Restaurant teams move fast — big changes some days, incremental ones the next. But it’s always in pursuit of better results.

A new campaign goes live, a menu changes, a team focuses on a specific service, site or week to try and shift performance. But when the numbers move, the context behind those changes is often scattered, which makes it harder to answer the questions that matter most:

What did we do, and did it work?

Introducing Annotations: context, captured in an instant

Annotations are a new way to record the actions and decisions that may influence performance, directly inside Distil Diagnostics.

They are a quick way to note changes as they happen, and together they work like a lightweight activity log for the estate.

Choose a category, add a date, write the note, and the Annotation appears in the Activity Timeline straight away. It’s that simple — intentionally so — to capture context in the moment before the detail gets lost in the day-to-day hustle.

A shared timeline for team visibility

Every Annotation is added to a shared Activity Timeline, creating a chronological record of what has happened across the account.

Each entry shows the category, date, note and author, making it easy to see what changed, when it changed, and who added the context. Category labels — Marketing, Reservations, Operations and Other — help teams scan the timeline quickly and understand the type of activity behind each note.

Over time, that timeline becomes a living record of optimisation work across the estate — the campaigns launched, levers pulled, tests run, changes made and decisions taken.

For teams working across multiple sites, services and functions, that shared visibility is powerful. It means context no longer depends on who was in the meeting, who received the email, or who remembers the detail three weeks later. Read more in the full release notes.

Bringing the “why” into the analysis

Annotations can also be linked to one or more Monitors, connecting activity directly to the restaurant, service and week being tracked.

The Monitor list shows how many Annotations are linked to each Monitor, with quick previews available without opening every record. In Monitor Details, Annotations appear as markers on the Daily Re-Forecast chart, placed on the date the action happened.

The result is a more useful performance conversation. Instead of looking at a chart and asking, “What happened here?”, teams can see the activity that may have shaped the movement.

The data shows the movement. Annotations help explain the moment behind it.

Smoother workflows across Diagnostics

This release also includes several workflow improvements designed to reduce friction.

The Forecast page now remembers the selected Service filter, so teams focused on specific services do not need to reset the same view each time. Weekly Report links now preserve the intended destination through login and provide clearer guidance when access or organisation switching is needed.

Monitors can also be created directly from the Capacity Report, with improved navigation across dates and time slots to keep teams closer to the analysis.

From “what changed?” to “what happened next?”

Distil Diagnostics already helps teams see where performance is moving and where attention is needed.

Annotations add the context layer: a practical way to capture the actions behind the numbers, connect them to the Monitors that matter, and understand their impact over time.

Because better results do not come from data alone. They come from knowing what happened, why it happened, and what to do next.

Read the full release notes here.

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