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Administrators and Users who following Technical Updates

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For additional information on current releases, please review Navigating the platform release roadmap.

What's New in YourWay 2.34

YourWay 2.34 introduces the following major changes:

• An upgrade of our Module Builder screen, and with it, General Availability to module development features for members of our Early Access program; if you're not already a part of this program and are interested in finding out more about it, please take a look at the requirements for joining, then send us an email and we'll be in touch with more information
• An upgrade of our BI reporting tool, which includes many new features and defect fixes, plus the ability to create reports on Workflow Task information
• Greatly improved cross-module search functionality
• Many search improvements:
  • Significantly improved cross-module search functionality
  • Saved Searches are now automatically updated when new fields are created
  • The search screen now remembers prior reference field and picklist criteria selections
  • More Assigned To and date field filters
• Many additional performance and usability enhancements to the Data Import screen
• Removed support for using Internet Explorer in Compatibility Mode
• The ability for admins to share tiles with teams, not just roles
• The Calendar view option is now available for all customers
• The ability for Module Developers to trigger notifications that are calendar invites
• Several security and reliability enhancements

** Important change: ** We are removing tabbed-item support for manually and initially collapsible regions. There is inconsistent browser support for hiding and displaying collapsible regions, and the usefulness of the feature didn't outweigh the confusion it sometimes caused when fields would appear as expected. We checked Productions and a very small number of modules will be affected so the change will likely go unnoticed by your users, but since it does represent a visual change we wanted to be sure you're aware of it. (TRAK 2014-0900)

For details on the above and much more, please see the sections below.

Detailed Notes By User Type

For General Users

This section describes fixes and enhancements that affect general user-facing functionality, with the following exceptions: If the ticket applies ** only ** to users of the Tabbed Item Display (where the item detail screen appears as a tab on the Dashboard), the ticket is prefaced with (tabbed). If the ticket applies ** only ** to users of the Full Screen Item Display (where the item detail screen takes up the whole browser), the ticket is prefaced with (full).

** Upgraded version of BI **

We upgraded the reporting engine behind BI to Jaspersoft 6.2. This upgrade provides the following new features and fixes. For more details and a new simulator, please also visit the updated help topic.

• Several new chart types, such as heat maps
• Advanced formatting options to let you modify your reports' colors, fonts, and other attributes
• Keyword filter boxes for fields and measures
• Several new calculated field functions, such as Boolean() and Case()
• Resizing a column in a report should no longer result in collapsed or missing columns in PDF or Excel outputs
• The whitescreen that sometimes occurred for certain users should now happen much less frequently, if at all; if you do experience it, and your browser's console shows an error involving NULL_SUBSTITUTION_VALUE, please clear your cache and try again (hit F12 on most modern browsers to get to the console display)
• Notifications that send Excel spreadsheets no longer default to the Paginated spreadsheet export option (i.e. where title bars appear every few rows)
• Exported reports now do a better job of fitting to the page and switching it to landscape or portrait as appropriate
• A default measure, Count, is now included in all reports; this is set to 1 for each row returned, so you can create charts and crosstabs on the number of rows returned instead of having to turn a field like Identifier into a measure and using that
• Resolved an issue related to including the same field in both the Details and Group By sections
• More closely aligned your report session timeout with your application session timeout, so your report session doesn't time out before your application session
• Fixed a display issue with the Spider Column, Spider Area, and Range chart type options
• Clearer error messages

** SUP 2008-0590: We no longer trigger task notifications for tasks that were assigned to you more than two months ago **

If you had a task that was assigned to you more than two months ago, we would clear out our memory of any notifications we sent you so we could retrigger them the next time the item was updated. The idea behind this is that it was useful to remind you of any tasks that were on your dashboard for more than two months. This ended up being confusing to many users, however, so we removed this feature.

** TRAK 2012-0633: We now remember your prior selection when you go to choose new reference field or picklist criteria **

When you click [Find Items] or [Select Values] to choose new reference field or picklist criteria, we now remember your prior selections so you can easily modify them if you have one or two changes you want to make:

Note that if you click [Clear Selected] and then [Return], that doesn't blank out your criteria; if you no longer want to apply criteria for that field to your search, click [remove] next to the field prompt.

** TRAK 2014-0900: (tabbed) Region panels are no longer collapsible **

Since they didn't add any value in the form of freed-up space and caused several subtle user interface issues, we removed the ability to collapse and expand regions. Please see the Important change note at the top of the page for more details.

** TRAK 2014-1211: Saved Searches are now updated automatically when fields are added or removed from the module **

When you add or remove a field from the list of reportable fields in a module or dataset, we now automatically update any saved report searches. Changes to field prompts reflect in the display names, newly reportable fields are added to the list, and fields that are no longer reportable are prepended with an asterisk, moved to the end of the list, and receive null values for every row (we can't safely remove fields entirely, because if they are used in the report that would break things).

If new fields are made available for grid searches, those fields are now also available for existing saved searches instead of just new ones. They are hidden by default, and are added to the end. Fields that are made no longer available were already being removed from saved grid searches in the UI, but were not being removed from notifications. They are now also removed from notifications.

Note that grid searches are updated at runtime, and so changes will be immediately reflected without module developers needing to do anything special or wait for any processing. Report saved searches, by contrast, are not updated at runtime, but only when module developers explicitly update BI by disabling and enabling BI for their area or by clicking [Update BI] for a particular module.

** TRAK 2014-1748: Better support for cross-module searches **

We now support viewing results across multiple modules in Grid mode, and also for performing multiple-module searches using common fields. For more details, please visit the search help topic.

** TRAK 2015-1145: BI users can now create reports on data at the workflow task level **

You can now create reports using information at the workflow task level. For example, you can create reports that tell you which workflow tasks take the longest length of time to complete, or who completes the most tasks each month.

For more information, please see the Child- and Task-level Reporting section of the BI help topic.

Note that enabling this functionality requires a refresh of our search index, which we plan to perform during the week following the release.

** TRAK 2015-1952: Resolved intermittent gson errors **

Under very rare circumstances, users could intermittently receive errors like the following:

Exception (JsonParseException): The JsonDeserializer com.google.gson... failed to deserialize json object...

The error would eventually go away on its own, but we resolved the root cause so it should no longer happen at all.

** TRAK 2015-3205: (tabbed) Opening a read-only object no longer throws a concurrency warning **

In certain cases, two users opening the same read-only object could receive a warning that the object was being edited, even though they didn't have any rights to edit it. We changed this so that we no longer display that warning.

** TRAK 2015-3560: Fixed boundary issue with sub-report fields in notifications based on datasets **

We resolved an issue with search notifications built on datasets that include sub-report fields.

** TRAK 2015-3964: (tabbed) We fixed an issue that could cause child grids to get into a bad state under rare circumstances involving removing and adding new rows. **

** TRAK 2015-4280: (tabbed) We resolved an issue that could cause reference button required background colors to not be removed when a value was selected. **

** TRAK 2015-4428: (tabbed) Screens now automatically reflect changes produced from performing a [Print] action that also performs a background save **

** TRAK 2015-4473: (tabbed) Reporting Authority picklist limits to module authorities **

We now limit the Reporting Authority picklist to the authorities a user has access to according to his module role definition. We always protected against a user choosing an authority they didn't have access to, but not displaying unavailable authorities is a more user friendly interface.

** TRAK 2015-4516, TRAK 2015-4616: More search criteria filter options **

• You can now search on dates fields for Last 365 Days and Next 365 Days
• You can now choose Me or My Alternates from the Assigned To filter

** TRAK 2015-4538: The new login page uses URL parameters instead of hash parameters by default **

To improve compatibility with client applications, the new login page and associated functionality (like email notifications) now by default use normal URL parameters (e.g. https://area/?sub=ABCDE12345) instead of hash parameters (e.g. https://area/#sub=ABCDE12345).

** TRAK 2015-4649: Better handling of errors when creating notifications **

We made our handling of errors while creating search notifications more robust, so as to avoid strange situations like multiple notifications being created for the same search.

** TRAK 2015-4687: Resolved harmless-but-annoying occasional truncation warning from the notifications screen **

In certain cases, we would inadvertently report a truncationn error when clicking [Run Now] in the search notifications screen. Although the error was harmless, we fixed it so it no longer appears.

** TRAK 2015-4760: The search criteria panel now stays closed after refreshing the search results **

If you had your search criteria panel collapsed and you clicked Refresh when viewing search results in Grid or Calendar mode, we now keep the criteria panel collapsed instead of reopening it.

** TRAK 2015-4830: We now try to force Internet Explorer users into non-compatibility mode **

Running Internet Explorer in compatibility mode is not something we recommend because it can cause strange behavior, so we changed a setting to suggest to IE that it should render our application in normal standards mode.

** TRAK 2015-4843: We now send only one email notification per person when a tile or search is shared, even if that person belongs to multiple teams with which the tile or search is shared. The email subject now indicates that the tile or search is shared with "you or your team" instead of naming the team. **

** TRAK 2015-4860: Resolved a minor issue with returning from the notification schedule window **

In certain cases, clicking [Return] from the notification schedule screen wouldn't do anything. We fixed this problem.

** TRAK 2015-4958: We fixed a problem that sometimes caused the search criteria panel to be blank after expanding **

** TRAK 2015-5095: (tabbed) When you add a new child row by clicking [Add], we no longer temporarily display referenced-in field values from the prior child instance. **

** TRAK 2015-5103: Login reporting authority selection now appears after authentication, not in a drop-down **

If you've enabled it, the login reporting authority selection functionality now appears as a pop-up after the user has authenticated instead of as a dropdown in the login box. Note that this only applies to the new login page. For more details, please see the Login Page Preferences help topic.

** TRAK 2015-5251: (tabbed) We now present a nicer message if you inadvertently try dragging a file to the attachment upload window, which doesn't support drag and drop: **

The upload dialog doesn't support drag and drop. You may drag and drop directly onto the attachments grid.

** TRAK 2015-5428: We fixed an issue that could cause a client-side exception to be thrown when a child radio group column had no attributes defined. **

** TRAK 2015-5490: (tabbed) We now apply the same checks everywhere when you upload files that are too large (> 20MB) whether you use drag-and-drop or the file upload dialog. **

** TRAK 2015-5751: We fixed an issue with search notifications that caused the "Items added" trigger to behave like "Items added or removed" under certain boundary conditions. **

** TRAK 2016-0084: (tabbed) Increased session timeout buffer from 2 to 8 minutes **

We increased the session timeout buffer from 2 to 8 minutes. This makes it more likely for your session to recover automatically in the event of a server-side or network disruption. For example, if your network goes offline for 5 minutes, before this change you would automatically be logged off with your next request, whereas now your session will remain active.

Note that this change means that pessimistically locked objects will remain locked for an additional 6 minutes when users who have the object locked close their browser without first closing the object to release the lock. The potential increase in reliability, however, makes the change well worth the slight increase in the length of time an object may inadvertently remain locked.

** TRAK 2016-0220: The Calendar view option is now available for all customers **

** TRAK 2016-0440: Calendar search results now display as expected for modules with multiple calendar date fields even if the first of the two date fields has a null value. **

** TRAK 2016-0692: We no longer display a [Sign Off] button for anonymous users **

Anonymous and shared-object sessions no longer display a [Sign Off] button, since there wasn't a signon event from the user's perspective. To end their session, users can simply close their browser tab and it will naturally time out.

For Administrators, Interface Developers, Report Builders, and Data Analysts

This section describes fixes and enhancements to functionality affecting power users, such as administrators, interface developers, data analysts, and report builders.

** (tabbed) Additional improvements to the Data Import screen (see also the help topic for additional details): **

• We now throw an error if you mark a column as a Key field but haven't defined a mapping.
• We default the Reporting Authority if you only have access to one or you selected one upon logging in.
• Better support for multiple key fields.
• The Data Import UI has better handling for jobs with lots of errors.
• We populate the Data Mapping region with fields that have the Search Grids/Data Import Default property enabled.
• We automatically check the Key Field attribute for the identifying field with the lowest sort order (typically an Identifier).
• We now throw an error if you try to upload a file with duplicate column headers.
• Environment administrators can now set up separate queues according to job size, so e.g. smaller imports do not back up behind very large imports.
• Users can now upload XLSB files, a binary and therefore much more compact version of XLSX. Note that these are immediately converted and stored on the server as XLSX, so if you download an error file it will be in XLSX format.
• You can upload files up to 80MB and up to 500k rows.
• A new [Modules & Fields Available For Import] button on the Data Import Job Details screen shows you information about the modules and fields available for import.
• The process of feeding objects to the search index now roughly keeps pace with Data Import (before, it was significantly slower).
• You can now use date fields and the Identifier field as keys when updating data.
• Using the ${moduleCode} variable, you can now push the module code of imported objects into the metadata import object that gets created.

** TRAK 2015-1571: Optionally disable access through username and password for customers with SingleSignOn **

If you have SSO and for security reasons you wish to disable access to the application through the normal username/password login page, we now let you do that through a new ForceSSO attribute. If you wish to enable this option, please file a TrakWay support ticket and our Operations group will assist you; we do not expose this option (or any other SSO-related options) through the normal administrative screens since an inadvertent change could cause your entire user community to not be able to log on.

** TRAK 2015-1673: It's now harder to make breaking changes to your dataset **

We made some changes that will reduce the likelihood of making breaking changes to your dataset; for example, we now run the SQL that forms the basis of your dataset and don't allow you to save the dataset if the SQL has execution errors.

** TRAK 2015-2359: Administrators can now publish shared tiles to teams, not just roles **

YourWay administrators can now share tiles with teams or roles (instead of just roles) using the Shared Tiles admin screen. Tiles that administrators share with teams appear and behave just like tiles that administrators share with roles. Tiles shared with teams appear with a lock icon in the upper left corner of the tile, and though team members (without administrator access) can see and use the shared tile, they cannot change the tile or its content. This feature does not affect the appearance or behavior of tiles that individuals share with teams.

** TRAK 2015-2993: We fixed an issue where custom e-mail footers could show up as a link wrapped in a link **

** TRAK 2015-4283: We fixed an issue where the contents of the screen would become garbled when deleting Password Policy rules from the Preferences screen **

** TRAK 2015-4689: For testing purposes, Config/Build and Config/Test are now available as connection options in the mobile apps **

** TRAK 2015-5245: The 250MB maximum report book size now more accurately calculates as 250x1024x1024 instead of 250x1000x10000 **

** TRAK 2015-5273: We now display the Order column in the Login Page Preferences screen if Use new login page is unchecked **

Since the Order column in Login Page Preferences still controls the order of messages in the old login page, we now display it unless the Use new login page checkbox in the Preferences screen is checked. Hover over the help text on the various columns in Login Page Preferences for more information.

** TRAK 2015-5410: We reduced the likelihood of persons not getting correctly created in rare circumstances during nightly HR loads. **

** TRAK 2015-5416: Objects fed to the search index in batch, e.g. through Query Builder, are now processed around 10 times faster. **

** TRAK 2015-5517: We now set the Effective From date to the current day at midnight for team members added from the Persons screen, to match the behavior from the Teams screen. **

** TRAK 2016-0136: The Performance Statistics screen now correctly reports usage of the IE11 and Edge browsers **

** TRAK 2016-0655: Made some improvements to the Preferences screen so it now displays better on lower-resolution monitors. **

For Module Developers

This section describes fixes and enhancements to functionality affecting module developers, i.e. users of the YourWay IDE.

** (tabbed) Many improvements to the Module Builder screen (see also the Development help topic for additional details): **

With YourWay 2.34, we're pleased to announce significant improvements to the Module Builder screen, along with General Availability of the screen to module developers who are part of our Early Access program. If you're not already a part of this program and are interested in finding out more about it, please take a look at the requirements for joining, then send us an email and we'll be in touch with more information.

** If you work with tabbed item (NMO) modules, you should use Module Builder unless you have specific reasons to use Define Module. ** New functionality, such as the ability to define calendar invites, will only be available in Module Builder and over the next couple releases we plan to deprecate Define Module entirely for maintaining NMO modules.

The changes include:

• A redesigned and much more responsive layout, giving you access to relevant information more quickly and with fewer clicks.
• Clarification and consistent use of terminology, such as "behaviors" for rules-driven attributes and "properties" for static attributes.
• The ability to see if a field is used across all rules and calculations, across all the modules in your environment.
• And many other improvements.

** TRAK 2013-1705: Since it was not used in Production and the Dashboard doesn't support it, we deprecated the concept of Escalate by making the Allow the user to ask for approval attribute invisible in Workflow Event definitions, and by automatically unchecking this attribute everywhere it was inadvertently checked. **

** TRAK 2015-1743: Field help text is now added to rule-driven prompts **

** TRAK 2015-2753: Empty value text now appears after clicking [Act as Assignee] **

** TRAK 2015-3651: New DXL function for showing the first n characters of a large field **

We created a new client-side function, clickForMore(), that lets you only show the first n characters of a large field, with the option for the user to click a link to show the rest. See the * Client-side functions * section in the DXL topic for more details.

** TRAK 2015-3655: New Virtual HTML field type **

You can now create Virtual HTML fields that display the marked-up content in HTML format. You use DXL to generate the field content, and you can create up to 25 Virtual HTML fields per level (Header, Task, Child).

Virtual HTML fields are preferable over non-modifiable Virtual Character fields with the Rich-text format attribute set for the following reasons:

• They display in a div instead of an iframe, so their height is scalable with their content; you don't need to set a very large height, with a corresponding small scrollbar, to accommodate the largest possible content.
• They render in all three levels instead of just the header level.

For more details, please visit the help topic.

** TRAK 2015-4036: We no longer display a Could not retrieve picklist data warning **

We no longer pop up a Could not retrieve picklist data warning for picklist-style reference fields that do not return any values, since the warning often made users think the screen was broken even though it might have been due to a harmless-but-unaccounted-for data condition. Instead, we now display the warning in the browser's console window, which you can access on most modern browsers by clicking F12.

** TRAK 2015-4622: You can now trigger notifications that send calendar invites to recipients **

See the help topic for details.

** TRAK 2015-4717: DXL that returns a null value to a date field no longer sets the date to 01/01/1900 **

** TRAK 2015-5344: We fixed a problem with importing SubscriberRoles when no selection was made to map the role to an entry in the target area. **

** TRAK 2015-5674: We resolved an issue that could potentially lead to dirty-criteria rule targets referencing the wrong module after import post-processing. **

** TRAK 2015-5746: We resolved an issue that could blank out the reports for Chart/Report fields when recompiling old-architecture logic. **

** TRAK 2015-5771: We now process Dirty Object criteria even if the priority was inadvertently left null **

** TRAK 2016-0475: Fixed MonthEnd() so it now calculates correctly when the reporting authority's timezone is behind the server's timezone **

Other

This section describes fixes and enhancements to our backend architecture. Tickets in this section primarily affect Ideagen personnel, such as our Operations group, or environments management personnel at our on-site customers.

** TRAK 2015-4774: Environment administrators can now set the "Time To Live" for various caches, such as the length of time a subscriber's banner location is cached. **

** TRAK 2015-4777: Reliability improvements to workers' processing of asynchronous requests **

** TRAK 2015-1591: Enhanced logging so we can more easily troubleshoot issues associated with asynchronous object events and other functionality. **

** TRAK 2015-5258: YourWay processes now do a better job of repairing connections to the database in the event of a brief database downtime, such as a failover **

** TRAK 2015-5322: We now do a better job of cleaning up old orphaned locks **

** TRAK 2015-5576: (tabbed) To reduce the chance of duplicate and/or missed orphans, the cross-module validation functionality now links up orphaned objects on object release (i.e. when the user closes an object or when their session is timed out) instead of on a batch job. **

** TRAK 2015-5633: We now do a better job of applying a session's log tag to all events associated with a session, including the firing of New() calculations and asynchronously processed requests; this will make it much easier to find logging associated with a session in order to troubleshooting problems **

** TRAK 2015-5754: We made the old-architecture RunBatchRules job more reliable, so if it fails halfway through any missed batch rules will get picked up automatically on the next hourly run. **

** TRAK 2015-5838: We made some stability improvements to how certain services handle servers taken out of the pool for maintenance. **