We're releasing Issuetrak 17.0 today, and you know what a major version change means: big changes and new feature additions have arrived!
Here are some of the highlights of what we've got in store for you:
- Completely revamped navigation UI, with less clutter, new icons, and larger fonts for improved readability in the Settings Lightbox, as well as major improvements to the Left and Right Menus.
- There is new hover behavior for the Left Menu that should help you with quickly navigating to where you want to go in the product.
- The Right Menu provides better contextual cues for where you currently are in Issuetrak.
- We've continued to modernize the UI for features such as Projects and Billing, making it easier to discern the difference between content under different headings on the same screen.
- The addition of private issue attachments, which are governed by a new Agent permission to determine who gets to view and create them.
- A major part of our introduction to private attachments is the new Attachments lightbox that replaces the Attachments screen for issues. The new lightbox provides different drag-and-drop areas for public and private attachments, as well as the ability to view and delete attachments. Each attachment can be individually toggled public or private, as well as toggled blocked or unblocked.
- A major part of our introduction to private attachments is the new Attachments lightbox that replaces the Attachments screen for issues. The new lightbox provides different drag-and-drop areas for public and private attachments, as well as the ability to view and delete attachments. Each attachment can be individually toggled public or private, as well as toggled blocked or unblocked.
- Outgoing emails are seeing the introduction of linked attachments, superseding the previous behavior of including attachments in the email itself. And although we've implemented this feature with what we consider to be sane default behavior, we've made it possible for you to tune that behavior to suit your needs. This new feature applies to both issue notifications and email issue functionality.
- We've also adjusted outgoing email logging so that it includes mention of attachments associated with each outgoing email.
- Custom Messages has also been updated with a new token: Attachments with Expanded Images. When this token is present in a notification, notifications will automatically display image attachments.
- Although linked attachments and private attachments are no doubt the the twin stars of this release, there's more that went into this: We've also made lots of other changes, such as the renamed the Calendar to Events, and kept current with Microsoft's rebranding of Microsoft Azure AD to Microsoft Entra ID.
We're also including a batch of bug fixes with this release.
Please check out our blog post for Issuetrak 17.0!
Let's get into the details further down!
Linked Attachments
Issuetrak will no longer send out attachments in notifications or via "email issue". Instead, Issuetrak will provide access to issue attachments in a manner defined by you via several new settings available on the Outgoing Email Settings screen:
- Attachment Link Mode
- Unauthenticated: Include links to the attachments, but don't require authentication to view them.
- Authenticated: Include links, but require authentication to view them.
- Plain Text (No Links): Don't send links to attachments at all.
- Allow link mode selection on Email Issue - This setting determines how the "Email Issue" functionality should handle links. There are three possible values:
- Disabled - Don't send links at all.
- Enabled for only Agent users - Only Agents will have the option to email links. This is the default behavior.
- Enabled for all users - All users have the option to email links.
- Allow links for attachments added on or after... - Only allows public attachments added on or after the specified date to be emailed as unauthenticated links. This is a safeguard against accidentally sending public links to attachments that weren't intended to be made public.
- Unauthenticated attachment links last for... - If you have set the Attachment Link Mode setting to "Unauthenticated", then this setting will determine how long unauthenticated attachment links are valid for. This setting is hidden if you've set the default behavior of links to "Authenticated".
We hope that you share our excitement for the release of this feature. We ask that you make sure to read the updated documentation associated with it before you tweak its settings!
Private Attachments
We've added the ability to make attachments private.
The Attachments screen that was available for each issue (if Attachments were enabled) has been removed and replaced with a snazzy new Attachments lightbox with drag-and-drop functionality. Additionally, the "drag-and-drop" area for attachments has two distinct Public and Private areas. Viewing and creating private attachments is subject to Agents having the "Can view and create private attachments" permission.
The new Attachments lightbox functionality unifies the attachments experience across:
- Issues
- Issue Templates
- Scheduled Issues
- Quick Notes
This new feature also gets the benefit of a more modern user experience, with new icons that are easy on the eyes. Heck, one of them actually is an eye!
Direct Links for Notes
Ever wanted to send someone a link to a specific note on an issue or request? It’s now possible with this release.
Simply open an issue, scroll down to the desired note, and click the timestamp to the left. This will copy a direct link to your clipboard to paste in an email, chat message, or wherever else you’d like.
Launch Guide
New evaluation and demo sites hosted in our Cloud will offer a helping hand to new users when they sign in. New users will have the opportunity to have the assistance of a "guided tour" from the launch guide to quickly get up to speed on using Issuetrak.
By default, each user will see this launch guide every time they sign in, until they toggle it off.
Redesigned and Streamlined
While we've been steadily chipping away at our staged refresh of the UI in various areas of the product over several releases, we've also gone way beyond re-skinning previously-existing features!
Let's see what we have here:
New Fonts - We've introduced new, easier-to-read, bold fonts in the redesigned Settings Lightbox, Left Menu, and Right Menu.
Settings Lightbox - We've made everything larger, and have overall improved readability and ease of navigation. Additionally, many of the features and settings that were present here have been moved to the left menu.
Left Menu - This menu now has new and larger icons, updated collapse behavior and sub-menus. We've re-housed a bunch of settings we pulled from the Settings Lightbox! The Knowledge Base, Projects, Entities, Automation, Asset Management, Surveys, and Billing all call the Left Menu home now.
Right (Quick) Menu - This has seen the adoption of larger fonts, enhanced collapse behavior, and visual cues that highlight the currently-active section in the context of the page you are currently viewing in the product.
Projects and Billing - These have been modernized in line with previously-updated areas like Asset Management and the Knowledge Base, for ease of navigation. The content of each area of these features has been updated to a card-based layout, making it easier to discern the difference between content under different headings on the same screen.
Calendar Events - The Calendar has been renamed to "Events", and the user experience has been overall improved with the same enhancements we've given Projects and Billing, as well as more: The Events screen has seen its "Filter Events" content moved into a lightbox that will appear when you click on "Filter". This reduces clutter on the screen, allowing you to see just the content that you want by default.
User Summary - This screen has also been revamped. It provides a good overview of statistics that pertain to all of the users in the site. We are also now accounting for current logged-in user sessions on this screen.
Microsoft Azure AD Entra ID
Microsoft has re-branded "Azure AD" to "Microsoft Entra ID", and so we have mirrored this change in Issuetrak's Identity Management options and other references to Azure AD in 17.0.
Administration
- Users with the "Can access and maintain Administration functions" permission would receive an error attempting to add items to a Multi-Select List UDF.
- If all active groups were inactivated, users would be presented with an incorrect "No groups currently exist" message and no option to show inactive groups.
- "The Self-Registration Template must not be blank, and must have "Can change their own password" permission would appear when attempting to enable Admin Auditing after an upgrade.
Issues
- When creating a new user from the Add New Submitter screen on an issue, the list of Organizations would not properly populate a list of available Organizations.
- Corrected a situation where a user could submit an issue without a required issue subtype being selected.
- If Rich Text is turned off for the site, in some instances the Select Assets button would not appear on the Submit issue page.
- Priority pop-up messages would only appear on the Submit screen, rather than any issue screen when the priority is changed.
Issue Hub
If the Issuetrak server time zone and the user's time zone are different, there was the possibilty that an Issue Hub View filtered by a Date field would show incorrect results.
Reports
- Scheduled Reports based on a Saved Search would fail to generate a report.
- Running a Saved Search from the Reports view of the Issue Hub would return an error.
- If a user had permission to run Summary Reports, if they did not also have the permission "Can add, edit and run Report Writer Reports", the Reports option in the left menu would not appear.
release date: 8.20.2024
Dark Mode
When in Dark Mode, if a user clicked on the Print icon in the title bar, the printed page that resulted would be light gray text on a white background. We've changed Issuetrak so that the page is set to Light Mode before printing to avoid this happening.
Menu Icons
The new icons that were introduced with 17.0 would, in certain hosting environments, be missing and/or misrendered.
Report Writer
If a report had a particular format set for a date UDF, and that UDF was selected as a "Group By" item, Issuetrak would display a 500 error when a user ran the report.
release date: 8.27.2024
Asset Management
Editing an asset while on an issue would result in the "General Information" fields for that asset being cleared.
Attachments
- Users were unable to delete attachments created by others, even when they had permission to do so, and even when Issuetrak was configured to display the delete option. We've adjusted the required permissions so that users with the permission "Can access and maintain Administration..." and/or "Can delete issues" are able to delete attachments that are not their own.
- The new (for 17) Outgoing Email setting "Unauthenticated attachment links last for" was capped at 180 days. We have removed the limit so that you can increase it beyond 180 days.
Identity Management
Our third-party identity management support did not allow for an exact match to a specific value when configuring mappings. We've added an "exact match" toggle, which will be visible when editing mappings, to all of the third-party identity management methods we support: AD Federation Services, OAuth/OIDC, and Entra ID.
This change applies to: user template, location, organization, and department mappings
This change does not apply to: user property mappings
Report Writer
Any date field that was not user defined, but was used in a report as a "Group By" field, would result in a 500 error when running that report.
