The more people use mobile devices to work, the more IS Tools improve handling data from them, that’s why the star of this release is fetching data from your pictures. But we also keep refreshing the looks of our platform and, of course, bringing to you new functionality.

If you are an administrator, be aware of the highlighted items as they might be relevant changes for your application.

Main features

Picture’s metadata

Every time you take a picture with a digital camera, information like coordinates, date and time, etc., is stored together with the image (known as EXIF data). We make it possible to fetch all this information, so you can for example extract latitude and longitude to then connect to a Map where you can see the exact spot of the shoot. This will be very useful for personnel working in the field taking pictures to report hazards, risk assessments, to audit civil works, etc.

Infinite scrolling for Selector component

Last release we implemented infinite scrolling for Table sections. Now is the turn for the Selector, which means that you won’t see your records split into subsets as before. Just scroll down as much as you need to see all records listed.

User interface looking great

You’ll see what’s new once you log in: a whole new set of modern icons everywhere, and a Menu with headers and entries that have replaced their sharp edges for a soft design.

You may also apply this style on sections, buttons, selectors and fields in your application.

Other improvements

Remember my Calendar view option

The Calendar component will now remember if you choose Day, Week or Month view, and apply it automatically after any change on the form and even after reloading it.

Clear button in User settings form

A new button has been added to this form, useful to clear locale storage after relevant configuration changes have been made to the application, and some elements are not working properly even after clearing the cache in the browser.

New PDF generator

As we notified in previous releases, the function to generate PDF files configured in Form designer has been removed. Instead, create new PDF files with our new generator. Learn how to use it in our manual, under the topic “PDF report template”.

Bugs fixed

Forms:

• For Repeater section:
  • Read-only fields looked editable.
  • The Caption could not be styled.
  • Form keyboard shortcuts did not respond on this compontent.
• For Media component:
  • The Border property could not be set.
  • An error occurred after attempting to select a file to be uploaded.
  • An error message was displayed if the Media component was configured with the “Take photo” button, the Image resize setting, and automatic save.
• For Table section:
  • The Quick Excel report icon exported the columns in a different order than the section displayed.
  • The menu for columns was unable to display the last field.
  • The data was not automatically refreshed after actions were triggered from a related section in the form.
  • No message was provided after failing pasting an array of cells from Excel that overpassed the number of records loaded at that moment.
  • An error message was displayed if a new record name was edited and saved via the “Save all” button.
  • The Filter per column for Drop-down field did not include an option to look for empty cells. For that, the “Blanks” option has been added.
• For Calendar component:
  • The Side panel did not render according to the Fixed edges set.
  • Double-clicking the component resulted in creation of new record even if the Create action was disabled.
  • Creating a record at the bottom of the Month view made the component to be scrolled to the top.

Mobile:

• Buttons with long names modified the layout of the screen.
• Records in Relation fields could not be filtered on iPhone devices.

Rules:

• Relation fields were duplicated in the Trigger and Target lists section.

IQL:

• It was not possible to set a Media component to read-only by using Behavior.
• Concatenation in IQL returned the word “null” for empty values instead of no data at all.
• Notification rules could not be triggered from IQL queries.
• An error message was displayed when a rule tried to trigger a nested rule that was inactive.

Other:

• Drop-down filters were not handled correctly by the Configuration Bundles functionality.
• An error message was displayed after clicking on a Map layer editor component.
• Bold and Italic style were not applied to Date and Date time fields.
• The “Show same record in other form” setting worked only after refreshing the form for the first time.
• Date and Date time fields would not close their calendars upon clicking on “Today” or “Now” buttons.
• Filtering on Record created real name would not return any data. This was because the filter looked for “Last name First name” whilst the field stores it the other way around. From this release on, all instances related to the creator name (i.e., record filter, column filter, IQL, reports, rules) will considered the full name shaped as “First name Last name”.

Other changes for IS Tools administrators

Rule debug tool enhancement

Our rule debugger will now display the traces of what has been triggered and when, once you click on a particular rule. This is especially handful for those IQL queries with multiple if-else statements.

Customizable Sheet name in Reports

Previously, all Reports exported to Excel had the fixed Sheet name of “DRT” (Dynamic Report Type), but now this can be changed, either for Macro purposes or to simply have a self-explanatory name.

Many users, one form to manage them

The User administration form will integrate all the functions of the User search form. The latter form is planned to be removed.

Extract EXIF from Pictures

To enable storage of EXIF data of pictures, use Run on change (for the Media component or the File field), or use Run on click (for a Button component) with the following IQL query:

set NoteField = readExif(FileField)

If you want to specifically fetch Latitude and Longitude into two separate Text fields instead, do:

await @exif = readExif(FileField)

set Latitude = parsejson(@exif, 'GPSLatitude[0]')

Fetch values from JSON data

As you noticed in the previous improvement regarding location for pictures, a new function has been introduced: parsejason(), useful to extract specific data within the field or param storing the JSON text. Some examples are:

set TextField = parsejson(NoteField, 'GPSLongitude[0]')

set TextField = parsejson(NoteField, 'DateTime’)

It can also be used for the JSON data stored for the Map editable layer component.

New icons to customize Forms

Besides the renewed icons along the platform, note that also a new icon library is available for you in Form designer, to use in combination with Button and Icon components.

Subtractions between Date and Date time fields

Use the new function Days to do a subtraction like Finish date – Start date:

Set NumberField = days(Finish date, Start date).

For hours, simply multiply the result by 24:

Set NumberField = days(Finish date, Start date) * 24

Non collapsible forms in Mobile device

There can be cases where users should not be able to collapse Panels or Sections while using mobile devices. For that, the new setting “Suppress collapse in mobile mode” has been added to Form designer.

Keyboard shortcut in Form designer to select components

For those administrators who like to work with keyboard shortcuts, we bring the Alt + x to toggle between the “Select rectangle tool” function (also known as Lasso, to select multiple components) and the “Move tool” function (to focus on a single component).

Concatenate a New line in Note fields

Use the new function char(10) to be able to add a line break for your data stored in Note fields; for example:

Set NoteField = ‘Created by: ’ || CreatedRealName || char(10) || ‘Comment: ’ || Comment

It would return:

Created by: John Smith

Comment: The installation has been approved

Soft edges is the new black

To set up soft edges on components, use the new Border radius property in Form designer.

Timeout on rule chain

In order to ensure a good performance of the application, a time of 15 minutes has been set up as the maximum limit for a rule to trigger a large chain of actions. After that, the rule will be automatically stopped.

Familiar layout for Rules editor

The Rules editor layout is now similar to a regular Table section, where you can easily apply filters and adjust the available columns.

Improved online API documentation

For you who use our API, check out the improvement in Swagger documentation, which will boost your efficiency when writing API calls.

Notice of planned future changes

Note field cannot be unique

The Unique setting in Data Model Editor will no longer be available for Note fields in our next release. The reason for this is that the verification of this uniqueness through Notes with capacity of more than 32K characters has a negative impact in the use of resources for the whole database.