Feedback

Let users send free-form feedback (bug reports, suggestions, confusion about a result) along with a screenshot of what they were looking at when they hit "Send feedback". The feedback is delivered by email to the VPT team for triage.

Overview

submitFeedback is intentionally simple in its first iteration:

• The user types a description of their feedback.
• Your app captures a PNG screenshot of the current screen and base64-encodes it.
• You POST both to submitFeedback along with optional context (app version, device, route, etc.).
• The server emails everything (with the screenshot attached) to the VPT team and returns an opaque FeedbackId the user can quote.

submitFeedback

Submit user feedback with an attached screenshot. Delivered by email; no DB row is created in Phase 1.

Headers

Request Body

{
  "query":   "submitFeedback",
  "dev_key": "your_developer_key",
  "api_key": "user_session_api_key",
  "data": {
    "description":      "After computing takeoff for LFPG 27R the V1 displayed seems too low.",
    "screenshotPng":    "iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAA...",   // base64-encoded PNG
    "appVersion":       "1.4.2 (build 312)",
    "serverApiVersion": "1.3.6",
    "deviceOs":         "iOS 17.5",
    "deviceModel":      "iPhone 14 Pro",
    "route":            "TakeoffResults",
    "logId":            12345,
    "extras": {
      "lastCalcId": "calc_98aa12"
    }
  }
}

Parameters

Success Response

{
  "Success":    true,
  "FeedbackId": "fb-9f3a17b2c4d8"
}

FeedbackId is an opaque short reference (no database row is created in Phase 1). Show it to the user as a quotable reference.

Error Responses

Full Example

// 1. Capture a PNG screenshot of the current screen.
//    (Use html2canvas in browsers, or your platform's screenshot API.)
const canvas = await html2canvas(document.body);
const screenshotPng = canvas.toDataURL('image/png').split(',')[1]; // strip prefix

// 2. Submit feedback.
const response = await fetch('https://api.virtualperformancetool.com/', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    query:   'submitFeedback',
    dev_key: 'your_developer_key',
    api_key: currentUserApiKey,
    data: {
      description:      userFeedbackText,
      screenshotPng,
      appVersion:       app.version,
      serverApiVersion: '1.3.6',
      deviceOs:         platform.os,
      deviceModel:      platform.device,
      route:            currentRoute,
      logId:            lastResponseLogId   // optional
    }
  })
});

const result = await response.json();
if (result.Success) {
  showToUser(`Thanks! Feedback submitted (ref ${result.FeedbackId}).`);
} else {
  showError(result.Error?.[0]?.Message ?? 'Unable to send feedback.');
}

Limits & Rate Limiting

Keep the screenshot lean: scale to the device's logical resolution and prefer PNG-8 or compressed PNG. A typical phone screenshot is well under 500 KB.

Privacy

• The user's api_key is consumed for authentication only and is never included in the email body.
• The screenshot is sent as an email attachment to the VPT team and retained as long as the email is retained.
• Make it explicit in your client UI that submitting feedback attaches a screenshot of the current screen, so users can avoid sending sensitive content.
• Feedback submissions are also logged in api_query_logs like any other API call (subject to the standard 3-day retention plus auto-redaction of api_key, dev_key, password and token-named fields).

Integration Tips