New features in the latest release R7.1

R7.1 is available to download right now! As ever we're keen to hear what you like/don't like about the new release, get in touch on the forums. Below is a breakdown of what's new in this release, we're sure you'll find something in there that'll make your working life a bit easier. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter for more updates.

Social Media Module

With this first version of the Social Media module we've focused on bringing you not only easy Tweeting about the content you're creating but also to take advantage of the workflow features inherent in Contensis.

We've given you the ability to roll out Tweeting internally while also allowing the Tweets to be vetted before they go out. This ensures that you catch the ill-judged posts and also gives Twitter novices the peace of mind to know that someone is double checking what they've written!

There are plenty of rules that can be applied to ensure that your posts go out at the best time and that they don't flood Twitter feeds with thousands of posts in a day. This is where we really feel that we've produced a solution fit for the enterprise - something that isn't common in Social Media.

Future releases of Contensis will bring additions for Facebook, Google+ and also for internal micro-blogging.

Comments

A couple of simple additions to the Commenting feature are the ability for users to rate a post and to report a comment they feel is inappropriate.

Multi Media

Certain devices don't (and may never) support flash. So we've upgraded the JW Player to the latest version which allows for a simple fall back to HTML5 video should the flash plugin not be present.

Councillors and Committees

Each implementation of a module is different and a few clients using the Councillors and Committees module found the current module to be too prescriptive with the way it needed to be implemented. We have addressed this by breaking the module up into more flexible controls, and also simplifying them for the person configuring them.

We've also taken the opportunity pop in a couple of additional profile options should you want to use them. You can now add a website address for a councillor (they may be prolific bloggers for instance). And we've also added a field to allow a councillor to mention their membership of other bodies.

Quality Assurance

We released a major update to the Quality Assurance module in R7.0 and we've developed this even further in R7.1 by transforming the reporting into a Quality Assurance dashboard. This dashboard is built around the Web Manager charged with the task of monitoring and reporting progress towards that perfectly valid website!

Contensis Desktop Tool

Out later this year, this tool brings Contensis right to your Windows taskbar; you receive notifications when there's activity in the CMS related to your permissions in Contensis. If you're an Administrator you'll be notified of any issues that come out of a periodical health check and if there's content waiting for your approval you'll also know by the colour of the icon.

For those of you who have multiple instances of Contensis (and want to know what's happening on all of them) you'll be glad to hear that you can follow the activity on as many CMSs as you like!

 

Forms

This is an extension for all of you that need to build large, multi-page and complex forms. You'll be able to set sophisticated rules such as "If this item is selected in a dropdown menu then skip to page x". This feature is useful as a way to feed a user just the form fields that they need to see rather than intimidate them with lots of fields they have to ignore. It essentially reduces the likelihood that someone filling out the form will give up halfway through.

When you create a form you'll also be able to restrict which file-types are permitted to be uploaded with the form.

Schools Directory

An excellent new module for our Local Government clients - this Schools Directory provides an online directory for local Schools. Each school has a profile with, for example, contact details, photograph, details of the Head Teacher and the Chair of Governors, inspection reports etc..

Adult Education Courses

This (also new) module handles the details of community education courses. You can set expiration dates and the listing is automatically removed after that date. Users can register an interest online, with all of the details you'd expect such as venue, cost, duration etc..

Productivity Tweaks

With each release of Contensis, we work to improve the experience of the people using it every day. We get the ideas for the changes from the forums, direct wishlist items, workshops, one-to-one sessions and from using Contensis ourselves. Here's a selection of the changes we've made for R7.1:

• Submit and approve as part of document upload.
• Global default setting on "include in menu", "a-z", "search" and "sitemap".
• Improved menu management screen - click and drag.
• Re-worded and better ordered context menu items.
• Add a message on "submit for approval".
• Re-synchronise a folder at any level in both the master and slave trees.
• Hover-over tooltip on navigation tree items now gives information about who has the item checked out.
• We've moved the project title to be more visible and is better associated with the navigation tree. This creates more space in the nav tree to allow for additional items to be visible.
• If content is checked out a user can select "email me when this is checked in".
• We've made some minor adjustments to the dashboard to make things clearer - see if you can spot them.
• New "Quick Search" addition to the top bar to more easily navigate to content.

Template editors

• At folder level it now illustrates to users when a CSS file has been forced at the template level.
• We've exposed the 'FolderLevelDepth' property to the Simple Menu Properties screen.
• The code editor has been replaced - better support for newer browsers, code colouring, CSS error highlighting.

Administrators

• New permission to specifically allow users to re-order menus.
• Archive and delete permissions are now separate.
• Removed the ability to save changes to CMS config and web.config files. You can now only 'save & publish' which avoids changes harbouring.

Application Support Teams

• No longer reliant on Word install on server.
• Extended PDF creation so that properties are written to published PDF documents.
• Warning message on login screen if the db is different version to CMS.
• Do not allow users to create pages called default.

Production to Dev migration tool

For developers, who regularly take a copy of the production environment and deploy it in the development one, we'd like to demonstrate that we understand what a hassle this can be! We've built a tool that automates this process for you.

The main focus with this was to take the time and effort out of a task that some of you perform fairly often. The tool includes the safeguards necessary to ensure that the migration only occurs one-way, which (as those of you who are involved in this type of activity will know) is easier to get wrong than you might think.

This tool will be rolled out before Christmas 2011 and will require R7.1 on both systems.