We have focused this release on calling the attention of users by showing attractive notifications, labels and other resources with the help of Markdown language and some additional features.

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

Main features

Notifications as popups

Do you have something very important to communicate to online users? Use the “Show message in popup” checkbox when writing Notifications to the given set of users.

You may apply some Markdown formatting on those popups to highlight key information and attract their attention immediately.

For those users that were offline at the moment of the message being popped up, don’t worry, they will still get an alert about an unread notification via the Bell icon at the top right of the screen.

Videos streamed in forms

IS Tools makes possible to play YouTube videos directly on your form. This can be especially helpful when you wish to share with your users some resources that are already up on the internet, without having to upload it on your application.

Other improvements

Highlighted filters in Table section

You will never miss again that there is a filter applied on a Table section’s column, because we have styled with a bright color the usual icon that indicates the data is filtered.

File name for Image in PDF

It is now possible to include the name of pictures printed in your PDF report file.

Bugs fixed

Forms:

• For Table section:
  • Components such as Buttons and Icons placed on the top edge of a Table section would not be clickable on the rendered form due to pixels added when Title was not available.
  • The “Save automatically” setting, in combination with “Run on change” on any of the columns, made the IQL action fail after using the Tab key to move through cells.
• For Maps:
  • The Side panel was disabled if the latitude or longitude of the record selected were removed.
  • Having more than one set of coordinates for a single record (e.., “Start Latitude” and “Longitude”, and an additional pair for “End”) displayed on different layers in a Map, would result in a location pin placed at the center of the rendered Map if one of the fields’ values was missing.
• The Repeater section was not refreshing automatically after records were added or deleted from a Multi value field placed in the section the Repeater was limited by.
• The Media component’s icon for non-image or video files was misplaced in the rendered form.
• For Record filter, after adding conditions on a Basic filter, switching to Advanced would result on an empty IQL editor.

Form designer:

• The “Snap to grid” setting is now snapping to the closest grid line, instead of doing it based on the default dimension of the component.
• The “Limitation field” property did not turn red to indicate that it’s mandatory after the “Limited by” property is set.
• The IQL functions runReportImmediate and runReportImmediateAndStore did not specify any format, leading to confusion on how to use it. This has been solved by suggesting ‘Excel’ as format parameter that the user can edit once the function is chosen.

Rules:

• Actions created in Rules manager that use File field as Trigger condition would not be displayed on the Toggle rule debug tool.
• The Trigger condition “Field keyword = UPDATED” for File fields has been removed based on the logic that this keyword implies a deletion and then an insert, which lead to misfunction of rules with this criteria.
• Mandatory validations configured in Rules editor did not display the red indicator for File when using Button in forms.
• Saving a Trigger condition subtracting a Date or Date time field (e.g., “Inspected on” – 3), would result in displaying the standard + in such criteria.
• The Rule debug tool could not handle deletion together with Dry run mode.
• For Run IQL action, an error occurred when the For loop over records function was referring the record as a direct parameter (e.g., for Table @record) instead of a filter (e.g., for Table where recordname = @record). Now both ways are working properly.

Other issues:

• For the Data model editor’s “Open table records” tool, only Record groups with Insert right granted to the current role could be seen in the column’s filter.
• In the User settings form, the property “Table section: Review changes before saving multiple records” was outdated, which is why it has been removed.
• In IQL editor, defining a parameter as a Drop-down field (e.g., set @param = DropdownField), would fail when using this parameter at a later stage to filter records (e.g., where DropdownField = @param).

Other changes for IS Tools administrators

Enhancement for Label components

Boost your style: Make Labels call the attention applying some Markdown together with the property “Display as formatted text” (similarly as it works nowadays with Note fields, but non-editable by end users).

Also, new Style properties for Labels have been implemented: Center and Bottom, especially useful for increased fonts to be in line together with their respective fields.

Embed videos in forms: Use our YouTube plugin directly on your forms by using Markdown on an expanded Label component: @[youtube](video id)

Color picker with Theme colors

Designing new forms often requires using the same colors you have chosen as your application theme over and over. To facilitate that, we have included your whole selection of theme colors as quick options in the Color picker in Form designer.

Functions to customize the style of components

The following IQL functions can now be used to make components behave in a specific way within queries:

:mandatory, :textSize, :x, :y, :textBold, :textItalic, :borderColor, :height, :width, :icon

For example, think of a hidden section that will pop up placed on a different position with a different color depending on the Button clicked:

if @param = 1 then
   set :x = 20
   set :y = 20
   set :borderColor: ‘green’
else
   if @param = 2 then
      set :x = 400
      set :y = 300
      set :borderColor = 'red'
   end
end

Date format customization

Regardless of the locale settings of your users in terms of Date time format, you can now set a fixed format in forms by using the new property “Date format” in Form designer, where different patterns can be applied. For example, if you wish to remove the seconds from a Date time field, type DD/MM/YY HH:MM. Note that the full date will still be editable as soon as the user clicks on the field.

File name for Image in PDF

While working with Jaspersoft studio to design PDF reports, you may include the name of pictures by using the getName() function in the expression for the Text field under the Image; e.g., ${MyFileField}.getName()

Record group with IQL

There are times when it’s necessary to save records in a group which name is built with several parameters concatenated, for example, a string and a variable, like “Contractor-” and <Contractor field>, respectively, to get the record stored in a group like “Contractor-ACME” or “Contractor-ISTOOLS”. For that, you can use the getRecordGroup function in order to use that concatenation for an exact match, like this:

let @rg = getRecordGroup('Contractor-' || Contractor field)

if @rg is not null then
   set recordgroup = @rg
else
   set recordgroup = STANDARD
end

Note that if the Else is not part of the query, the rendered form will warn the user in case the field has a non-matching value with the existing Record groups.

Label as column in Table section

Use your creativity adding a Label component as a column in Table section where you can add a Behavior property to change the caption or style of it depending on a condition. For example:

if Price = null
   set :caption = 'Contact Finance for Rate cards'
   set :textColor = 'red'
else
   set :caption = ''
end

Import template description

There’s a new field in the Import configuration form for you to add a description of what your template is about. This is especially useful for applications with a long list of similar templates.

Note field cannot be unique

The Unique setting in Data Model Editor will no longer be available for Note fields. 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.

Enhancement to “Target section” property

Previously, components such as Buttons and Icons could be used to create records and enter data into fields of the entity selected as their “Target section”. This has been improved so that this targeted section works similarly to the “Limited by” property, where fields can be also used to fetch related data.

Mandatory setting changes

From now on, the Mandatory setting in Data model editor is allowed to be ticked (manually or via Configuration bundles) even if there are existing records with missing data, leaving the responsibility to the administrator for null values. However, saving a record with missing mandatory data will not be possible to perform, just as it used to work.

Good bye User search form and Classic report generator

We have removed these tools, as they both are already replaced by others: in the first case, the User administration form can do the same functions and much more; in the latter case, a newer version of the Report module has taken place since years ago.

Notification popups via Rules

Find the new “Show message in popup” not only when configuring Notifications from user form, but also in Rules manager while configuring a “Send a notification” rule action.

Line spacing in Markdown display

Space between headers and their following content formatted with Markdown has been improved for a standard look.

Fresh look on administrative forms

Note that the toolbar of forms like Data model editor, Form designer, Rules manager, etc., has increased the size of their icons to make it easier to find and click.

Also, filters made on these forms are now highlighted to clearly indicate that data has been shorten.

Comment on IQL editor

While testing new configuration, sometimes is necessary to use — or /**/ to disable all queries within the IQL editor box, but keep them in case we use them later. This is now possible to do, without having to add any additional functional query.

Changes on Form designer’s “Run on click” and “Behavior”

Queries containing functions that impact the way a component behaves, such as :disabled, :hidden and :caption, will no longer be supported within the IQL editor of the “Run on click” property. Instead, we recommend using them in the “Behavior” property.

An improvement has been implemented for this matter so that only proper functions are suggested by the predictive text in the IQL editor box, depending on if it’s about behavior or a query to execute an action on data.

Notice of planned future changes

Nowadays, forms using the Layer functionality load all data at once, but in the coming release, this will change so data placed in hidden sections will not be loaded until the section is shown. This will make the forms load much faster initially, adding time when sections turn visible.

The Role rights form will be removed in our next release, as other administrative forms already cover its functions.