Lots of platform updates for April

Since our last news in February, we’ve implemented 53 improvements (both ideas and bugfixes) to the Agilebase platform, many in response to customer requests. I will pick out the highlights and any important ones here, and try to give a very brief explanation of each.

These will be released to the live server in the next few days.

In no particular order

1. Accessibility work: with help from Jon from As It Should Be , we’ve started work on making Agilebase more suitable for many different accessibility needs. This work should in fact benefit everyone, e.g. by adding keyboard navigation facilities throughout the platform. One particularly visible change is that any selected data entry box now gets a border, so you can easily see which element on screen has focus.
   Thanks to the West of England Combined Authority for putting us on that path.
   Note that the work is in progress and not fully complete yet – improvements are being released incrementally.
2. The API now returns results as standard JSON by default, without having to add the json_format=json parameter to requests. Anyone who doesn’t add that parameter may like to check requests for compatibility
3. All new tables now show up at the top of the list of tables. That means software architects in charge of a system should be aware of new tables that anyone else creates, important as people move up the Learner Progression ladder. Thanks to our partner Richard for requesting
4. AI improvements: rolling quite a few updates into one – the Agilebase AI now does more. E.g. when it creates fields for a table, it now also stores relevant values for those fields, if they’re dropdown or tags fields. So for example if it creates a “status” field, it might also populate it with statuses of “new, in progress, closed”. The AI user interface has also been made a lot more engaging with help from designer Gemma and coder Elliott.
5. Bugfixes, including: deleting a filter from a view could sometimes fail, if the ‘or blank’ option had been ticked
6. When viewing ‘raw’ table data (i.e. by clicking on the name of a table when in development mode as opposed to creating a view), row IDs are now shown. That can be a help when developing or debugging APIs and workflows. Thanks to Richard for that request.
7. The visualisations tile has been removed. It was obsolete as if you want to bring lots of different charts from different places together, it can be better accomplished with our Business Intelligence integration, with which you can also bring in charts from other third party systems
8. In the development interface, a badly chosen (or un-changed from default) colour meant that when sorting tables by name, it was hard to see they were sorted and in which direction. That’s now fixed – thanks to new user Alex from BWCE for that pointer
9. A bug meant that people were unable to change their passwords from within the system if 2FA was not enabled. Although everyone should enable 2FA, it shouldn’t block that action so that’s now fixed. Thanks to David from Kraft Heinz for reporting
10. When views were cached for performance, they didn’t always display in the right sort order, as set in the view properties. That’s fixed, thanks to Kim from Britannia Windows for reporting
11. If there is an error in a calculation you submit, the AI sometimes suggests a fix. Due to a glitch in the user interface, the suggestion couldn’t be copied and pasted into the calculation box though. That’s now resolved, thanks to Neil from Lewis Pies and Morgan from R-Tech Materials for both reporting
12. When adding a record in a tab, you’re sometimes asked to choose a relation. E.g. when adding an ingredient line to a recipe, you may be prompted for the name of the ingredient. It used to be unclear which fields were being searched on when you typed, that’s now clarified. Thanks to a number of people for telling us
13. It’s now possible to generate a formatted (HTML) repeating footer in generated PDFs, including page numbers, version numbers and any other variables you wish. Thanks to people from Jardox, Beacon Foods and R-Tech Materials for asking for that
14. When referenced data fields output URLs, they used to show as buttons, which would make a form post to the URL when pressed. They now show as standard links, which is more expected behaviour
15. Workflow buttons in a form can now be made mandatory. Just like you can set a field to be mandatory, requiring people enter a value before moving on, you can require that a workflow button be pressed. Thanks to Alison from Skybound Therapies for requesting
16. Workflows now can have more flexible privileges. If a user presses a button to run a workflow, it will usually run with the privileges of that person. E.g. if the workflow creates records in a table, they have to have privileges to do that. However, a developer can now set a workflow to not require that, useful for when you may not want to give users additional privileges just so they can run a workflow. For details, please check the documentation

A number of other general improvements have been made, but hopefully those will just make life better for you without you particularly noticing!

In other news, we are investigating the use of private clouds for AI features. With concerns around the confidentiality of anything users may ‘tell’ the AI for example, it’s important to look into that and we’ll keep you up to date.

Also we have scheduled for Agilebase to be ‘pen-tested’ by a CREST-accredited organisation later this year, as part of our continuous improvement when it comes to data security and privacy.