What's New
A running log of features, improvements, and fixes added to the Canadian News Dashboard.
📡 Telegram Group Multi-Topic Support
All Telegram alerts are now simultaneously posted to @canewsdashgroup with dedicated topic thread routing: AI summaries go to the General (main) chat, breaking news alerts to Thread 6, weather & AQI alerts to Thread 7, and the weekly Sunday digest to Thread 8. The @cannewsdash channel continues to receive every alert as a single unified stream. The Telegram Settings admin card now shows the group topic routing map.
🔗 Inline Read More Buttons on Telegram Alerts
Breaking news, weather, AQI, UV, snowfall, and weekly digest Telegram messages now include inline URL buttons directly below the message. Breaking news alerts show a per-article ‘Read More’ button for each article plus an ‘Open Dashboard’ button. Weather and environment alerts include a ‘View Environment Details’ button. Weekly digest includes per-headline buttons. A new Test Weather Alert button was also added to the Telegram Settings admin card to verify thread 7 routing on demand.
📱 Telegram Integration
All Discord alerts are now mirrored to @cannewsdash on Telegram — hourly & daily AI summaries, breaking news alerts, weather/AQI/UV/snowfall alerts, and the weekly Sunday digest. A new Telegram Settings admin card provides per-type toggles, configurable weekly digest hour, three test buttons (message, breaking news, weekly digest), per-type snooze (1 h / 6 h / 24 h), and a recent alert log with sent/failed status badges.
📅 Weekly Discord Digest
Every Sunday morning the scheduler posts an AI-written week-in-review to both Discord channels — covering the top topics, most-covered categories, and key headlines from the past 7 days. The send hour is configurable per-minute in Discord Settings, and a "Test Weekly Digest" button lets you preview the format on demand.
🟢🔴 RSS Feed Health Monitor
A new admin card in Notification Settings shows the last-fetch status of every RSS source — green check for success, red X for failure, article count, last-checked time, and the error message on hover. Each row has a Retry button that immediately re-fetches that source, updates the health record, and inserts any new articles.
🏷️ Custom Breaking News Keywords
Breaking news alert keywords are now stored in the database instead of being hard-coded. Admins can add new keywords, toggle any keyword on/off (amber = active, grey = disabled), or delete keywords entirely from a new card in Notification Settings. The scheduler and manual retry paths both read the live keyword list at runtime.
⏰📊🛡️ Snooze, Frequency Chart & Webhook Health
Three final Discord improvements: (1) a Snooze All Alerts panel lets you pause all Discord posts for 1h, 4h, or 24h with a single click — active snooze shows a countdown with a Resume Now button, (2) an Alert Frequency chart in the Discord Settings card shows how many alerts were sent per day per type over the last 7 days as proportional bars, and (3) Webhook Health Check buttons verify both the news and weather webhooks are live and responding, posting a confirmation message to Discord on success.
👁️🔕🗑️ Discord Preview, Per-Row Mute & Clear Log
Three Discord UX improvements: (1) a Discord Embed Preview modal in Notification Settings lets you see exactly how each alert type (breaking news, weather, AQI, UV, etc.) will look in Discord before enabling it — with a type selector for all 9 alert categories, (2) each row in the Alert History card now has a mute (BellOff) button to instantly disable a noisy alert type without scrolling to find its toggle, and (3) a Clear All button lets you reset the alert history log from the settings page.
🥶🌫️🚨 Frost, Visibility & Alert History
Six Discord improvements: (1) Feels Like Frost alerts post when the feels-like temperature drops to −20°C or below, (2) Visibility alerts post when visibility drops below 1 km (fog or blowing snow), (3) a Discord Alert History log in Notification Settings shows the last 10 alerts posted with type, value, and timestamp, (4) breaking news alerts now have a 15-minute global cooldown to prevent burst spam, (5) all weather and AQI alert paths now use pre-check deduplication as an extra safety layer, and (6) every alert is logged to the DB for audit.
☀️🌧️💨 UV, Precip & Air Quality Discord Alerts
Four new weather Discord enhancements: (1) UV Index alerts for Very High (UV ≥ 7) and Extreme (UV ≥ 11), (2) heavy snowfall (≥ 10 cm) and rainfall (≥ 25 mm) accumulation alerts, (3) rich Air Quality alerts (AQI ≥ 101) using live data from the Calgary AQI card with pollutant breakdown, and (4) a "Last weather post" timestamp in the Discord Settings card.
🧊🥵 Extreme Temp Alerts & Daily Forecast Digest
Three new weather Discord enhancements: (1) a dedicated "Test Weather Channel" button in Notification Settings, (2) a configurable daily 7-day forecast digest posted at your chosen hour (MT), and (3) instant wind chill (≤ −30°C) and humidex (≥ 40°C) alerts posted to the weather channel.
🌦️ Weather & AQI Discord Channel
Calgary weather alerts, AQI threshold breaches, and periodic weather reports (current conditions + next forecast) are now posted to a dedicated weather Discord channel. All three can be toggled independently from the Notification Settings page.
🚨 Breaking News Discord Alerts
Discord now receives instant breaking news alerts whenever high-priority headlines (breaking, urgent, emergency, amber alert, etc.) are detected in incoming feeds. Up to 5 headlines are bundled per alert with source labels and article links.
💬 Discord Settings Panel
Admins can now control Discord posting from the Notification Settings page: toggle hourly summaries, daily summaries, and breaking news alerts independently. A "Send Test Message" button lets you verify the webhook is working at any time.
💬 Discord Webhook Integration
Every new hourly and daily AI summary is now automatically posted to your Discord channel via webhook. Posts include the full summary text, article count, and a deep-link back to the dashboard. Long summaries are split into multiple embeds so no content is lost.
🎨 Topic Legend on Calendar
A colour-coded topic legend now appears below the calendar grid, showing all 12 topic categories with their emoji and badge colour. Quickly identify which colour corresponds to which topic without hovering individual days.
📊 Top Topics Mini-Bar Chart
A compact horizontal bar chart now appears alongside the Export button, showing the top 6 most-covered topics for the viewed month with article counts. Bars are colour-matched to the topic legend.
⏰ Hourly PDF Export Support
The Export Month PDF button now works for both daily and hourly calendar views. Hourly exports group summaries by day with hour-by-hour sub-sections, making it easy to archive a full month of hourly coverage in one document.
🏷️ Dominant Topic Badge on Calendar
Calendar day cells in the Archive view now show a colour-coded emoji badge for the most-covered topic that day (e.g. 🏛️ Politics, 💼 Business, 🌍 World). Hover any highlighted day to see the topic name alongside the date. Topic counts are derived from all articles published that day.
📥 Export Full Month as PDF
The Calendar Archive view now has an "Export [Month] PDF" button when viewing a month with daily summaries. It fetches every daily summary for that month and opens a single print-ready document with all entries separated by dividers — ideal for offline reading or archiving.
✉️ Email Share Button
Each expanded summary in the History tab now has an Email button alongside the existing copy-link Share button. Clicking it opens your default mail client with a pre-filled subject and body containing the summary title and a direct deep-link URL.
🔗 Share Summary Deep-Link
Each expanded summary in the History tab now has a Share button that copies a direct URL to that exact summary. Paste the link anywhere — it opens the Summaries page with that entry pre-expanded and scrolled into view.
📅 Monthly Calendar Archive View
A new Calendar view on the History tab shows a month-by-month grid of all archived summaries. Highlighted dates have summaries — click any day to jump directly to it in the List view. Month pills let you navigate the full archive at a glance.
⚖️ Compare Two Days Side-by-Side
A new Compare mode on the History tab lets you pick any two dates and view their summaries in split columns — fuchsia for Day A, violet for Day B. Each column has its own PDF download button. Great for tracking how coverage of a story evolved day to day.
🔍 Summaries Keyword Search
The History tab on AI Summaries now has a live keyword search bar. Type any word or phrase to instantly filter all loaded summaries by content or date label. A hint appears when more entries could be loaded to expand coverage.
📅 Jump-to-Date Picker
A date picker next to the search bar lets you jump directly to a specific day's summary. Select any date and click Jump — the matching summary expands and scrolls into view automatically.
📄 Download Summary as PDF
Each expanded summary in the History tab now has a Download PDF button. It opens a clean print-ready page with the summary content, date label, and a footer crediting Canadian News Dashboard — ready to save or print.
📚 Daily Summaries Full Archive
The History tab on the AI Summaries page now shows every daily and hourly summary ever generated — no more 7-entry limit. Summaries load in pages of 30 (daily) or 24 (hourly) with a "Load more" button showing how many remain. A total count banner confirms the full archive size.
🦶 Site-Wide Footer
A full-width footer now appears at the bottom of every page. It includes all navigation links (Dashboard, News Feed, Reading List, AI Summaries, Search, Daily Digest, Calgary Environment, Notifications, What's New), a curated list of news source links, and legal links to the new Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy pages.
📋 Terms & Conditions
New Terms and Conditions page at /terms covering acceptance of terms, description of service, intellectual property, user accounts, acceptable use, third-party content, AI-generated content disclaimer, notifications, warranty disclaimer, limitation of liability, and governing law (Alberta, Canada).
🔒 Privacy Policy
New Privacy Policy page at /privacy compliant with PIPEDA and Alberta PIPA. Covers data collection (account info, usage analytics, localStorage), legal basis for processing, cookies, data sharing, retention periods, your rights (access, correction, deletion), security measures, and contact details for the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and OIPC Alberta.
✍️ Most Active Columnist — Dashboard Badge
New Dashboard card (side-by-side with Top Surging Topics) showing the most prolific opinion columnist across NP, Herald, and Sun over the last 7 days. Displays article count, outlet badge, latest headline, and a direct link to their articles in the News Feed.
📝 Opinion & Commentary in Daily Digest
The AI-generated Daily Digest now includes a dedicated Opinion & Commentary paragraph. The LLM reviews up to 20 opinion pieces from NP, Herald, and Sun published in the last 24 hours and summarises 1–2 notable columns — naming the columnist and their central argument.
⚖️ Columnist Comparison View
Select any columnist in the NP/Herald/Sun Opinion author filter, then click the split-column icon next to another columnist to enter comparison mode. Their articles appear side-by-side in a two-column layout with article counts. A fuchsia banner shows who is being compared; click Exit comparison to return to normal view.
🔥 What's Heating Up — Top Surging Topics
New Dashboard card showing the top 3 topics by percentage change in 24-hour article count vs the prior 24-hour window. Ranked with gold/silver/bronze medals, trend arrows, and article counts. Clicking any topic navigates to the News Feed filtered by that topic.
💬 Author bio tooltip on columnist chips
Hovering over any columnist chip in the NP Opinion, Herald Opinion, or Sun Opinion author filter now shows a popover with the columnist's article count, their most recent headline (linked to the article), and a link to their author page on the outlet's website.
📰 Subscribe to all NP Opinion RSS
A new "Subscribe to all NP Opinion" RSS link appears at the top of the columnist filter row when the NP Opinion source is active. Also shows an "All Canadian Opinion" link for the combined feed.
🗞️ Herald Opinion, Sun Opinion & All Canadian Opinion feeds
Three new virtual source tabs: Calgary Herald Opinion, Calgary Sun Opinion, and All Canadian Opinion. Each has its own author filter with columnist chips, RSS subscribe links, and bio tooltips. The combined All Canadian Opinion feed merges NP, Herald, and Sun opinion articles into one RSS feed at /api/rss/source/allcanadianopinion.
📈 Rising Topics History Log
The Notifications page now shows a Rising Topics History card listing the last 20 topic surges detected on your device — topic name, percentage change, article counts, and timestamp. Appears automatically once the first alert fires. Includes a Clear button to reset the log.
📰 Columnist RSS feeds
Each columnist chip in the NP Opinion & Commentary author filter now has a small RSS icon link. Clicking it opens a filtered RSS feed for that columnist (e.g. /api/rss/source/nationalpost?author=Rex+Murphy), ready to subscribe in any RSS reader.
📈 Rising Topic Alerts
New push notification opt-in on the Notifications page: get a browser alert when any news topic’s 24-hour article count surges by your chosen threshold (default 50%) compared to the prior 24 hours. Adjustable sensitivity slider from 20% to 200%. Checks every 5 minutes, deduped once per topic per day.
✍️ NP Opinion author filter
When the NP Opinion & Commentary source tab is active in the News Feed, a "Filter by Columnist" chip row appears below the source tabs, listing all NP columnists with article counts. Click any name to see only their articles.
📅 BoC calendar export (.ics)
The BoC Rate Decision countdown badge on the Dashboard now includes a small .ics download button. Clicking it downloads a calendar file with all remaining 2026 Bank of Canada rate decision dates pre-filled, compatible with Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, and Outlook.
🏦 BoC Rate Decision Countdown
The BoC Overnight Rate chart on the Dashboard now shows a live countdown badge: days until the next scheduled Bank of Canada rate decision (e.g. "Next rate decision in 23 days — Apr 16"). The badge turns amber within 7 days and green on decision day, and links directly to the Finance feed.
✍️ NP Opinion & Commentary as dedicated source
National Post Opinion & Commentary is now a dedicated source entry (violet badge). It filters NP articles whose categories include NP Comment, editorial, commentary, or op-ed — separating opinion from straight news without requiring a new RSS feed or DB migration.
📊 Opinion Spotlight in Topic Breakdown
The Top Topics card on the Dashboard now includes a pinned "Opinion Spotlight" row (violet bar) whenever Opinion falls outside the top 5 topics. Shows current count, trend direction, and links to the Opinion feed.
🏦 BoC Rate Announcement Alerts
New push notification opt-in on the Notifications page: get a browser alert on the morning of each scheduled Bank of Canada interest rate announcement (next: April 16, 2026). Deduped per day so you only see it once.
💰 Overnight rate badge on Finance chip
The Finance quick-filter chip in the News Feed now shows the current Bank of Canada overnight rate (e.g. 2.25%) as an inline badge, fetched live from the BoC Valet API.
✍️ Opinion quick-filter
A new "✍️ Opinion" chip in the News Feed quick filters surfaces editorial, commentary, op-ed, and National Post Comment articles separately from straight news. The Opinion topic is also available in the full topic filter bar.
Dashboard card reorder
BoC Rate History chart now sits directly above the 24-Hour Article Volume chart for a cleaner finance-first flow. Articles by Source moved below Standings toward the bottom of the Dashboard.
💰 Finance topic in TopicFilterBar
Finance is now a first-class topic in the topic taxonomy. The TopicFilterBar shows a Finance chip that matches BoC rate announcements, monetary policy articles, mortgage rates, and financial news — powered by both category tags and keyword inference.
🏦 BoC Rate History chart on Dashboard
A new Bank of Canada Overnight Rate widget on the Dashboard displays a 2-year area chart of the overnight rate (from 5.00% peak to current 2.25%), with current rate, 2-year peak, and trend indicator. Data is sourced from the BoC Valet API (series V39079).
National Post category detection improved
NP-specific category tags (NP Comment, First Reading, Foreign Affairs, War on Iran, MAiD, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, etc.) are now mapped to the correct canonical topics, so NP opinion pieces, world news, and health articles appear correctly in topic filters.
Finance quick-filter
A new "💰 Finance" chip in the News Feed quick filters instantly shows articles from BNN Bloomberg, National Post, and all four Bank of Canada feeds in one click.
🏦 BoC Rate Announcement badge
The Breaking News banner now detects Bank of Canada articles containing interest rate, policy rate, or overnight rate keywords and displays a pulsing "🏦 Rate Alert" badge alongside the headline.
3 new Bank of Canada feeds
BoC Media Advisories, BoC News, and BoC Market Notices are now live as separate sources (18 total), each with their own RSS export link and colour coding in the Articles by Source chart.
Sports alert history log
The Notifications page now shows a "Recent Alerts" card listing the last 5 sports notifications that fired on your device, with team matchup, league, and timestamp. A Clear button wipes the log.
All 9 CFL teams added to live alerts
BC Lions, Stampeders, Elks, Tiger-Cats, Alouettes, Red Blacks, Roughriders, Argonauts, and Blue Bombers are now available as individual team filter chips in the Sports Push Notification card, using correct ESPN abbreviations.
Mobile "Today's Games" scores drawer
On small screens a floating 🏒 Scores pill button appears in the bottom-right corner. Tapping it slides up a drawer with the full live scores ticker and league filter pills. A pulsing green dot appears when any game is live.
NHL & NBA Standings widget
A new Standings card on the Dashboard shows full conference tables for NHL and NBA, with Canadian teams (Flames, Oilers, Canucks, Jets, Leafs, Senators, Canadiens, Raptors) highlighted in red with a maple leaf badge. Toggle between leagues with the NHL / NBA pills.
Canadian Teams — Live Game Alerts
A new opt-in card on the Notifications page lets you receive a browser push notification the moment any Canadian NHL, NBA, or CFL team's game goes live. Click the notification to jump straight to the News Feed.
Live game indicator on News Feed
A pulsing green dot appears next to the News Feed sidebar link whenever any NHL, NBA, CFL, or MLB game is currently in progress, so you always know when to check the scores ticker.
Live scores ticker with league filters
The sports scores strip on the News Feed now has All / NHL / NBA / CFL / MLB filter pills to narrow the view to a single league. Every score card links to the ESPN Gamecast page for that game.
Live scores on Dashboard
A compact Live Scores card on the Dashboard shows up to 6 games across all leagues at a glance, with the same league filter pills and auto-refresh every 60 seconds.
TSN and CP24 added as sources
Two new Canadian news sources are now aggregated: TSN (sports) and CP24 (24-hour breaking news), bringing the total to 13 trusted sources.
Sports filter & TSN shortcut
A 🏒 Sports quick-filter chip on the News Feed filters all sports articles across every source. A dedicated TSN Sports chip narrows the view to TSN sports coverage only.
Per-source RSS export links
Every source in the sidebar Live Sources section now has an RSS icon that opens the per-source feed in a new tab, making it easy to subscribe to individual sources in any feed reader.
RSS auto-discovery in page head
The site now includes RSS auto-discovery link tags for all 13 per-source feeds and the AI Summaries feed, so feed readers like Feedly and NetNewsWire detect them automatically.
Breaking News & Weather Alerts on News Feed
The Breaking News rotating banner and the conditional Weather Alerts card (shown only when active alerts exist) are now also displayed at the top of the News Feed page, matching the Dashboard.
Offline support
The dashboard now works offline. Static assets are cached by the service worker, and a branded offline page is shown when there is no connection.
Install App (PWA)
A dismissible banner prompts mobile visitors to add the dashboard to their home screen. Android Chrome shows a native install prompt; iOS Safari shows Share → Add to Home Screen instructions.
Push notification opt-in
On first launch as an installed PWA, a prompt asks whether to enable weather alert push notifications for Warning and Watch level events.
Share articles
Every article card now has a Share button. On mobile it opens the native share sheet; on desktop it copies the link to clipboard.
Auto update check
The app checks for updates every time the tab regains focus and shows a toast with a one-click Reload button when a new version is available.
Admin-only subscriber list
The Active Subscriptions list on the Notifications page is now hidden from public visitors and regular users. Only admins can see subscriber emails.
Self-service subscription management
Logged-in users can view and edit their own notification preferences — including which alert types they receive — directly from the Notifications page.
Resend confirmation email
Admins can now resend the confirmation email to pending subscribers directly from the subscriber list.
Public dashboard
All pages are now publicly accessible without login. A Sign In button appears in the top-right header for users who want to log in.
Homepage subscription widget
A compact email subscription card at the bottom of the dashboard lets any visitor subscribe without navigating to the Notifications page.
Subscriber count badge
The Notifications nav item now shows a badge with the total active subscriber count, visible only to admins.
Topic filter bar on News Feed
A row of topic chips (Politics, Business, Sports, Technology, etc.) above the article list lets users filter by topic. The selected topic is persisted in the URL.
11 Canadian news sources
Aggregates articles from Global News, CTV News, CityNews, The Canadian Press, BNN Bloomberg, Juno News, The Counter Signal, Micro News, Calgary Herald, Global News Calgary, and Calgary Sun.
AI Summaries
Hourly and daily AI-generated summaries of top Canadian news stories, powered by the built-in LLM integration.
Reading List
Save articles to a personal reading list. Saved articles persist across sessions for logged-in users.