October: Clients Reach You from Anywhere, Rides and Mileage, and Neostella

This roundup covers the month of October: portal releases 2026.10.8 through 2026.10.268, app store releases 2026.10.1 through 2026.10.5 with their over-the-air updates through October 31, and CaseConnect extension releases 2026.10.0 through 2026.10.4.

The short version: clients can reach your team from a browser or by email, not only the app. A client can ask your firm for a ride to an appointment and keep a mileage log without a notebook. And Neostella joins the case management systems Quilia works with, while importing cases from any of them takes fewer clicks.

Clients can reach you from anywhere

Many clients never install an app. They can now use app.quilia.com as a full client website, with the same Home, Appointments, Prescriptions, Providers and Settings screens as the app. CaseChat is on the website too, with live updates, a typing indicator, attachments up to 25 MB, and a "Your legal team" strip showing each person's photo, name and title.

Email works as well. When a client replies to an invitation or a new message email, the reply goes to ℚ instead of an inbox nobody watches. ℚ saves the message and any attachments to the case, answers by email, and passes anything only your team can handle to your team. A client who has no push notifications and no phone that takes texts gets your CaseChat messages by email. When a client answers your message by text, the reply now lands in that CaseChat conversation.

On your side, the CaseConnect extension now actually notifies you when a client sends a CaseChat message. Each message gets its own alert, and clicking it opens that conversation.

Rides and mileage

Getting to appointments is one of the most common reasons treatment stalls. With Ride Requests turned on for a case type, a client taps Request a ride in the app, gives the destination, appointment time and pickup address with 24 hours' notice, and your case team gets an email with everything needed to book the ride. Requests are listed under the case's Incident → Rides tab. Ride Requests is off until your firm turns it on.

Mileage is now tracked where it happens. After a client confirms they went to a visit, the app asks "Did you drive to this visit?" and logs the trip with the driving distance filled in. A client can also photograph a paper mileage log, and Quilia reads the trips from it. You'll find every trip on the case's Mileage tab, with a PDF or CSV export ready for the demand.

On vehicle case types, the app has a new Vehicle tab. Rental is now Transportation, which covers the rental car, time without a car, mileage and rides.

More case management systems, fewer clicks

Neostella is connected end to end. Projects import as cases, new projects and stage changes come in automatically, and Quilia writes the activity feed, CaseChat, documents and staff back to Neostella. Uploads go into a Quilia folder on the project, and you can rename that folder.

Importing is faster everywhere:

• Import by phase: choose phases (or matter types in Smokeball, and case types in Neostella and Filevine), see how many open cases each one holds and how many are already in Quilia, and decide whether to invite those clients.
• Pick from a list: Import Existing Case now searches your open cases in Smokeball, Neos, Clio, MyCase, Filevine, SmartAdvocate and CasePeer, so nobody has to paste an ID. CasePacer gets Import Existing Case for the first time.
• Faster sync: connected systems are checked every five minutes, and a case re-syncs only when your system reports a change.
• Minors: a child who shares a parent's phone imports as their own client, with the parent added as a delegate. How importing minors works.
• Smokeball court dates: court dates can become appointments on the client's calendar, with their own reminder texts in English and Spanish. A per-firm switch turns this on.

Also new

• Providers on Quilia: an Invite button on the Providers page asks a practice to claim its free listing. A claimed practice's profile, office hours and updates (bills, payments, appointments) show up on your cases. What happens when a provider joins.
• Shared by Provider: the case Uploads area has a new tab for files a practice shared with your firm.
• Head injury banner: a possible head injury shows a banner on every tab of the case, with one Mark handled button that records who handled it.
• Score requests by text and email: "Ask for a score" automations can reach clients the app can't. A client who scores you 9 or 10 gets your Google review link.
• Payments in the app: clients can open Pay Legal Fees to see their balance and invoices and pay through your firm's payment link. It's set per case type.
• Export My Case: clients can save a PDF of everything on their case from the app's settings.
• Visit check: with the client's permission, the app notices a visit to a provider and asks "Did you go?" Nothing reaches the case until the client says yes.
• Family law: Assets, Debts and Income each get their own tab, and the app shows a Court Calendar on family law cases.
• Smarter uploads: files can be filtered by document type, people and topic.
• Tap buttons in forms: a short-choice question shows clients buttons to tap, and existing forms switched over on their own.
• One place for templates: forms, documents and task lists each have one page, templates first, and you can copy an existing one.
• Phase Messages folded into Automations: the old page is gone. Every message it sent still runs as an automation.
• Import FAQs: bring your firm's FAQs in from a PDF, Word file, image, pasted text or a link.
• Sample client: "See what your clients see" in Settings sets up a test client you can sign in as.
• ℚ: it writes to each client in the language on their profile, says plainly that it's a digital case assistant when asked, and follows family law and estate guidance instead of injury questions. It also handles "stop texting me" with one confirmation and records care that's on hold, with the reason, instead of marking it missed.
• Speed: the portal server now runs next to its database, so pages load noticeably faster, and the Cases page loads only what's on screen.

Bug fixes and stability

• Live chat in the app: new messages show up in an open conversation within seconds, and translations appear without reopening the chat.
• iPhone uploads: a crash on upload is fixed, iCloud photos upload again, and long uploads keep their files.
• CaseConnect sign-in: a crash that stopped sign-in in extension 2026.10.3 is fixed in 2026.10.4. Visits and providers staff add from the panel are now recorded under the staff member, so the client is notified.
• Texted photos reach your CMS: photos clients text in are now uploaded to your case management system.
• CasePacer imports: firms whose imports had stopped get them again.
• Filevine documents: sync no longer drops documents Filevine briefly withholds.
• Large firms: the Cases, Dashboard, Providers and activity pages stop timing out.
• Signatures: typed signatures appear in the signed PDF.
• Quiet hours: texts no longer go out late at night to clients with no time zone on file.

Security work continued through the month: the extension's libraries were updated to clear two critical advisories, and deactivated staff lose access the moment they are deactivated.