September 2026 Release Guide

BusinessOptix MCP

BusinessOptix MCP — BusinessOptix libraries can now be connected to AI assistants through the Model Context Protocol, the open standard for connecting assistants to the systems where an organisation's information actually lives. Claude, Copilot, Gemini and other MCP-capable assistants can find models in the library catalogue, filtered by name, type, author, owner, status, version and dates; search across all content types, narrowed by the roles, systems and locations referenced in the content; and answer questions, returning structured responses drawn from BusinessOptix data sources with filtering, sorting, grouping and totalling. A connection reaches a single library and nothing else, is switched on per library at your request, and acts as the person using it — every request is authorised on behalf of the signed-in user, with their own permissions, so an assistant sees exactly what that person would see signing in to BusinessOptix directly. It is read-only: it answers questions, and does not create, edit or delete anything. Every request is logged for administrative review. Read the BusinessOptix MCP guide.

Authorisation and consent — Connecting an assistant takes the user through a BusinessOptix log-in page where they authenticate and then grant the client permission to what it may access. Authorisation uses OAuth, with bearer tokens supported for non-interactive use, and access tokens expire after 14 days.

Content Viewing

Notifications and discussions get a considerable lift this release, along with a more dependable commenting experience.

Improved

• Notification pop-up — Opening a notification now shows a clear header, giving you the kind of notification, how long ago it arrived, and the model's name and folder, above a properly laid out body so tables, lists and links are easy to scan. Tasks show their due date, highlighted when overdue, and where a model has several notifications you can page through them from the footer. You can also open the model in a new browser tab with ctrl-click, cmd-click or right-click, matching how model links in the navigation sidebar behave.
• Discussions page — The page showing comments across all models has been improved.
• Notifications visibility control — A library can now hide the model change Notifications toggle from a document's Actions menu, hiding the whole section where the feature is switched off.

Fixed

• @mention keyboard selection — Pressing enter now selects the highlighted user when adding an @username to a comment.
• @mention in replies — @username is now available when replying to a comment.
• Comments on moved content — Resolving a comment on a model that has since moved folder leaves the folder structure exactly as it is.
• Pop-up messages — Pop-up notification messages appear once and stay on screen for their full duration.
• Workflow banner on scroll — The workflow banner stays flush with the nav bar as you scroll a document, and sits above the left-hand menu.
• Workflow status in the Actions menu — Workflow status is now shown in the Actions menu whether or not the banner announcing the workflow has been dismissed.
• Expansion arrows in document navigation — Document sections in the navigation panel show an expansion arrow where they contain sub-sections. In a document with no sub-sections, the arrow column is removed so section names get the full width of the panel.
• Client selector — The client selector appears when viewing a document in libraries that have client configuration.

Dashboards

A substantial release for dashboards — a new chart type, two new widget capabilities, more control over layout, and significant performance gains on large dashboards.

New

• Heatmap chart — Dashboards now support a heatmap chart. The category field forms the x-axis and an AutoSeries selector the y-axis, with each cell coloured by the plotted value. Four colouring modes are available: a sequential swatch that bins values by magnitude and shows a scale legend, the same swatch in Rotate mode where colour cycles per cell as a visual differentiator, Threshold mode using your own breakpoints, and a categorical swatch giving each square a discrete colour for red/amber/green KPI strips. Setting the category axis to Date lays values out on a calendar, and setting the value axis to Timer formats cells and the scale as durations. Cell labels are abbreviated with the full value on hover, and clicking a cell drills down by category and series.
• Metric cards with a sparkline — Metric cards can now show a sparkline alongside the headline figure, so a dashboard can present both the current value of a measure and its recent history in one card. Choose the new Metric Trend Card style, then add a chart beneath the value — it picks up the card's data source automatically, and renders bare, without its own title, legend or axes. Metric cards also gain Sort by and Sort order options, so a card showing a single value can take the most recent record.
• Kanban cards on Card List — The Card List widget now offers a kanban card type, so card data can be presented as a kanban board with the styling and layout already available in the Hierarchy Diagram widget.
• Dashboard spacing — A new Spacing setting on the dashboard base controls how tightly blocks are packed: Comfortable, Dense, or Compact, where blocks form one continuous grid separated by thin lines. The setting is made once and applies to every block on every page, including blocks nested inside groups and panels. Existing dashboards continue to use Comfortable.
• Configurable treeview height — A treeview can now be set to a small, medium or large height in the same way as charts, with a long tree scrolling within that space. Full height remains the default.
• Dual y-axis on charts — A chart with multiple series can now associate each series with a y-axis on the left or the right.
• Duration units on charts — Charts displaying timer or duration information can now be configured to show the value in the most appropriate unit.

Improved

• Large hierarchy diagram performance — Dashboards containing large Hierarchy Diagrams are considerably faster, and filtering, expanding and focusing all stay responsive at scale. The appearance and behaviour of hierarchy blocks is unchanged.
• Filter performance — Dashboards with filters respond faster when filters are applied, changed or cleared, and reopening a filter dropdown is instant.
• Chart height in a row — Dashboard charts now fill the height of their row. A chart sitting beside a taller widget, such as a list-style card list, grows into the space the row already gave it. Heat maps, column charts, pies and gauges all benefit, and a chart with no taller neighbour keeps exactly the height you configured.
• Treeview filtered state — When a treeview drills down to a filter, the values held in that filter are highlighted and their parent branches expanded, so the current selection stays visible when you navigate between dashboard pages or use the browser back button.
• Rich text in tooltips — Hover tooltips in dashboard tables now show formatted content, rendering rich text just as the cell does, so long values are readable at a glance. Plain text columns continue to show exactly what was entered.
• Rich text in HTML export — Exporting a dashboard table to HTML now renders rich text fields as visual text.
• Widget group settings — Widget groups now respect their title, help text and background colour settings, matching how panels already behave, and have gained a show-title option. Help text expanded shows inline, a collapsed group with expand help text shows the help once the group is opened, and a collapsed group without it puts the help behind an icon.
• Chart space usage — Charts now make fuller use of the space available in their card. Charts that share a height option and column span still reserve an identical strip, so their plot areas remain aligned across a dashboard row.
• Timeline date format — Timeline chart dates now use the standard site-wide date format, for example 10 Aug 2026.
• Treechart readability — Treechart text now uses an accessible contrast colour taken from the underlying background.

Fixed

• Date fields in filters and drilldowns — Dashboard filters on a date field now work with sub-filters and with chart drilldowns. A date field can be chosen as a sub-filter's filter field, and a date range picked on a parent filter — a preset such as This Year, or a custom span — narrows the sub-filter's data as well. Clicking a bar or column on a chart with a date category axis applies the date range that bucket covers, and clicking the same bar again clears the selection.
• Treeview branches on clearing a highlight — Clearing a highlight in a dashboard treeview now collapses the branches that the highlight opened. Branches you opened yourself are left alone, and moving straight from one highlighted item to another closes the previous item's branches as it opens the new one.
• Bubble and scatter drilldown — Clicking a point in a bubble or scatter chart now applies the correct filter value when drilling down.
• Drilldown filters using identifiers — Filter values set by a drilldown from a different page now load correctly when using identifiers.
• Visibility configuration — Dashboard visibility rules based on filter values are applied as configured.
• Page length between tab types — Moving from a multi-screen tab to a single screen tab sets the page length for the tab you are on, so scroll bars appear only where they are needed.
• Role-based content lists — A list of library content configured for a role shows exactly the content that role gives the user access to.

Model as a Sheet

Improved

• Large data set performance — Editing model as a sheet with a large data set is faster.
• Dropdown width — Dropdown menus now size to their content rather than being limited to the width of the column, so wider values are easy to read and select.

Fixed

• Save Row on a Model Sheet — Editing a row and clicking Save Row writes the edit to the model the row belongs to. The row edit popup applies to the row you opened, and text, multi-line text and date values are preserved when they load after the field appears. Plain Form sheets are unaffected.

Search

A cleaner, better organised results page, and an AI overview that is clearer about what it knows.

Improved

• Search results page — The library search results page has a new, cleaner look. The search box, filter sidebar, AI overview and result list have all been redesigned to make results easier to scan: filters are grouped into collapsible sections with their own “Find filter” box and a result count against each value, results appear as cards showing the model type, location, a matching snippet and who last changed it, and the AI overview is clearly labelled as experimental with an indication of its confidence. Filters can be operated from the keyboard, and the page shows progress while a search runs. Search behaviour itself is unchanged, and the new styling picks up each library's own theme colours.
• AI overview availability — The AI overview tells you when an overview is not available for a search, and stays visible when you choose to show archived models.
• Steadier result cards — Results in the search popup stay static as you move the pointer over them, so a list of results is easy to read and click through.
• Related search terms — Multi-line related search terms in Quick Search are displayed clearly.
• Lists in results — Search results containing lists display with the list indented.

Fixed

• Search keyboard focus — The cursor lands in the search entry field when you start a search in Monarch.

File Browse

New

• Drag and drop upload — You can now add files to a library folder by dragging them straight from your desktop or file explorer onto the folder's contents in Browse, with no need to open the upload dialog first. Dropped files upload into the folder you are viewing, and if a file of the same name already exists you are asked whether you want to overwrite it. An Upload button in the toolbar provides the same capability through the standard file picker.

Improved

• Recycle Bin confirmation — Deleting content from the Recycle Bin now shows an accurate confirmation message, making clear that content deleted from the Recycle Bin cannot be recovered. The revised wording is translated for all supported languages.

Fixed

• Icon sizing — Icons display at the size the page asks for, so model icons sit neatly within their row.
• System folder icons — Dashboards and data sources display their icon when viewing the System folder.

Forms

A set of refinements that make forms calmer to fill in and more predictable to work with.

New

• Connection check before saving — Forms now check for a network connection before saving or submitting. If your connection has dropped, a message tells you so and the save or submission is stopped before any further processing, so everything you have entered stays on the form and can be submitted once you are back online.

Improved

• Status RAG drop-down — The Status component's RAG drop-down now lists its options in severity order — Red, Amber, Green, Grey — and the selected option uses a contrasting text colour so its label stays legible.
• Form open performance — Opening a form for editing in Author is faster in libraries with many thousands of models.

Fixed

• Validation as you fill in a form — The Review Form bar and required-field messages appear once you leave a field, move on to the next wizard page, or submit, so a form opens clean.
• Current user default — A user field set to default to the current user displays that person by name, both while the form is being filled in and when a saved submission is reopened.
• Visibility rules with group names — Form field visibility rules work with group names containing a space.
• Version 7 attachments — Attachments added in version 7 all display in the Monarch form rendering.
• Viewing attachments — A file saved as a form attachment opens when you view it.

Library Wide Navigation

The headline change of the release, plus a tighter, more resilient shell around it.

New

• Dark mode for a library — A library can now be presented in a dark theme. An administrator sets the mode in the library's theme configuration — light, dark, or system, which follows each viewer's own operating system preference — and everyone opening that library sees it that way. The library's own brand colours carry through into dark, and a dark block in the theme file lets an administrator tune individual colours for dark without affecting light. Existing library theme files continue to work unchanged. The theme updater in Manage edits both palettes, and dashboard charts redraw in the new colours when the mode changes.

Improved

• Library brand colours applied consistently — Colours set in a library's theme configuration now drive both of the app's colour layers, so a colour set once applies everywhere it should. A library whose theme file sets colours some way from the defaults may look different in light mode as a result.
• Site header — The Monarch interface has been tightened up, reducing the height of the site header and using narrower borders.
• Main menu — The display of the main menu has been improved, letting you see more menu items without having to scroll.
• Response to network problems — Where a request gets no response from the server, the app shows a clear message after 90 seconds. Requests that fetch data retry automatically up to twice first, so a brief network blip recovers on its own.

Fixed

• Menu link destinations — Main navigation menu links now route to the location defined in the menu configuration, so links to areas such as System and Stakeholders open the correct model. Links to Shared are unchanged.
• Dismissed library messages — A library message you dismiss stays dismissed.

Author

Broader stencil support and smarter gateway defaults, alongside a thorough pass across complex model editing and the translation workflow.

New

• Process features on derived stencils — Features previously specific to Process models are now enabled for stencils based on Process.
• Gateway link defaults — When editing a process model, links from gateways now default to conditional or unconditional depending on the type of gateway.

Improved

• Large model link performance — Process models with a very large number of links now open faster.
• Translation toolbar — The full toolbar is now available when working in a second or additional language.
• Copying original text — The original text can now be copied when using the Translate features.
• Full-screen translation editing — The full-screen button now opens full-screen text editing when viewing translated content.
• Read-only toolbar — Models opened read-only now present only the toolbar options that apply.
• Session expiry message — The message advising that your session has expired has been made friendlier.
• Executive Summary label — The description requested when creating a new model is now labelled Executive Summary, aligning with the labelling used in subsequent editing.

Fixed

• Changing component type on large models — Changing the type of a component on a large model completes smoothly.
• Quick add placement — Quick add on a complex process model places the step in the lane you are working in.
• Embedded sub-process positions — Step positions in embedded sub-processes are saved as you arrange them.
• Copy and paste into embedded sub-processes — Copied activities are associated with the embedded sub-process you paste them into.
• Copy and paste between swimlanes — Activities pasted between swimlanes land in the position you drop them.
• Translating individual steps — Translating a step applies the change to that property alone.
• Outputs on custom stencils — A custom stencil that extends Process offers its available outputs in the action menu.
• Step probability — Probability calculation completes across gateway links in a process model.
• Verify and swimlane roles — Model verify recognises responsible roles defined through the swimlane.
• Future state transformation roles — Future state transformation carries through the responsible role where the swimlane is configured to be responsible.
• Table of contents sort order — Sorting the table of contents by sequence sorts both steps and links.
• Diagram image export — Diagrams save cleanly to PNG and JPEG at any browser display zoom.
• Extract diagram images — Extract diagram copies images across to the new model.
• Versions and Workflow buttons — Buttons in the Versions and Workflow interface display their icons and labels.
• Master data revision comparison — Comparing master data revisions includes new parts.

Model Output

Fixed

• View as PDF — View as PDF on a process model output opens the output as a PDF.
• Open URL in new tab — Open URL in new tab, set on a process step description, is honoured when viewing the output.

Workflow and Email Notifications

New

• Daily Catch-up email — When a business user has a workflow to review or approve, or forms to action, we now send them the Daily Catch-up email to remind them of the actions waiting for them in the library.
• Reviewer and approver detail in emails — Workflow emails can now be configured to include which of the reviewers and approvers performed each step.

Fixed

• Workflow configuration revisions — Saving Workflow configuration changes in Author applies to the latest revision.

Import and Export

Imports and exports handle imperfect source files gracefully.

Improved

• Word documents with embedded objects — Word documents containing embedded objects or hyperlinks without a URL now import successfully; those elements are ignored.
• Word documents with missing images — A Word document referencing an image that does not exist now imports, with the missing image ignored.
• Visio files with missing images — Visio files referencing images that are not available now import without the image reference.
• BPMN export of large models — BPMN export now handles large models with many references to master data.

Fixed

• Signavio import clean-up — Importing Signavio .sgx files removes the source files once the import completes.
• Signavio export of long names — Process models with long folder and file names export to Signavio.

Platform and Performance

Server-side work behind the performance gains elsewhere in the release, plus broader reach for component data sources.

Improved

• Folder listing performance — Fetching folder listings is faster, noticeable in libraries above about 10,000 files.
• Master data from Stakeholder — Component data sources can now retrieve master data properties from Stakeholder, with additional configuration available as an extension to enable it.
• Model URL on component data sources — The model URL can now be selected when creating a component data source.

Fixed

• Bulk model moves — Moving several models at once updates the folder location for every model moved.
• Models containing invalid HTML — A model containing invalid HTML uploads successfully.

Manage and Deployment

Improved

• Date display on user operations — Dates shown against user operations in Manage now use a format that cannot be read as either US or rest-of-world.