6.18 release notes

A new feature for managing user access to backend UI features is now available in Matrix.

Admins can now easily restrict access to certain Matrix features for users through a new screen available on user group assets called Feature restrictions.

On this screen, you can configure restrictions for four types of features including:

Adding restrictions to this screen will hide and restrict access to those features within the backend UI for all users inside that user group.

For example, if you add Redirect page as an asset type restriction, users under that group can not create or edit any assets of that type, regardless of their permission access.

This feature makes it easier and faster to invite new users to help manage your CMS because they will not require as much training or understanding of the full Matrix feature set before they can become productive.

A new “Members” screen has been added for User groups that lets Admins easily see all the users of a particular user group, regardless of their hierarchy depth within that group.

Each user listed on this screen shows you useful high-level information such as their user type, status, username, full name, email address, and the last time they signed in to Matrix.

This new screen makes it easier for Admins to manage larger user and group sets within a Matrix instance.

To further help manage users and groups, a new “Memberships” screen is also available on User assets.

This screen lists all user groups the user is a member of, including directly linked and nested groups.

The list will highlight any groups that have feature restrictions applied. Additionally, the list also highlights user group memberships where certain conditions must be met for the membership to take effect.

This membership visibility makes it extremely quick and easy for admins to make sure a certain user is part of all the correct groups and where feature restrictions and membership conditions are applied as part of those memberships.

A new spam control feature has been added to Matrix forms that let users easily integrate with the popular hCaptcha service.

This feature works very similarly to the existing reCAPTCHA forms feature.
You add a hCaptcha Site and Secret key to your Matrix External tools configuration, and then you can start enabling it on forms such as custom forms, asset builders, password reset pages and account managers.

Using hCaptcha on forms enables better protection from bots, spam, and other forms of automated abuse.

Several new capabilities have been added to the Asset Management API, enabling developers to create more feature-rich applications and solutions that update assets in a Matrix instance.

The following new asset functions are now available through the API:

Read the Asset Management API documentation for more information about this API.

Several improvements have been made to the Asset tree in the Matrix backend UI, including improved icons, fonts, colors, spacing, and tooltips.

There are now navigation options for screens with tabs on them, so you can go directly to a specific tab of any screen that uses them, such as the recently improved Linking screen.

Short-cuts for moving an asset to the top or bottom position of any tree location parent are now available under the Move…​” menu item.

The asset position selector for moving, linking, or cloning an asset has also been improved so that it is much easier to select the correct target location.

These improvements make it easier and more intuitive to perform all asset tree tasks for user account types.

The asset syncing tool has received a UX improvement that makes it more intuitive for developers to sync assets between Matrix environments.

When starting an outbound or inbound sync job, the Sync activity table refreshes automatically and always shows the syncing job’s updated status.

Developers no longer have to manually refresh the screen to see an updated status of their sync job.

The popular WebP image format is now supported for image assets in Matrix.

Developers can now use this format for web project development to create smaller and richer images that make their Matrix solutions faster for end-users.

Read more about the WebP image format on the Google Developer website.

The Reference report screen is no longer available as a standalone screen on assets. The screen is now available from the References tab in the Linking screen.

The Security restrictions screen found on User group assets has been deprecated and will be removed in a future release of Matrix.

This functionality has been replaced with the new Feature restrictions screen available on User group assets.

Upon upgrade to this version of Matrix, systems with existing security restrictions on user groups will continue to work.

The Restrictions screen on User assets has been renamed to Membership conditions to more accurately and consistently reflect its functionality.

The functionality of this screen is unchanged.