Version 26.9.1 is live across AutoPlayAuto.com. You do not need to do anything to get it. Log in and it is there.
This release is mostly about one screen. The Contact Dashboard puts the work you need to do today next to the full picture of the person you are about to ring. Alongside it, a guided wizard for setting up new users, rosters that repeat over more than one week, seven smaller improvements and twenty-four fixes.
Here is what each one changes on the floor this week, and what it adds up to over the next year or two.
The Contact Dashboard sits under Contacts in the left menu. It does not replace anything. The Lead Dashboard, the contact screen and the Prospect Dashboard all stay where they are and work as they do today. This is another way in, and nobody has to change how they work.
What it adds is the mix. The work list you would get off the Lead Dashboard now sits alongside everything the dealership knows about the person behind each lead: what is scheduled with them, and everything that has passed between you.
The contact list is no longer just a list. Six working queues sit down the side, each with a live count: Contact today, Follow-up overdue, Future events, Open leads, Prospects and, for managers, Unassigned leads.
AutoPlay takes the soonest dated item across each contact's lead events, prospects and test drives, and that date decides where they land. A lead with nothing scheduled does not disappear. It drops into the queues flagged No Event, and anything twenty days past due or last touch is marked Stalled.
So a consultant starts the day on Contact today and works down it. A sales manager switches from Personal to Team and sees the whole floor's overdue follow-ups in one count, and which leads nobody has been allocated yet.
Search always covers the whole database, whichever queue you are in. Ctrl K (or ⌘K on a Mac) opens a jump menu to any view, action or open lead without touching the mouse.
Communications, automated messages, leads, test drives, appraisals, prospects, vehicles owned and showroom visits used to be eight separate lists to check. On a contact's Timeline they are one feed, newest first.
It reads by side. What the customer did sits on the left: calls in, texts they sent, showroom visits. What the dealership did sits on the right. Leads, test drives and purchases run down the middle. Long gaps are named, so "7 months quiet" tells you more than a scroll would.
Across the top of the record sit five numbers: lifetime spend, open lead value, days since last contacted, vehicles owned now and open prospects. Days since last contacted turns red past ninety days.
Say a customer who bought a Ranger from you in 2023 enquires about an Everest on Trade Me. Whoever picks up the lead opens the contact and sees who sold them the Ranger, when the warranty runs out, that they have opted out of email, and that they already have an open lead at your other yard. They pick up the phone instead, and the two yards do not chase the same person.
The Overview tab goes one step further and names the single lead worth working now, with the reason in the headline: "Call about the 2021 Citroen C4, open 155 days with nothing back." It ranks by lead value, not by age.
Logging a call, creating an event or starting a test drive or appraisal all open as a panel on the right. The contact stays underneath, exactly where you left it.
Consent now lives on the channel, and it is enforced where the channel is chosen. If a contact has opted out of SMS, the SMS option refuses up front rather than failing after you press the button. Logging that the customer rang or texted you is never blocked.
The same rule runs through campaigns. Before anything goes out, AutoPlay shows how many people will receive it, how many were skipped and why, by name. A thirteen-person list can drop to two on SMS, with each of the eleven skipped contacts listed against its reason. Opt-outs are applied every time and are never offered as a filter, so there is no way to target someone who has opted out by accident.
You can build a contact list straight off the dashboard, by lead, prospect, test drive, vehicle history or contact, with a live count that updates as you go. "Never test drove" and "never appraised" can now be targeted for the first time.
A saved marketing list is a set of criteria, not a frozen set of people. It runs against the live database every time you open it, so the list behind next month's campaign includes the people who enquired this month. Duplicates land in a merge queue for review rather than piling up quietly.
This week, it means fewer clicks between a lead and the person behind it, and fewer calls made without knowing the history. Over a year or two, it means the customer history belongs to the dealership rather than to whichever consultant dealt with them last. When someone moves on, their customers stay, along with every call, visit and vehicle on record.
Adding a user is now a guided, step-by-step process. The Add New User Wizard walks through who the person is, what they can do, where they work and whether they should get leads, then lets you review everything before the invite goes out.
It replaces the single long form, which made it easy to save a user with incomplete access. That usually surfaced at 8:15 on their first Monday, when the new consultant could not see half the stock. Now every user is set up the same way, whoever does the setup.
A rostered day off can now repeat over a cycle longer than a single week. Take a consultant who works Saturday one week and has it off the next. Set the fortnightly pattern once and lead allocation and calendar invites follow it, so no leads are routed to someone at home and no test drives are booked on their day off. Your rosters and your lead flow finally agree.
Seven improvements and twenty-four fixes went out alongside those three. The ones most likely to matter to you:
The Contact Dashboard is phase one. 26.9.1 is another step in the larger shift that started with 26.7.1. If you are already running AutoPlay, all of this is waiting for you the next time you log in.
If you are not on AutoPlay yet and you want to see any of it working, book a demo.