Improving the speed and helpfulness of our customer support operations has been a major priority over the past year. We’ve cut down the average time-to-response by about 75 percent, but we know we can still do better. To help with that, we’re moving our support software to Zendesk, so you might see some minor changes in the coming weeks.

Over the course of the next week, a few brave newsrooms are getting upgraded to the new DocumentCloud platform, which offers a variety of improvements from speed and search to mobile-friendly annotations. Here’s how to cut to the front of the line or ask for a delay.

We’ve loved seeing the creative ways users have used our Assignments crowdsourcing tools, from digging through documents to building petitions. Now, to help newsrooms quickly gather answers to big questions, we’ve created an experimental spinoff of Assignments designed to help organize volunteers in gathering and label large amounts of data no matter where it may live.

Over the coming months, we’re migrating newsrooms to the new version of DocumentCloud (don’t worry — you’ll get a notification before anything changes!). Along with the updated version of the site, we’re also moving to a new API. Anything you can do through the web interface you’ll also be able to do through the API, so we’re excited to see what kinds of new integrations you build.

Ever notice a typo in an Assignments question? Get some feedback from folks helping you crowdsource analysis and wish you could incorporate it right away? You finally can: Assignment questions are now fully editable, with lots of backups in place.