Release Notes - December 2019

In the December 2019 release, we have added new capabilities, enhanced existing capabilities and fixed a variety of issues. The changes include:

• Allowing non-Author users to select the output format they want to see - see user-selectable output
• Model output access control is now finer-grained and allows properties in the model to be visible to only some users - see User Access Controlled on Output Content
• For models with a large numbers of diagrams we've reduced the loading time - see model output loading
• Filter, Comments, and Actions sidebars in model output have all been enhanced - see output sidebar menus
• Comment notifications have continued to be refined - see comment notifications
• Workflow with an assignment to BusinessOptix Groups has been improved for the previous workflow enhancements to multi-step approvals - see workflow. 

Version 7 Libraries

User Selectable Output

For libraries that have more than one version 7 output styling, your viewer and participant users are now able to select the output styling for themselves. This functionality was previously only available to Authors.

When a user clicks on the card or list from model, form or insight tabs the model will be opened using the default output format for the model (defaults are either set at the library level for a model type or can be overridden at the model level by an Author).

If the user opens the model properties sidebar or clicks on the Action menu then they will be able to select from any of the V7 output formats available to them. Output formats can be subjected to access control allowing administrators to make alternate output formats selectively available to a group of users.

Note that for many V7 libraries you may not have an alternative output format installed, so this functionality will not appear.

[Immediately available in Version 7]

User Access Control on Output Content

We have continued to enhance the access controls on model content. In previous releases, we enabled the option of configuring access control on a stencil extension. This allowed an Author to view some model properties in the Authoring tool and removed the properties from being viewed in model output, by any user.

In this release, we have now extended the access control to make content selectively available in model output. By extending the access control to the model output you can also make the model properties visible to a group of non-Author users. This applies to properties access controls on stencil extensions and master data. 

[Requires Library Update in V7]

Model Output Loading

For models with lots of diagrams in the same model, there was a wait between opening the model output and the user being able to start interacting with the model. This was because we were rendering the diagrams so that they showed immediately. Our usage analytics showed that in many cases the user only interacted with the first diagram, so we've made some changes so that we only render the first diagram before allowing user interaction. All other diagrams will be rendered in the background. In the small number of cases that a user navigates immediately to the Document view then if the diagrams haven't completed rendering in the background there will be a slight delay before the document view can be shown.

[Requires Library Update in V7]

Output Sidebar Menus

We've made some improvements to the user interface in the filter, comment and actions menus in version 7 outputs.

The Filter sidebar has received some minor styling changes to make more of the content visible at one time.

• Based on feedback from various users the comments sidebar has been enhanced to include:
  • Details of who will receive a notification about the comment you are making.
  • Discussion threads that are marked as resolved and not received a new comment in the previous 30 days will not be shown by default. They can still be viewed by pressing the 'Show More' button.
  • We've received feedback that users were starting new discussion threads when they meant to reply to an existing discussion. To make it clearer we've removed the Add comment box which started a new discussion until you are either viewing an existing thread or you have pressed a button to say you want to "Start a new discussion".
• The Actions sidebar has been changed to allow the user-selectable output (described above). When there are multiple HTML outputs available you will now see a dropdown allowing you to select which one you would like to view. And for PDF output you'll be shown a pop-up dialog asking you which format of PDF you wish to view.

[Requires Library Update in V7]

Comment Notifications

In this release, we've continued to fine-tune when a user is subscribed to a model for comment notifications. Authors requesting new master data will no longer be subscribed to comments for the master data type. If an Author is already subscribed to the master data model, then they will need to turn off comment notifications for the model.

In a related change, a user who has started a discussion and then turned off comment notifications for the same model will now receive a notification when the discussion is marked as resolved.

Note that once a user has made their own selection on whether they receive comment or model change notifications we do not change that selection. 

[Immediately available in all libraries]

Workflow

Continuing on from the workflow enhancements in the previous releases we have made a small number of enhancements:

• When a workflow step is assigned to a BusinessOptix group we now show the list of users when they view the model.
• The banner that appears when you have a workflow action to complete now disappears when you navigate to a different part of BusinessOptix.

[Immediately available in Version 7 libraries]

Home Page Models

When you are using a diagram in a model as a landing page/dashboard tile in your library we now automatically zoom the model so that it will fill more of the screen initially. We have put limits on the zoom so that a very large diagram will not be zoomed out so far that it is too small to read and the same for very small diagrams so that they

[Immediately available in Version 7 libraries]