. Your data, and deleting it

What the service collects, why, who it goes to and how long it is kept is set out in the Privacy Policy, which is specific rather than generic - it was written against the software.

For anything about your operational record - your positions, the incidents you attended, what an operator wrote - ask your group first. Under POPIA your group is the responsible party for that information and the decision is theirs; we act on their instruction and will not override them.

For your account itself - your name, address, callsign, or deleting the account - write to support@wolfpak.co.za. We will respond within 30 days as POPIA requires, and we may have to verify who you are first.

One thing worth knowing before you ask: an incident log cannot be edited. Entries are added and never altered, because a record somebody can quietly revise afterwards is worth very little. A correction is a new entry saying so. Where a request would require a line to be changed, the options are to delete the incident or the group's records in full, and we will work through that with your group.

9. Contact

Problems with the app or the service: support@wolfpak.co.za
Anything else, including a group wanting to start using Wolfpak: hello@wolfpak.co.za

Two mailboxes on purpose: somebody whose responders are not getting taskings should not queue behind enquiries.

Support is by email during business hours, South African time. We do not promise a response time or any level of uptime unless we have signed something separately with your group - see Availability and support in the Terms.