Release notes

This page presents the release notes for Workplace v3.5, as well as provides access to the release notes for earlier Workplace versions:

Workplace 3.5

Squiz is proud to announce the release of Workplace 3.5. This release introduces two main new features relating to Workplace communities - private communities and easy community creation, as well as other features, various improvements and bug fixes.

New features

Private communities

Private communities is a completely new additional Workplace communities feature that refines team collaboration, by enabling discrete working or interest groups to discuss topics and tasks within an invitation-only community.

Workplace users who are not members of a private community do not have access to any content within the community, and the community is hidden from view.

When a private community is created, individual members can be added/invited, based on their involvement in a particular project, department, team, or any other working or interest group.

Within a private community, members can create discussions (each with their own comments and threads), as well as share documents exclusively amongst the private community members.

Private community members with manager-level access can:

  • Add new members to grow the private community, as the community evolves or changes direction or purpose.

  • Archive the community or individual discussions within the community.

Learn more about private communities in Managing a private community.

Easy community creation

All Workplace users can now create and update communities themselves.

This alleviates pressure on Workplace system administrators, who previously were required to create, edit and archive communities.

Any Workplace user can now:

  • Create a new public or private community

  • Change the community name, purpose/overview and community picture *

  • Archive a community *

  • Create a new discussion

  • Change the discussion name and its overview *

  • Archive a discussion *

* For private communities, only members with manager-level access can perform these functions.

Learn more about creating communities in Creating a community.

Other features

Configurable number of articles on news feed

Workplace system administrators now have the ability to configure the number of news articles displayed in the Latest news area on the homepage.

This value is now configurable within the Squiz Workplace Mk III > Squiz Workplace - Site > Squiz Workplace > Home > Home prefix standard page asset. From this asset, choose Edit Contents amd in the home-latest-news content container, modify this value in Items on page.

Reporting Dashboard is now PDF-friendly

Printing the Reporting Dashboard to a PDF file using your web browser’s page printing functionality now generates presentable output.

Support for PHP 7.1 and Yammer comments

In addition to support for PHP 7.1, upon integrating Yammer with Workplace, comments made in Yammer (which are then surfaced in Workplace) are now measured by Workplace’s In-Page Analytics feature.

Improvements

The organisation chart loads more rapidly

When the organisation (org) chart is initially loaded, it does so more rapidly, as only users presented in the visible org chart view are loaded as opposed to all users in the organisation.

The org chart also loads in its entirety without cards being repositioned upon page load completion. This makes it easier to navigate between users at different levels within the org chart. Additionally, the cards of people in an org chart who do not have Workplace user accounts are no longer clickable, and no longer lead to an empty staff profile.

Notifications can now be marked as unread

The ability for all users to mark a read notification as unread is now available.

Keyboard scrolling for @mentions is now more intuitive

Keyboard scrolling and user selection have been made easier and load times for this functionality has been reduced.

Automatically generated URLs no longer contain username values

For security reasons, URLs that are automatically generated by navigating the staff directory or searching for staff members, no longer contain username values.

Therefore, third-party applications that integrate with Workplace, like Google Analytics, no longer have direct access to this anonymous data.

Creating new staff profile fields has been made simpler

Any newly created staff profile field is now automatically included in search results. Therefore, the search configuration step required when creating a new staff profile field is no longer required.

Performance improvements to reduce page load times

  • The number of news items displayed in the Latest area on the home page has been reduced from 13 to 8.

  • Avatar images now automatically resize, where each image size is known as an image variety.

  • Workplace’s CSS and JS files have been minified.

  • Header caching has been introduced.

  • The Notifications spinner which appears when notifications are loading has been removed.

  • Org chart caching, help videos and other features in Workplace have reduced cache times.

Accessibility improvements

  • The underlying HTML for the "Tiles" layout on Workplace pages has now been correctly marked up as an unordered list rather than headings.

  • For users who use screen readers, the focus state has been restored to the Contact Cards feature.

Bug fixes

  • Roles/titles in the positiontitle field of the org-chart-data-vX.csv file now supports up to 255 characters.

  • The org chart feature no longer "blinks" when there is a large number of users in the chart. After loading, the order of users in the org chart no longer changes.

  • The org chart now displays Workplace users with the Backend User account types which was not the case in earlier versions of Workplace.

  • The second level of the megamenu (which appears when an item in the first level is hovered-over), no longer reappears when the mouse pointer is moved back into its area. This usability issue caused items obscured by the second level menu (e.g. page breadcrumbs) to be obscured and their accessibility impaired.

  • Upon submission, comment replies now automatically appear on a page. Users no longer need to refresh pages to see their submitted replies.

  • Classifieds items no longer appear semi-transparent in Internet Explorer 11.

  • Users with a username of less than 4 characters are now able to update their staff profile.

  • The hierarchy of numbered list items is now presented in the correct format in news articles and standard pages.

  • Users no longer receive a blank error message when they upload a new avatar.

  • Employees with position titles/roles containing the & and ' characters are displayed incorrectly.