Release Notes

Current Version: 1.3.7a

Features & Enhancements

HTML Email

HTML email has now been enabled, which allows for richer more customisable emails to be sent from the system. This means more control over the appearance of emails is possible.

New Bulk Email

A new bulk email manager has been integrated, removing the last dependence of the Flash Player from the Intranet. This new bulk email manager allows richer emails - with links, images and other embedded content.

Email Digest

Daily emails or instant notifications

A new daily email digest feature has been added, which allows people to choose to receive a daily email digest, summarising updates on the intranet every day. The digest runs every morning at 7am, and includes all updates from the previous day’s trading. On Sundays, no digest is run, and Monday’s email digest includes all updates from Saturday.

The digest includes all News stories that were posted that match users notification settings on the previous day. It also includes the feed from the previous day which matches the users feed control settings (feed control settings are now stored in the database instead of a cookie).

Users can turn the digest on and off, and also choose to turn on or off instant email notifications*. This means they could potentially get one email a day with a summary of changes and updates instead of multiple emails per day.

This allows users to have up to four different settings:

1. Digest turned off, instant updates turned on
   The system will work exactly as it currently does (default setting)
2. Digest turned on, instant updates turned on
   Users will be sent emails as they currently do, but also will be sent a daily email digest every morning
3. Digest turned on, instant updates turned off
   Users will be sent a daily email digest every morning, but won’t be sent instant email notifications*
4. Digest turned off, instant updates turned off
   Users will not be sent any emails at all

 

* News marked as priority 1 (very important trading information) will be sent regardless of users instant notification settings.

Update members

New notify members screen

When clicking “notify members”, administrators are now taken to the “create blog post” screen (currently (as of 1.3.6), a blog post is automatically created after members are notified).

This new screen means that administrators can create “richer” news stories (suing the rich text editor) - with links to documents embedded in the news story - instead of needing to write “see price list in prices folder”. In other words, a real hyperlink to the price list can be created instead and embedded in the news story.

This enables members to click on links directly on the blog post/email digest/email notification instead of needing to “find” the document referred to in the email.

Feed

Document uploads

The feed now includes documents that have been uploaded to the system (you’ve probably noticed), but now, in this update, thumbnails can be hovered over to get a full size thumbnail – allowing people to quickly see the uploaded document without needing to click on it.

Feed Grouping

News feed items are now grouped when numerous similar items appear within quick succession (for example, “David Hebdon acknowledged payment from xxx”. It will now say “David Hebdon acknowledged payment from xxx (plus 10 other similar stories)”.

This makes the news feed more user friendly – as presently on occasion the entire news feed can be taken up with pages upon pages of very similar items.

Turnover Figures

Supplier amendments

Suppliers can now amend turnover figures retrospectively – BUT, instead of updating existing figures they are put into a “queue” – an administrator can then “authorise” the changes by clicking a button. This means that it is easier for suppliers to change figures once they have made a mistake, whilst keeping control over these figures by administrators.

Dashboard

Group Dashboard

A new group dashboard - where central administrators can see rebate due to the group, rebate paid to the group, and rebate paid to members centrally. This enables central administrators to toggle rebate as paid - toggle rebate as paid to members (when a BACS payment has gone out or a cheque has been sent).

Speed

Speed mode enabling/disabling

Version 1.3.6 brought numerous speed increases by using server-side caching to speed up page requests.

In this version, we allow people to enable or disable “speed mode”*, which allows people to see up to the second changes, instead of a faster (but less “up-to-the-second”) view which they currently have.

This is most useful for administrators, so they can be sure they see the very latest changes made to the intranet.

* Speed mode is automatically disabled when in edit mode