Dear AODocs Users,
We’re pleased to announce the release of AODocs version 56.
The release enriches and simplifies the user experience for end users and administrators. New capabilities lighten admin workloads, improve end user efficiency, and give users more flexibility to solve complex document management challenges.
Note: Subscribe to our announcement list to receive our Release notes.
Launch details
Rollout pace: from 19 July to 20 July.
Set up an improved document editor which conditionally adapts to users’ modifications
Conditionally mandatory or hidden properties were introduced as a private beta in release 55. In release 56, we’re pleased to announce that this feature is now available for all AODocs customers.
Depending on the last input and document context, the document editor can adapt to user input by displaying and requiring additional information. You can set formulas to determine when a property should or should not be hidden or mandatory.
Learn more:
- Configure properties to be conditionally mandatory or hidden
- Use conditional logic in your AODocs documents
For which users?
Library administrators
Why it's important
Setting properties to be conditionally hidden or mandatory allows you to:
- guide your users so they don’t have to wonder what is expected of them
- prevent your users from filling in contradictory information
- optimize the form length to make the user experience more comfortable
- avoid heavy customization and complex workflow states, which are difficult to maintain
Additional details
Since the private beta, we made some improvements:
- Updates are now immediately displayed when the document is being created or edited, without any user action required.
- Library administrators can:
- make formulas error-proof thanks to fallback behaviors
- configure the behavior “Display a property when mandatory” in two clicks
- When users edit a document with conditional behaviours set as mandatory, they are taken into account as mandatory properties before the document can be saved: the banner indicating the number of remaining mandatory properties includes them in its count.
- If a calculation error occurs and no fallback behavior has been defined:
- a visual warning is displayed next to the property in edit mode and an error message can be displayed (administrators and document managers only)
- an error message is displayed when any user tries to save the document
Availability
All AODocs customers
Enjoy an enhanced search experience with revamped views (beta)
We’re rebuilding AODocs views from the ground up, which includes extensive visual enhancements and additional features. This is an ongoing task that will be spread over several releases. Learn more: Use views (beta version) in your AODocs libraries.
In release 56, the new views are still available in a beta version. The aim of the beta is to collect your feedback to steer the course of the next steps.
Thanks to your feedback, the R56 beta version of views brings you:
- filters defined by categories, including the ability to filter by multiple values
- the ability to browse by folder – the options to browse by category, workflow state and document class are currently replaced by a filter instead
- a Copy link to view with filters applied button which copies the view URL and includes: applied filters, search query and Browse by folder option – you can then easily share the filtered view or save it as a bookmark
- an Export unfiltered views to Bulk Updater button to export the view to a spreadsheet using Bulk Updater
- a Remove button in the search bar, to remove the searched values in one click
- the ability to view the property description when you hover over the title of a column in the view
- the ability to open the documents with the applied behaviour configured by the library administrator (Current tab, New tab for each document or Same tab for each document) – learn more: Configure the layout of views
For which users?
All users
Why it’s important
Views help users organize and browse their documents, so it’s important for these functionalities to be efficient. Our aim with the revamp of views, is to:
- improve the user experience
- enhance performance and search capabilities with the use of new technology and features
- offer customization options to end users so they no longer have to fully rely on library administrators to configure views
- improve the overall display of views to fit with the revamped display of the AODocs interface in previous releases
Additional details
- All users can still switch between the standard version and the beta version of views. Your feedback is always welcome, the feedback form is still available next to the button to switch versions!
- The following features are not yet available in the beta version of views:
- switch to another view
- browse by workflow states, categories, and document classes
- New button to create documents
- the ability to select checkboxes next to document names and access individual document actions or bulk document actions
Availability
All AODocs customers.
Note: To opt out from deploying the beta version of views on your domain, contact our support team at: support@aodocs.com.
Delegate granular domain roles based on permissions
We want to ease the domain governance challenges you may face, especially when managing large domains.
Super administrators can allocate users granular permissions to access some domain administration features, without giving them full access to the domain administration. Users can have any combination of domain administration permissions, including:
- Manage AODocs licenses: view, allocate and revoke licenses
- Manage storage accounts: view, add, edit and remove storage accounts
- Access the domain audit log: view, filter events and export the log
- Administrate all libraries in the domain
Learn more: Granular domain roles based on permissions.
For which users?
All users
Why it’s important
Super administrators have extensive rights on the application, so you might want to keep their number to a minimum for security and compliance reasons. However, by delegating users some of the more mundane maintenance tasks like managing licenses and storage accounts or viewing audit logs (useful for Help Desk users for instance), you enhance the management of your AODocs domains and libraries.
Users with granular domain roles only have access to the features they are allocated and not to more sensitive settings like billing details and security codes.
Additional details
Note: For now, granular domain roles can only be activated through API. For more information, contact our support team: support@aodocs.com.
Availability
All AODocs customers
Sharing your attachments with non-Google users has been visually clarified (early access program)
To help you extend your business outside the Google environment, we integrated the Google visitor sharing feature into AODocs.
Since R55, you can easily share your document attachments (Google Drive files) with non-Google users using the freshly-revamped and standalone Additional Drive permissions on attachments pop-up (previously found as a tab in the Document permissions dialog), which we also made available in Document Management libraries.
Learn more:
- Set additional Google Drive permissions on attachments (Secured Folders)
- Set additional Google Drive permissions on attachments (Document management libraries)
With the improvements brought by Release 56, you can now:
- easily identify whether users outside your domain are Google users or non-Google users, thanks to the new icons in the Outside your domain column in the Additional Drive permissions on attachments pop-up
- view error messages in real time, when you try to add non-allowlisted addresses
- easily identify the permission dialogs, thanks to the revamped icons and wording in the document’s More actions menu
For which users?
All users
Why it’s important
Sharing documents with AODocs users has been a natural and long-standing use case. However, we’re aware of some instances where information needs to be shared with external partners or customers who don’t use a Google Account.
Aside from the option to share documents and their attachments with the whole web via link, there was previously no way to meet this need in AODocs until the Google visitor sharing feature was released and we integrated it into AODocs. The deep integration of such a recent Google feature is a great way for AODocs to constantly stay in-tune and provide the most cutting-edge solutions to our users!
Availability
This feature is available as an early access program.
Note: For more information, contact your technical account manager or sales representative. You can also reach out to us: sales@aodocs.com.
The Additional Drive permissions on attachments pop-up is available to all users in Secured Folders and can be deployed to Document Management libraries on request. Contact our support team: support@aodocs.com.
Additional details
Library administrators can also automate the management of additional permissions thanks to dedicated custom script methods.
Setting up conditional logic just got easier
With AODocs, you can set up conditional logic in document classes in any type of AODocs library.
When users edit their documents, conditional logic is applied as follows:
- property values can be calculated automatically
- properties can be conditionally mandatory or hidden
- document titles can be calculated automatically (in Document Management libraries only)
We continued to improve the end user and administrator experience:
- If a calculation error occurs in a document, users are no longer prevented from:
- manually checking out the document
- changing the document permissions
- propagating the library permissions to all documents in the library (administrators only
- For library administrators, the formula injection tree has been enhanced:
- you can now use values from the current version of the document (current version name, creation date and description)
- in one click, you can enter the code in your formula builder for frequent use cases such as whether a property is mandatory or hidden
- We enhanced the formula editor. It now includes:
- JavaScript syntax coloration
- input suggestion and autocompletion capabilities when typing in the formula
- inline error highlighting
- inline help
Note about the new formula editor:
Although the new formula editor improves the user experience by far, it comes with a few changes that you might notice when editing your existing formulas.
Important: All working formulas created in a previous version of AODocs will still run in the exact same way in this new release.
However, when editing an existing formula, you will notice that:
- The syntax to reference AODocs entities has evolved. For example, the reference
property`Business Unit`
is nowpropertyString`Business Unit`
.
The new formula builder handles this change seamlessly, and the examples in our Knowledge Base articles have been updated accordingly.
- When handling dates, notably when calculating durations, you now need to use the method
getTime()
. For example:returnDate.getTime() - startDate.getTime()
Learn more: Calculate a duration between two dates.
For which users?
All users
Why it’s important
We want to help administrators implement advanced use cases without advanced development skills. The JavaScript code editor with autocomplete helps you write formulas with correct syntax and prevents the majority of formula writing errors.
Allowing end users to perform actions on the document even if there is a calculation error ensures your business processes are not restricted.
Availability
All AODocs customers
See your pending workflow tasks, domain-wide
On the AODocs homepage, we brought back the option for you to view your pending workflow tasks.
You can press the See my tasks button to display the libraries in which you have pending workflow tasks. On each library card, there’s an indicator with the number of documents where you have pending workflow actions. You can press the indicator to access the list of documents with pending workflow tasks.
Learn more: Display libraries in which you have pending workflow tasks.
For which users?
All users
Why it’s important
Users who have to approve or control large numbers of documents don’t necessarily track email notifications, especially if that is their only use of AODocs. They now can check periodically on their pending tasks and see all of them at a glance.
The experience has also been streamlined with that of the mobile application.
Availability
All AODocs customers
Improvements and bug fixes
End user interface:
- Throughout the user interface, Date fields now have indicate the required date format:
- We added an icon to the view selector in standard views to make it clear users can change to a different view here:
- Clearer and more consistent wording when opening attachments with UFO from AODocs
- Improved message with suggestions for resolution when the “third-party cookies” error opens due to authentication problems
Administration interface:
- You can now use a “between” operator in pre-filters on:
- Dates
- Integers
- Numeric properties
- In views, you can now use the current version date and hasEvaluationError indicator as:
- Displayed columns
- Filters
- Pre-filters
- View and class names are now automatically normalized: useless whitespaces are removed (or collapsed).
- Calculated values for properties of type Reference Catalogs have been made more robust, by gracefully handling formula errors.
- A document that is read-only when not checked out can no longer be modified by API when not checked out.
And there’s so much more brewing…
- The scope of features for the new version of views continues to expand! We’re continuing our work on integrating features from the standard version and adding new features. Coming soon:
- Browse by categories, workflow states, and document classes will be available
- Select multiple documents and perform bulk actions, such as delete documents and perform workflow transitions