Two main components are starring this release: a brand-new Table section and a modernized version of the Image editor.
Main features
Brand-new Table section
This Table section is the greatest feature in this release, with the following advantages:
No more sets dividing records per page, meaning that you will be able to load all your records as you scroll down.
Automatic save. An optional setting to store your changes as soon as you hit Enter or focus away.
Forget the limit of 50 records to copy and paste cells, take as much as you need. To paste new rows, simply use Ctrl+Shift+V.
Variety of tools per column:
- Relevant columns? Pin them so they freeze while you scroll horizontally to review more data.
- Autosize columns based on their headers, or to fit all in the table.
- Hide or show columns.
- Easy to apply, with smart options for the way you want to match your input.
You can also drag and drop columns to change their position.
The best is that all customization you make, will be displayed next time just as you left it.
The headers will be fully displayed, regardless of the columns’ width.
An optional setting to turn the full row to edit mode, or by cell.
Also, some remarks:
“Show same record in other forms” is not supported.
Links to Table section no longer selects the record in question automatically. It requires some adaptation by the administrator.
Popup windows to review changes before saving, and to choose a Record group are disabled.
For Text and Note fields, long value is no longer popping up as tooltip when hovering over the cell.
New version of Image editor
This tool has become a fundamental part of the workflow in many applications, where pictures can be edited with some drawings. It is time to bring a better tool, with new options such as adjusting, resizing and the possibility to stack images, besides adding advanced settings on shapes and text. You will also notice a huge improvement in the way it works on handheld devices.
Other improvements
Capture a signature
We introduce in this release a dedicated function to sign electronically. In the past, this could be done with the Media component, but now it’s a regular button that will pop up a blank screen ready to be signed, and save immediately afterwards if you like to.
Click and shoot
With a single click on a button on your mobile device, open your camera to take a picture, and immediately store it into a File field. This will save you time and scrolling.
Custom name to Files
As a complement to the previous feature, or for other cases, you can now customize the name of pictures, signatures, videos, documents, etc., uploaded either by a Button, a Media component, screenshots of Maps and Charts, or directly uploaded to File fields. For example, you may have a fixed name like “Survey signature.png” or even a complex concatenation with name and current date, like “Survey signature 30-10-2023.png”.
Create-new mode Form
We sure always need a form where to register new records, without caring about existing data nor navigation through records. Take advantage of this feature in Detail sections.
Expand/Collapse my menu
Under the “Refresh menu” option, find the new tools to expand or collapse all your folders at once. Collapsing can be especially useful for large applications, to avoid so much scrolling on the menu.
Today’s date in Gantt chart
Besides the “Project start” and “Project end” flags, the new flag “Now” has been added to this chart with the purpose of making it easy to notice where we are in the timeline of scheduled tasks.
Form sections filtered by other sections
The record name selected on any section, or any of its fields’ values, can be used as parameter to filter another section in the form, even if these are not related. For instance, selecting an item of your inventory could display the different prices of your suppliers’ price section.
Enhanced Import queue form
The “Status” column of imports is now refreshed every 30 seconds, so you get to see the a clear progress of the records being migrated or updated from Excel.
Tooltips for icons
Whenever you have doubts about what clicking an icon would do, just hover over it to read information as tooltip that the administrator provided.
Editable Date range selector
It is now possible to manually enter the range of dates you wish, as an alternative to selecting them on the pop-up calendar displayed in Charts with time series, in the Notification form, and in Configuration bundles (the latter one, for administrators).
Same record selected throughout the application
The setting “Show same record in other forms” has been removed from the sections, and instead moved to the top bar of the form, which makes it applicable to all data tables in general, and not only to the section’s table as before.
Bugs fixed
Forms:
- The Multi detail section had to be manually refreshed to display records created by rules.
- Relation fields failed displaying values that belonged to a relation to itself, e.g., a box trying to display “<Table1.Recordname>-<RelationToTable1.Status>”.
- Relation fields were not available for update if a parameter was used in the section’s filter.
Data model editor:
- Newly created fields were removed if one of them was Relation type without Parent selected upon saving.
Form designer:
- The Style rule property is no longer available for Multi-value components, as this feature was never supported for this type of component.
Imports:
- Importing values to Checkbox fields was not consistent due to the format of the column in Excel. We fix this so that regardless of this format (string like true or false, number as 1 or 0, or boolean) your Checkbox is successfully imported.
Reports:
- The setting “Hide record name” was not working properly.
Mobile:
- The attempt to click a value in a Relation field resulted on the selection of the component underneath the unfolded list instead. This was solved by deactivating the automatic pop-up keyboard that caused the lack of focus on the field.
Rules with IQL:
- The function randomstring() did not work properly with Text fields.
- Parameters defined as Drop-down fields (like let @dropdown = MyDropDownField) could not be used inside subqueries.
- Parameters defined as Date and Date time fields could not be compared with each other, unless they were of the same type.
- An error message was displayed after running queries that resulted in null.
- The In and Not in operators could not be used in combination with the If query.
- Attempting to store a Drop-down value into a Text field resulted in the ID of the List item, instead of the string.
- Using system defined fields as functions, e.g., createdDate(recordName), did not return the correct result at runtime.
- The Record group value could not be obtained from a reference of a related table contained in a subquery.
Others:
- It was not possible to include Number fields that contain decimal separator in E-mail messages.
- User accounts removed from the application still received E-mails triggered by rules.
- The following administrative forms were corrected on the type of filter per column: Report and import queue, Report manager, Message log, Configuration bundles, Form rights and User administration.
Another issue with these forms was that if the columns were all removed from the filter tab, they couldn’t be added back. Now, in case this occurs again, the form will display all of them by default after reloading.
- The configuration bundles form was displaying the “Last modified” column for Forms as empty.
Other changes for IS Tools administrators
New features Form designer
Copy and paste components between forms or within the same form. This will help you enormously to save time while configuring new views in your application. For example, if you have a section designed with colored components and standard IQL queries (with no dependency constraint), simply copy and paste it as a base on other forms, without having to start from scratch every time.
But if what you want is to move a section within a panel to another one or onto the canvas, or vice versa, then you can use our newly introduced “Parent” property, where you can edit the dependency constraint, very useful to also save time when redesigning an existing form.
For the form root, there is a new powerful property “Run on init”, where you can set up with IQL initial data to display right after the user loads the form, without having to type any input to obtain further actions. For example, set today’s date automatically on a parameter field once the user opens the form, so that other fields and/or filters can have a chain reaction based on that.
As a complement to the previous feature, use “Run on select” in sections to set up the selected record name, or any other value as parameter to filter another section, even if these are not related. For instance, @param = RecordName typed in the “Run on select” of the Inventory section, can be later used in the “Filter: Configure…” Product = @param of your Suppliers’ price to find the different prices available for the matching product.
Edition of Layers’ names. The Layer is a useful tool for forms with tabs or components meant to pop up, but when they are many, it can be difficult to guess which one has the content we wish to edit. That’s why we enable the edition of their names, so that you can type a key description of what they are about, to easily identify them.
Tick the “Open in create mode” property in Detail section to make it independent of having a Selector to avoid navigation between records, i.e., it will only allow the possibility to create and save.
As for the new Table section, you need to be aware of the following settings:
Automatic save and Full row edit are set by default, but they are optional.
Since “URL parameter for selected record”, “Show same records in other forms”, and Link to a Table section selecting the origin record are no longer supported, you must make use of parameters and filters to point out the right record.
“Header” style for individual columns has been removed, allowing only text color and background color for the cells.
“Page size” is also removed, due to the infinite scrolling. Instead, find the “Number of rows per page in table sections” in Application preferences, to set how many records you want to load at once without scrolling action.
Enhanced IQL editor
We have extended the limitation of number of characters typed within the IQL editor box (applies on forms’ components and filters, and rules), so that you don’t have to worry about having large and/or nested queries anymore.
Take a photo function
Use our new takephoto() function to help users shooting their cameras with a single click on a Button instead of a Media component, and immediately save it into a File field, e.g., in “Run on change” of a selected button type set MyFileField = takePhoto() call save().
Capture signature function
Replace the use of the Edit image icon in Media component for the captureSignature(‘Sign here please plssss’, ‘png|jpg|svg’) function to quickly get the user to sign on application forms. You can also add a call save() function to immediately save after signing is done.
Custom name to Files
Try out the new filename function in forms to customize the name of files uploaded from Media component, from stored screenshots of Maps and Charts, or directly uploaded to File fields. For that, select in Form designer a Media component or a File field, and in “Run on change” type, for example: set :filename = RecordName || ‘ ‘ || today() || ‘.xls’ to store the file as “PO-001 30-10-2023.xls”
Enhancements for administrative forms
Manage record groups
There are occasions when you need to set all rights to certain roles. For that, we added the option “All” in the “Edit selected” button so you can grant all checkboxes at once.
Data model editor
For analysis and filtering purposes, the List tab will display all items if no particular List is selected.
Also, the Description property under the Tables’ Details tab has increased its capacity to 1000 characters, Table name to 100, and Generated series name to 6 digits.
Improved data model diagram
Self-related tables are now displayed with a self-pointing arrow.
Field usage report
This report is one of the most popular tools among administrators due to its importance in analyzing the growing data model of an application. That’s the reason why we included these additional features: “Inactive” column referring to Rules usage, display of duplicated rule names, and forms are listed if the field in question is used in IQL as a setting.
Rules editor
Sorting and Filtering are now available in this form, making it handful for when the list of styles and validations becomes long.
Rules manager
Sometimes, there is no need to have a trigger condition in a rule, but to simply trigger it from another rule. For those cases, we now allow to configure rules with no criteria involved. For that, the Trigger table is displayed as “No trigger” until a table is provided.
We introduce the “Last modified” and “Last modified by” system fields to be included in the Send a mail action.
Notice of planned future changes
Old PDF generator to be removed
After the introduction of the new PDF generator last year, we have planned to remove the old generator at the beginning of 2024. This implies that the “Action: Export to PDF” in Form designer will no longer be available. That’s why IT IS REQUIRED THAT ALL YOUR PDF TEMPLATES ARE RECONFIGURED USING THE NEW PDF GENERATOR. Follow the instructions in the “PDF Report template” topic of the user manual or contact our support team to do this.