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YourWay 2.31 Overview

We're pleased to deliver YourWay 2.31 to you, which includes the following major improvements:

• Drag-and-drop creation of live tiles (searches published directly to your Home tab).
• BI reporting against child fields like trend codes.
• Improvements to the notifications screen and emailed attachments.
• Streamlined toolbar for tabbed items accessed through the new login page.
• Push notifications to mobile devices, geolocation, and faster mobile performance.
• More intuitive default rollback behavior for tabbed items.
• Module developer improvements that make workflow assignments easier to maintain.
• The ability to rename attachments.

** Please note: ** One of the features we planned to release blocked the ability for users to distribute notifications to persons other than themselves unless they had the Search & Reporting Administrator role. A few customers complained that this was too restrictive, however, so we disabled that feature until we could investigate a design that better meets everyone's needs.

For General Users

This section describes fixes and enhancements that affect user-facing functionality such as the Dashboard, Search, and old Manage Object. For changes specific to the Tabbed Item Display architecture and the mobile UI, please see the next section.

** TRAK 2012-0518: Live Tiles **

Instead of just dragging a saved search to an existing tile and publishing it as a link, you can now drag it to an empty part of your Dashboard to create a Live Tile:

When you do that, we automatically create a tile, name it after your saved search, and set its contents to the actual results of the search:

Regardless of whether your search has a list, grid, or report output type, we only present the list of items. In an upcoming release we will display a graphic of the report or chart if your search has a report output type (meaning you've licensed BI).

To refresh the contents of the live tile, simply click the Refresh icon in the top left corner. To open the search, click the Showing m of n items link at the bottom right.

You can resize a live tile, change its color, or share it with a team as you would any other tile you own. You cannot currently publish a live tile to a role as an admin-maintained shared tile, and you cannot access live tiles through the mobile UI, though we plan to support both in the near future.

** TRAK 2013-2481, TRAK 2014-0586, TRAK 2015-0249, TRAK 2015-1134: Improvements to the search notifications screen **

We simplified several things about the search notifications screen:

• To de-clutter the screen, We hid the Name field since it didn't add any value and we moved the Schedule button to a tab next to Recipients, since users typically set a schedule once and leave it alone after that.
• Notifications are now one to one with saved searches. When you open a saved search and choose Options .. Notifications, we take you directly to the notification without you having to select your saved search a second time.
• One nice benefit of this is that you can now create notifications for searches that have been published to you as a member of a team but that you didn't necessarily create yourself. To modify a notification published to a shared tile you must be an administrator, otherwise the screen will be view-only.
• Because notifications are now one to one with saved searches, the Notifications option is grayed out until you save the search you're working on:

In addition, we made the following functionality changes:

• Search notifications can now return the count of results found by using the ::ResultsCount:: variable in your e-mail's subject or body.
• You can also include fields in the subject or body of your email by referring to them by name. For example, if you have a field in your module called "Owner" you can embed that in your email by using the variable ::Owner:: We do not currently publish the available field names directly in the notifications screen, but a data administrator can retrieve them through the Query Builder window by querying the vXX_Field system view.
• You can select a person field in the "Send sub-reports to" dropdown to generate sub-reports for those persons. These emails will be in addition to the complete report sent to any additional recipients specified. The only difference is that the sub-reports will only contain items corresponding to records attached to each distinct person contained in the data field. For example, if the field is "Manager" and your search results contain two distinct managers, Joe and Ellen, then Joe will receive a notification with a sub-report containing just his items, and Ellen will receive one containing only hers.
• When you distribute a notification to a team, we also include external team members in the distribution list:

** TRAK 2014-1207: Search Grid results sort more reliably for all data types **

When you click a column to sort Search Grid results by that column, we were correctly returning sorted results across all pages but the browser was then applying its own sort for the current page it was displaying. This was especially apparent on numeric fields, which were sorted numerically across all pages but then sorted alphabetically on the page being viewed. We removed the client-side sorting so results now display as expected for all field types.

** TRAK 2014-1358: Notifications now sent when they include objects with missing workflow details **

We fixed a rare issue that could cause notifications to not be sent out if they included objects with missing workflow details.

** TRAK 2014-1549: Columns in Excel search notification attachments now auto-expand **

To improve readability, when you request a grid-output saved search to be sent to you as an Excel spreadsheet on a scheduled notification, the columns in the spreadsheet now auto-expand.

** TRAK 2014-1723: We now lock objects opened in the old-architecture Mass Edit screen **

We now enable object-locking when objects are opened in the old-architecture Mass Edit screen. We lock objects across all pages, not just the current page. When you click the Details link for a locked item, you can still edit the item because you own the lock. If one or more items are locked when you open the old-architecture Mass Edit screen, you will see one or more messages (one for each locked item) explaining which items are locked.

Clicking [Return] to exit the Mass Edit screen releases the locks on all items. If you sign off or close the browser without click [Return], you have to wait for your session to time out for the locks to be released.

** TRAK 2014-1747: Saved search names now support the backslash character **

You can now use the backslash character in saved search names.

** TSR 2014-2519: Additional filtering fields available in BI **

We have added the ability to filter BI reports by the fields "Assigned to", "Workflow Step", and "Workflow Task". (Note: Module developers must click [Update Ad Hoc] for these fields to be available.)

** TSR 2014-3603: Increased maximum characters for saved searches **

We increased the maximum number of characters allowed for naming saved searches from 50 to 250 so saved searches can make better use of 'Wide' tiles.

** TRAK 2015-0010: Support for future/past date filters **

On date fields you can now filter for items that are in the past or in the future. For example, if you have a Due Date field and you want to create a saved search for items that are overdue or due today, you would choose "Today or Before":

** TRAK 2015-0025: Support for BI reporting against child fields like trend codes **

Module developers can now choose to expose child-level fields to BI. There are two major flavors of accessing child-level data through BI:

** As an attribute of a header-level report. ** In that case the child-level data simply displays as a comma-delimited list:

** By selecting the level by which you wish to expand the set of results. ** This option is only available for output type Report, not List or Grid:

When you choose a level to expand by, we repeat Header-level information for each child record. For example, if your results contain the following records:

Condition Report A, Due Date 06/23/2015
    Task A-1, Assignee Joe
    Task A-2, Assignee John
Condition Report B, Due Date 05/19/2015
    Task B-1, Assignee Ellis
    Task B-2, Assignee Ellen
Condition Report C, Due Date 07/05/2015

Then if you choose to expand by Task and print out the columns in a tabular report, they will look like this:

CR | Due Date   | Task | Assignee
=================================
 A | 06/23/2015 | A-1  | Joe
 A | 06/23/2015 | A-2  | John
 B | 05/19/2015 | B-1  | Ellis
 B | 05/19/2015 | B-2  | Ellen
 C | 07/05/2015 | null | null

** TRAK 2015-0225, TRAK 2015-0507: Improvements to tile group functionality **

We fixed a couple minor UI issues related to tile groups.

** TRAK 2015-0227: Better support for concurrent notifications **

The functionality that generates report notifications can now handle a much larger number of simultaneously scheduled requests.

** TRAK 2015-0315: Improved reference field filters of dataset searches **

When searching a dataset by a reference field, we will no longer throw an error when the user switches conditions before selecting a value against which to search.

** TRAK 2015-0436: Plain-word criteria added to 'Initiated On' date filter **

We included plain-word criteria (e.g. 'Last Week', 'Last Year, etc.) to the 'Initiated On' field filter.

** TRAK 2015-0973: Improved support for many concurrently scheduled report notifications **

We made a change that should improve support for many report notifications scheduled to run during the same minute of the day.

For Users of Tabbed Item Display and Mobile

This section describes fixes and enhancements to functionality affecting users of our new architecture, which includes the mobile UI. You know you are a user of the new architecture if the item detail screen opens as a tab on the Dashboard instead of taking up the entire browser frame.

** TRAK 2013-0071: Mobile apps now support push notifications **

The iOS and Android native apps now support push notifications for Dashboard notifications set to "Immediately". In addition to the email we trigger, we will also send a push notification to any device for which you have the mobile app installed:

Clicking on that opens the mobile app, where at the bottom you will see a red badge overlayed on the messages icon showing the number of new notifications you have been sent:

Clicking on that in turn will display the notifications, from where you can click to open the objects directly:

In an upcoming release, we will allow module developers to configure custom emails to optionally be sent as push notifications to mobile devices as well.

** TRAK 2013-0072: Provide the ability to include geolocation information with updates made by the mobile app **

If allowed by the user, we now include geolocation information with every request. This will become available to module developers in the form of a special variable so they can use it in rules or store it in a field they choose, with the eventual target being to expose a Maps output type on Advanced Search so users can see where updates to objects were made. The current functionality already stores the geolocation information for uploaded attachments where available.

** TRAK 2013-0132: Renaming attachments **

You can now rename an attachment by clicking into the name box and typing a new name. To download an attachment, click the "Download" link next to the name.

When you rename an attachment, you must use the same file extension as before or you will receive an error.

** TRAK 2013-2119: Improve support for custom date formats **

We improved our handling of subscriber-specified, custom date formats when viewing and entering date values. Specifically, for date fields that become editable as the result of another action.

** TRAK 2013-2330: Objects initiated by anonymous users can no longer roll back to "Initiate" **

We no longer present the option of rolling back to "Initiate" in cases where an object was initiated by an anonymous user. We also now validate that non-anonymous initiators still have appropriate roles before presenting the option to roll back to them.

** TRAK 2013-2501: Reference button labels no longer truncate unexpectedly **

Certain conditions could cause the labels for reference and button fields to truncate unexpectedly. We improved the algorithm governing these labels to reduce the likelihood of this happening.

** TRAK 2014-1297: Faster rendering performance for the mobile UI **

We made some performance improvements to the mobile UI so that it renders more quickly, especially on older devices. However, we still recommend devices with a SunSpider JavaScript benchmark of less than 1000ms.

** TRAK 2014-1637: "Review Open Assignments" no longer displays through the new login page **

Since it's an old-architecture screen, the "Review Open Assignments" tree view node no longer displays when you sign on through the new login page.

** TRAK 2014-1676: Improvements to Shared and Anonymous objects **

We made the following changes/improvements to Shared objects and Anonymous new objects:

• We removed the irrelevant Home tab
• We added a [Requests] button
• We added the [Sign off] button
• We removed unnecessary buttons: [Find Similar], [Share], and [Bookmark]
• We removed the 'top of the screen' toolbar
• We removed the left 'collapsed treeview'
• We added the [Messages] button
• We added the display of login messages

** TRAK 2014-1718: Creating two child objects from a parent object open in two separate instances no longer confuses the UI **

The following steps confused the UI:

• You open an object A
• You create a new object B from a child grid in object A
• You open object A a second time from the Recent Items folder or Search
• You create a new object C from a child grid in the second instance of object A
• You clicked Save and returned to the parent from both children

We fixed this by no longer allowing the opening of tabs that are already open as part of an existing tab-stack.

** TRAK 2014-1774: Implemented live updates for mobile apps **

We implemented live updates for mobile apps, meaning that for updates that do not require changes to operating system APIs we can update the apps without having to republish them to their host app stores.

** TSR 2014-3092: List searches using the New login page no longer display a selection checkbox **

We now hide irrelevant checkboxes from the new login's list searches.

** TSR 2014-3596: We now display a message if you're logged in to a test area through the new login page **

If you log into a non-Production area through the new login page, we now display a message in the toolbar indicating that. This reduces the possibility that users may update Production data when they think they're in a test area or vice versa.

** TSR 2014-3617: Mobile app won't navigate away from an unsaved object when the save returned an error **

If you encounter an error on the mobile app when tapping [Yes] on the save changes dialogue, we do not return you to the previous page but keep you with the unsaved object to prevent any loss of data.

** TRAK 2015-0038: Downtime message now displays on the new login page **

The new login page now correctly displays upcoming downtimes.

** TSR 2015-0038: Refreshes triggered by changes to the reporting authority propagate more reliably **

We fixed an issue that could cause refreshes triggered by changes to the reporting authority field to not propagate correctly back to the server.

** TRAK 2015-0154: Attachments grid now renders all columns correctly **

In rare cases, only the first column of the Attachments grid (the filename) would display until the first Save on an object occurred. We made a fix to reduce the likelihood of this happening.

** TRAK 2015-0195, TRAK 2015-0270: Improvements to dragging and dropping attachments **

We improved the drag-and-drop attachment functionality that was introduced in YourWay 2.30. Now we clearly state if the attachment that has been drag-and-dropped is not able to be attached. We also removed references to drag-and-drop when using IE9 or older, where drag-and-drop is not supported.

** TRAK 2015-0316: Mobile UI no longer attempts to load unavailable templates **

The mobile client no longer attempts to load offline snapshot or template details that are not accessible to the user.

** TRAK 2015-0471: The object toolbar is now simpler when accessing objects through the new login page **

To make it easier for new or infrequent users to absorb the content on an object screen, we simplified the toolbar by putting most ancillary functions in the Options menu:

This change only applies to users who access their applications through the new login screen, so the change does not apply to the majority of our users.

The full list of actions that are now accessed through the Options screen is:

• Model Attributes
• Template
• Spellcheck
• History
• Bookmark
• Find Similar
• Share
• Ask for Assistance
• Offline Snapshot
• Mark Unread
• Cancel
• Delete

** TRAK 2015-0481: Mobile apps now return feedback to the user when saving in offline mode **

Because saving changes while in offline mode is a nearly instantaneous operation since it's a completely local action, we never displayed an indicator to the user that something was happening. We now show a brief "loading" indicator so you know the action was received and got processed.

** TRAK 2015-0494: Numeric fields now display correctly on tabs that become visible after an action **

We fixed an issue that could cause numeric fields to not display correctly on newly visible tabs.

** TRAK 2015-0563: "Recent" items hidden from anonymous users **

We no longer track "Recent" items for anonymous users.

** TRAK 2015-0600: Rollbacks are now routed to the last assignee by default **

When using the default YourWay rollback functionality, we formerly reran the assignment rules to determine who should receive the rolled back task. Many users found this behavior confusing, however, so by default we now assign the rolled back task to the user or team to whom it was last assigned (not necessarily the person who completed the task).

** TRAK 2015-0638: Resolved an issue with the [Add] option for child level reference fields **

We fixed a minor error in which the [Add] button was not appearing for reference fields in child level grids.

** TRAK 2015-0794: Exporting search grid results to Excel now includes all visible columns **

When you export grid search results to Excel, the generated spreadsheet now includes fields that were initially hidden but that you manually made visible in the grid.

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.

** TRAK 2014-1041: Outbound web services now include the child level name **

We now include the LevelName for child rows in outbound web service messages.

** TRAK 2014-1585: Sort reporting authorities alphabetically **

The Reporting Authorities screen now sorts reporting authorities alphabetically within each level.

** TRAK 2014-1617: RESTConnect API saved search results are now paginated **

When the RESTConnect API accesses a saved search with several pages of results, you can append &page=n to the URL to access the n-th page of results.

** TRAK 2015-0015: You can now choose whether to display messages on the new login page, the pop-up, or both **

When you create a user-facing message in the Login Page Preferences screen, you can now choose whether to display it on the new login page, the messages pop-up, or both. The default behavior for new messages is to display them only on the pop-up. Note that the old login page will continue to display all messages, regardless of whether the "Login Page" checkbox is checked.

** TRAK 2015-0241: The Persons Admin screen now more reliably shows the list of tiles a user owns **

In YourWay 2.30 we introduced the ability for admins to manage a person's tiles through the Maintain Persons admin screen. A bug in that functionality incorrectly caused shared tiles belonging to the logged-in user to also display. We fixed this problem.

** TRAK 2015-0501: Added DisplayOrder to the PicklistCodes system view **

We added DisplayOrder to the vXX_PicklistCodes system view.

** TRAK 2015-0695: Clearer dataset warnings **

We added more integrity checks when building datasets and moved the display of those checks from the column level up to the Dataset level.

** TSR 2014-2545: The mobile UI now lets you cancel a [Back] request when you have unsaved changes **

Previously, if you had unsaved changes and clicked [Back], we only prompted you to save or discard your changes. We now allow you to cancel the action, which returns you to the data object you were working on.

For Module Developers

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

** TRAK 2011-1513: Floating header region **

By setting its display order to 0, you can now create a region or panel that displays across all group tabs and which doesn't scroll with the rest of the page.

** TRAK 2013-0402: ValidDay() function for Date-field calculations **

We added support for a ValidDay() function for use in Date-field calculations. This function ensures that the date returned is not a weekend or holiday. 

** TRAK 2013-2411: Dependent objects now link as soon as an object lock is released, not in a batch process **

The two-way cross module validation check ensures that objects that are logically linked do not have that link inadvertently broken. For example, a Condition Report object has Actions, which are a different type of object. In cases where Actions cannot exist on their own, if they are orphaned due to a broken network connection or some other error, we have to reconnect them to their parent. The two-way cross module validation is what takes care of doing that.

Starting with YourWay 2.31, we improved this process so that the link is re-established at the moment an object lock is released. This makes the process much quicker (instead of having to wait up to half an hour), simpler, and more stable. The only caveat is that you must have pessimistic locking or optimistic locking with warnings enabled for the modules for which you want a cross-module check performed. In practice this isn't much of an issue, as locks and cross module checks are pieces of functionality that typically go hand in hand, and in the future this issue will disappear entirely since we plan to create lock records even for optimistic locks, but it's a good idea to be aware of this effect.

** TRAK 2014-0988: New and/or improved DXL functions DateToString(), StringToDate(), and StringToNumber() **

We added and/or improved three new DXL functions. 

** TRAK 2014-1741: Generated DXL functions include extra parentheses when appropriate **

We improved the DXL parser generator to more correctly generate nested parentheses where appropriate.

** TRAK 2014-1753: Report & chart fields now respect the "Recalculate (overwrite) on Save and Refresh" checkbox **

You can now choose to regenerate the URL associated with Chart/Report fields on every refresh by checking the Recalculate (overwrite) on Save and Refresh attribute in either Define Module or Module Builder. If you leave Recalculate (overwrite) on Save and Refresh unchecked, then we don't overwrite the URL after it's initially generated (on opening the object).

** TRAK 2015-0006: Email rule target enhancements **

New-architecture modules now support the "Open task assignees" email rule target. In addition, email rule targets no longer apply the email override for messages sent to devonway.com addresses, which facilitates testing (see related ticket TRAK 2014-1288).

** TSR 2015-0103: Advanced Search now supports reference fields with static display criteria to multiple modules **

The Advanced Search screen now supports reference fields that point to multiple modules and contain static search criteria.

** TRAK 2015-0179: "Show in Models" checkbox applicable to paged objects only **

Because the "Show in Models" option only applies to the old paged modules, we have added clarity to the option in Define Module. It now reads "Show in Models (OMO only)". Also, we removed the "Show in Models" option for the new Module Builder.

** TRAK 2015-0196: Better handling of certain SQL statements in DXL **

We now do a better job of handling certain quoted keywords in SQL() statements.

** TRAK 2015-0210: Ability to print without specifying font/margin sizes **

We now use a default value in case a module has font and margin sizes that are null.

** TRAK 2015-0237: Improved behavior when importing modules with similar company codes **

We improved the replacement of company codes when importing a module to ensure all codes are replaced correctly.

** TRAK 2015-0400: Anonymous users can now share newly created objects **

Object sharing now works for roles to which you have allowed anonymous access.

** TRAK 2015-0469: You can now construct a URL that provides chromeless access to a single object **

If you append the parameter &Bare to a URL that launches an object directly, we will open it in a window that doesn't have the chrome typically associated with a platform login; specifically, the search bar, tree view navigation pane, and Home tab will all be hidden.

** TRAK 2015-0601, TRAK 2015-0694: Two new options to simplify workflow assignment rules for tabbed objects **

We added two options to simplify workflow assignments for tabbed (new architecture) items, "Update current task" and "Skip task":

• ** Update current task ** - Updates the currently working task, so you don't need to create a separate rule for each task and explicitly choose it in the "Workflow Task" column. This is useful for creating a single rule to handle, for example, reassignments.
• ** Skip task ** - This lets you create rules to explicitly tell the workflow engine under what conditions particular tasks should be skipped. Formerly the only way to do this was to check the "Skip when no assignments found" attribute in the Assignments region of the Workflow tab, and make sure your assignment rules all took into account whatever attribute drove the skip behavior. This made the assignment rules very hard to think about and maintain, as skipping was an implicit behavior resulting from the absence of an assignment action, instead of a first-class action in and of itself. Please note the following:
  • We run "Skip task" rules before running assignment rules. We never run assignment rules if we determine a task should be skipped.
  • We still respect the "Skip when no assignment is found" checkbox, although we encourage module developers to no longer use this and to instead use explicit skip rules.

** TRAK 2015-0644: We now prevent conflicts resulting from concurrent refresh requests **

Refreshes triggered concurrently could result in conflicts. We made a change to the client to prevent that situation from occurring.

** TRAK 2015-0645: Fixed issue with refresh on focused field **

We fixed an issue that could prevent a refresh from triggering on a field that was in focus.

** TRAK 2015-0646: Support for picklists above P20 in rules **

We implemented support in rules for picklist fields above P20 (e.g. H:P23).

** TRAK 2015-0786: Change in behavior for new-architecture header region prints spanning multiple pages **

Due to a change in an underlying 3rd party library, the existing behavior of Print regions will change. Currently when a header print region spans multiple pages the print region header is repeated at the top of each successive page. The new behavior is that this region header will only be displayed once at the beginning of the print region. This change only impacts new-architecture prints and report books.

** TRAK 2015-0862: Fields available in grid search not dependent upon also making them a filter **

We no longer require that both the 'Make this field available for grids and reports' and 'Show this field in the list on the Advanced Search screen' checkboxes are checked to make a field available for display in search grids. Instead, we make the field available as long as 'Make this field available for grids and reports' is checked.

** TRAK 2015-0954: Reference field attributes are now correctly applied after a refresh **

We fixed an issue that could sometimes cause attributes to not be reapplied to reference fields after a refresh.

** TRAK 2015-1258: Object assignees now correctly tracked for closed objects **

We fixed an issue that could limit the search results displayed for roles where the Search for objects they didn't work on attribute was set to false.

** TRAK 2015-1292: Support for DXL in mask rule targets **

The "Format" box for numeric fields now accepts DXL, although raw masks like #,###.0 will continue to work as before.

Note that DXL will not work in the "Default Format" field since this change is only for rule-based formats. One complication with this is that Define Module will automatically put formats associated with the ALWAYS rule into the Default Format field, so if you plan to associate DXL masks with the ALWAYS rule you should instead create an ALWAYS2 rule and use that. Module Builder will not have this limitation.

** TSR 2015-0080: We now always recreate subscriber views during a YourWay release **

To ensure you always have access to the latest subscriber (system) views in the Query Builder screen, we now automatically recreate them during a YourWay release.

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 2014-1768: Better support for secure emails to multiple recipients **

We now only send an email using TLS if all recipients' domains have the ability to receive secure emails. This reduces the chance that an email will fail to be transmitted. As always, we encourage you to implement support for secure TLS email if you have not already done so.

** TRAK 2014-1772: More reliable Dataset feeds **

In an effort to improve the reliability of dataset feeds, we rewrote that functionality to match the mechanism we currently use for regular objects.

** TRAK-2015-0071: Support for running environments without legacy software **

We made a handful of small changes to Maintain Persons, Module Import, and other administrative screens to support environments running without legacy software. This does not affect any of our existing customers; it is preparatory work for new customers that do not require legacy components.

** TRAK 2015-0250: Changes to how we issue SQL against the Data Depot **

We made some improvements to how we issue SQL from the Query Builder window against the Data Depot.

** TRAK 2015-0514: File extensions for attachments loaded via integration efforts **

We better handle file extensions that are loaded via integration efforts to avoid printing errors.