This guide covers the core application structure of QCnext: project creation and management, the 5-slot workspace layout, background job execution, asynchronous multi-coder collaboration sync, the full audit history with per-row undo/redo, and the integrated bug reporter.
The Dashboard is the application home screen for opening / creating projects and showing basic project statistics and shortcuts.
- New Project: Opens the project creation dialog. Keep in mind that projects are hosted in folders. A project in QCnext is a self-contained directory holding your raw source material (interview transcripts, PDFs, images, field notes, survey spreadsheets, audio/video recordings, and web captures) along with an integrated database that records your analysis.
- Open Project: Opens the system folder picker to open an existing project folder.
- Recent Projects: Displays recently opened projects.
- Accessibility Controls: Quick dropdown to select high-contrast, screenreader, large-text, reduced-motion, or colorblind-friendly modes (experimental).
QCnext's layout is divided into a ribbon, left bar, center view, and right bar
You can resize and hide the sidebars by dragging their inner border (may occasionally distort the layout).
The top navigation bar, The Ribbon, contains buttons for QCnext's main windows: Dashboard, Coding (File Manager), Cases, Journal, a worksheet Crafter, and Reports (Analysis).
It also contains a Task Queue Indicator that displays background execution status of long tasks (automatic transcription and coding) with a progress ring. Clicking on it opens a flyout in which tasks can be re-prioritized, paused and canceled.
The Collaboration flyout allows switching the active coder and toggling collaboration sync. Multiple raters can work on the same project simultaneously without requiring a dedicated server. When turned on, raters work on separate copies of the same .qda project folder, shared through any folder-sync tool (Nextcloud, ownCloud, Sync&Share, Syncthing, Dropbox, ...). Every instance writes its own change history and merges each other's changes. The project in the shared folder is refreshed whenever a collaborator closes the project (or on demand via Refresh archive in the coder flyout) and gets downloaded whenever problems in the local problems are detected.
The coder flyout shows a per-coder activity indicator (who is actively working right now, and on which file) and a Live now section. The sync dot in the ribbon reflects the overall sync state: green = in sync, yellow = changes pending, red = conflicts or an error.
When two coders edit the same item concurrently, QCnext detects the conflict and shows it in the Conflict Resolution dialog. For each conflict you can choose Keep mine, Take theirs, or Merge to combine both versions — or resolve every pending conflict at once with Keep all mine / Take all theirs. Resolved changes sync to all other instances automatically.
Note
Simultaneous collaboration is currently considered an experimental feature. Make sure to back up your data regularly.
The Left Bar holds view-specific navigation. You will usually see the files list if no file is open, the codes if a file is open, the case list in Cases, report list in Analysis, or worksheet list in Crafter.
The Center View is the primary area where coding, analysis, editing, and report generation take place.
The Right Bar shows detail pages with additional information by default:
- For files, it shows metadata, memo, linked cases, and character count.
- For codes, it shows code details, parent category, memo, color swatch, and recent segment shortcuts.
Adding specific memos and comments, assigning to cases, or just viewing stats for the specific code/file is assembled here.
You can also toggles between the following panes:
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🕒 History: Opens the project history for undoing every step in this project (experimental!).Every action in QCnext is logged in an immutable project audit history. You can filter log entries by action type (coding create, code delete, text edit), coder name, or text query. Unlike traditional full-project rollbacks, clicking the undo icon on a log entry safely reverts that specific change (e.g., restoring a deleted coding or reverting a code rename) without affecting other work. You can also redo up to 10 recently undone actions. Clicking an entry also displays details on the exact step.
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✨ AI Assistant: Opens the AI chat and semantic search pane.
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💡 Creative Coding: Opens the creative scratchpad pane.
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🐞 Report Bug: QCnext is beta software and will contain bugs. If you encounter an issue or wish to submit feedback, QCnext includes a built-in issue composer. It automatically takes a screenshot that you can redact, automatically tries to populate your report with context, and generally simplifies the ticket submission.
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⚙️ Settings:
- Appearance: Switch between Dark and Light themes (defaults to system preference).
- Language: Select UI display language.
- Accessibility: Toggle specialized display modes (High Contrast, Screenreader, Large Text, Reduced Motion, Colorblind Friendly).
- Auto-Updates: Configure update checks (Daily, Weekly, Never) and single-click update installation. Opt into the Nightly channel for small delta patches (0.1.13_001) that verify, install, and activate on reload — with one-step undo.
- Project Maintenance: Toggle automatic database compaction upon project closure.
- About: App version plus the R installation status — click the R path to point the app at an Rscript manually.