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Docs updates for E/A#100176 Refresh needed state on the Spend page - #101490

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Explanation of Change

Help site follow-up for fix: show a "Refresh needed" empty state for stale search results, which replaced the "Oops... Something went wrong" error on the Spend page with a Refresh needed state and a Refresh button when a Search request fails. A malformed query still shows the old error with no retry button.

Members who hit the new state will search the help site for the words they see on screen, and no article covered them. Two things needed documenting:

  • What the Refresh needed state means and what to do about it. The key point is that nothing is broken or lost — only the list on screen is out of date.
  • Why a member sometimes sees "Oops... Something went wrong" instead, with no Refresh button. That case is an invalid search, so refreshing won't help.

Both went into Getting-Started-with-the-Spend-Page.md, which already owns the Spend page workflow and already documents a comparable "why is this disabled" case for the total spend currency picker. No new article was created, because this is not a separate workflow.

Changes:

  • Added a ## What to do when the Spend page shows "Refresh needed" section, placed alongside the other standalone Spend page sections.
  • Added two FAQ entries covering the Refresh needed state and the invalid-search error.
  • Added retrieval keywords for the phrases members will actually search ("Refresh needed", "page out of date", "results not loading").

All copy is quoted verbatim from src/languages/en.ts on main (search.searchResults.staleResults and errorPage.title), so the article matches the shipped strings exactly.

The Spend, Expenses, Filters, and Display labels referenced by the article were verified against the live UI on dev web. The Refresh needed state itself could not be reproduced on a fresh test account — reaching it needs a previously populated Search cache — so its copy was taken from en.ts rather than from a screenshot.

Applied while writing: docs/HELPSITE_NAMING_CONVENTIONS.md (bold UI labels, no quotation marks around button names, exact casing), docs/HELP_AUTHORING_GUIDELINES.md (task-based ## headings, no new # headings, no ###, relative links outside of numbered steps, FAQ exempt from task-based heading rules), and docs/TEMPLATE.md.

Fixed Issues

$ #99352
PROPOSAL:

Tests

// TODO: The human co-author must fill out the tests you ran before marking this PR as "ready for review"
// Please describe what tests you performed that validates your changed worked.

  • Verify that no errors appear in the JS console

Offline tests

Not applicable. This PR changes a help site markdown article only and ships no app code.

QA Steps

// TODO: The human co-author must fill out the QA tests you ran before marking this PR as "ready for review".
// Please describe what QA needs to do to validate your changes and what areas do they need to test for regressions.

  • Verify that no errors appear in the JS console

PR Author Checklist

  • I linked the correct issue in the ### Fixed Issues section above
  • I wrote clear testing steps that cover the changes made in this PR
    • I added steps for local testing in the Tests section
    • I added steps for the expected offline behavior in the Offline steps section
    • I added steps for Staging and/or Production testing in the QA steps section
    • I added steps to cover failure scenarios (i.e. verify an input displays the correct error message if the entered data is not correct)
    • I turned off my network connection and tested it while offline to ensure it matches the expected behavior (i.e. verify the default avatar icon is displayed if app is offline)
    • I tested this PR with a High Traffic account against the staging or production API to ensure there are no regressions (e.g. long loading states that impact usability).
  • I included screenshots or videos for tests on all platforms
  • I ran the tests on all platforms & verified they passed on:
    • Android: Native
    • Android: mWeb Chrome
    • iOS: Native
    • iOS: mWeb Safari
    • MacOS: Chrome / Safari
  • I verified there are no console errors (if there's a console error not related to the PR, report it or open an issue for it to be fixed)
  • I followed proper code patterns (see Reviewing the code)
    • I verified that comments were added to code that is not self explanatory
    • I verified that any new or modified comments were clear, correct English, and explained "why" the code was doing something instead of only explaining "what" the code was doing.
    • I verified any copy / text that was added to the app is grammatically correct in English. It adheres to proper capitalization guidelines (note: only the first word of header/labels should be capitalized), and is either coming verbatim from figma or has been approved by marketing (in order to get marketing approval, ask the Bug Zero team member to add the Waiting for copy label to the issue)
  • If a new code pattern is added I verified it was agreed to be used by multiple Expensify engineers
  • I followed the guidelines as stated in the Review Guidelines
  • I tested other components that can be impacted by my changes (i.e. if the PR modifies a shared library or component like Avatar, I verified the components using Avatar are working as expected)
  • If a new CSS style is added I verified that:
    • A similar style doesn't already exist
    • The style can't be created with an existing StyleUtils function (i.e. StyleUtils.getBackgroundAndBorderStyle(theme.componentBG))
  • If new assets were added or existing ones were modified, I verified that:
    • The assets are optimized and compressed (for SVG files, run npm run compress-svg)
    • The assets load correctly across all supported platforms.
  • If the PR modifies code that runs when editing or sending messages, I tested and verified there is no unexpected behavior for all supported markdown - URLs, single line code, code blocks, quotes, headings, bold, strikethrough, and italic.
  • If the PR modifies a generic component, I tested and verified that those changes do not break usages of that component in the rest of the App (i.e. if a shared library or component like Avatar is modified, I verified that Avatar is working as expected in all cases)
  • If the PR modifies a component related to any of the existing Storybook stories, I tested and verified all stories for that component are still working as expected.
  • If the PR modifies a component or page that can be accessed by a direct deeplink, I verified that the code functions as expected when the deeplink is used - from a logged in and logged out account.
  • If the PR modifies the UI (e.g. new buttons, new UI components, changing the padding/spacing/sizing, moving components, etc) or modifies the form input styles:
    • I verified that all the inputs inside a form are aligned with each other.
    • I added Design label and/or tagged @Expensify/design so the design team can review the changes.
  • I added unit tests for any new feature or bug fix in this PR to help automatically prevent regressions in this user flow.
  • If the main branch was merged into this PR after a review, I tested again and verified the outcome was still expected according to the Test steps.

Screenshots/Videos

Android: Native
Android: mWeb Chrome
iOS: Native
iOS: mWeb Safari
MacOS: Chrome / Safari

UI label verification for the article (not an app change — this PR touches markdown only):

Spend > Expenses page showing the Filters and Display labels used in the article

@BartekObudzinski, please review the files changed and confirm they reflect the current behavior. Then post a new comment saying @MelvinBot mark this PR as ready for review.

Co-authored-by: Bartłomiej Obudziński <BartekObudzinski@users.noreply.github.com>
@MelvinBot
MelvinBot requested a review from a team September 17, 2026 22:41
@MelvinBot MelvinBot added the HelpDot Apply this label if the issue relates to ExpensifyHelp label Sep 17, 2026
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