This release holds improvements and new features that mainly seek to improve the stability, performance, and usability of Activator. Some of these changes are therefore not immediately visible to the end-user. The release also contains numerous bug fixes.

New Features

Settings Popup

Fetch and display document metadata and thumbnail in a large popup. Before publishing, show the external thumbnail if available; post-publishing displays the Activator Thumbnail. Only fields with available metadata will be shown, and all metadata will be in a read-only state. An 'Open in Aprimo' button has been added for enhanced accessibility.

Send Test Email

Introducing the ability to send test emails directly from the application. This feature integrates SMTP and AWS setup scripts and allows repurposing existing scripts for seamless email delivery. You can follow the provided links to the scripts in our Bitbucket repository and Terraform documentation for detailed setup. Utilize the 'send email' capability imported from Blackburn and send the compiled email to user-inputted addresses. Trigger this action with the send-test-email event, and upon success, the system will return test-email-sent to the frontend.

Send Test Email UI

We’ve streamlined the process of sending test emails directly from the UI. By clicking the ‘send test email’ button, users can now trigger a popup to input an email address and initiate the send functionality. This update enhances the ability to quickly test and preview email communications, ensuring accuracy and efficiency in your workflows.

Device Resolutions in Preview

Add device resolution toggles to the top bar and fit the email preview container to the selected resolution, allowing users to view the full content without scrolling. Currently, supported devices include desktop and mobile views.

Improvements

Download external thumbnail and save during generation

Enhance your issue tracking with automatic thumbnail generation. This update modifies the schema to include an activatorThumbnail, ensuring that external thumbnails are downloaded and saved during the generation process, making it easier to manage visual assets alongside your issues.

Log Display

The log display feature is now available to help you understand system activities and facilitate communication among developers, QA, and other stakeholders. Easily share the URL to keep everyone on the same page and streamline debugging and issue resolution processes.

Improved Content Fetching for Design Systems

We have enhanced the efficiency of content retrieval from Design Systems. Now, when using the wizard, only templates are fetched, and when displaying the canvas, only layouts and helpers are fetched. This update ensures faster loading times and reduces unnecessary data collection, optimizing performance and resource usage.

Configure Provisioned Concurrency for Lambda Functions

Reduce Lambda cold start times by configuring provisioned concurrency directly from the solution.json file. This feature is particularly beneficial for live environments needing immediate response times. Note that enabling provisioned concurrency will increase costs. For more details, refer to the AWS Lambda documentation.

Bump resource loads in Media Library from 12 to 24

We have increased the maximum number of resource loads in the Media Library from 12 to 24, allowing you to handle larger volumes of media more efficiently. This enhancement improves the overall performance and responsiveness of the media management process, enabling faster access and usage of your digital assets.

Handle media thumbnails on Rosalind side

Due to issues with signed URL expiration, we're now handling media thumbnails directly on our side. To ensure thumbnails do not expire, we will either download the thumbnail (SP: 8) or generate our own rendition of the resource (SP: 16). Additionally, thumbnails will be stored with the document, linked to the version ID of the media.

Support dynamic filtering in the Media Library

We’ve introduced dynamic filtering in the Media Library, allowing users to instantly tailor their view based on various filter criteria. This enhancement makes it easier to manage and locate media assets efficiently. With just a few clicks, you can filter content by date, type, size, or custom tags, ensuring you have quick access to exactly what you need.

Extend the conversion library to read metadata values from additional fields

Enhance the conversion library to retrieve and display metadata values along with their IDs. This allows for a more comprehensive view of settings within the popup, making it easier to manage and utilize metadata effectively.

Import Additional Record Metadata from Aprimo

You can now configure which record metadata fields from Aprimo are integrated into Activator, beyond the default fields like name and id. For instance, you can specify fields such as ‘product’, ‘country’, and ‘language’. Any required fields should be set up as additional metadata when creating records in Activator. This configuration can be managed per document type within the 'Aprimo' configuration in ArangoDB. Example configuration: "fields": {"default": [{"country": ""}, {"product": ""}, {"language": ""}]}. Additionally, it’s now easier to retrieve field labels for records, ensuring accurate metadata representation.

Indicate Media is Being Re-loaded

To improve user experience in the Media Library, we've added an indication for when new searches are being made and the list of media is refreshing. This visual indicator, such as a single skeleton screen or overlay spinner, ensures users know that the Aprimo API is fetching updated content based on their filters and search inputs.

Retry the retrieval from the DB

Implemented a retry mechanism for database retrievals to handle intermittent ArangoDB socket hangup errors. This approach significantly improves the success rate by attempting multiple retrievals before failing. This retry functionality has been standardized across various database calls to ensure consistency and reliability until a permanent solution is provided by the ArangoDB team.

Delayed search requests in DAM search

We have improved the search experience by implementing debouncing, ensuring that searches are made only after users have paused typing. This enhancement prevents searches from being triggered with every keystroke, resulting in more accurate and timely updates to the search results. Additionally, we have ensured that displayed results correspond to the current search and filter setup, eliminating the issue of outdated search queries overriding the actual results.

Clear Media Library filters, search and results on close

Now, whenever you open the Media Library, it resets filters, searches, and results from any previous session. This enhancement ensures a fresh start each time you access the Media Library, improving clarity and reducing confusion from leftover data. All stored information related to the Media Library, including DAM content, searches, and filters, will be cleared upon closing.

Deselect active element and post all edit events before publishing

We have improved the publishing workflow to ensure that all document edits are finalized accurately. This change deselects the currently active component, triggering an edit event and guaranteeing that all edit events in the queue are completed before the publish event is triggered. This adjustment ensures document integrity, even before displaying the preview.

Success Snackbars Update

Success snackbars now feature a checkmark icon instead of the info icon, enhancing visual clarity and immediate recognition of successful actions.

Bugfixes

Update how the editor works to avoid Ably errors

We have optimized the editor to prevent Ably errors by stopping the transmission of entire documents. Leveraging the anthill-html-updater module, users can now seamlessly move HTML without encountering issues. This enhancement ensures a more efficient and error-free editing experience.

Refreshing from within Preview Breaks the App

Refreshing the browser while in the preview mode causes the compiled email to disappear, preventing users from returning to the designer as the preview button becomes unresponsive. This issue requires a fix to ensure a seamless transition between design and preview modes without disruption.

Extension Added to Filename at Publish

In Novartis environments, the filetype extension is being appended to the document name from the ‘filename’ field each time a new version is created. This automatic extension behavior occurs on the initial publish as well as during reimport and subsequent publishes, leading to redundant extensions being added.

Compiled Email Does Not Always Show Latest Changes

The compiled email in preview mode has been fixed to consistently reflect the latest changes made in the email designer. Users will now see accurate previews ensuring that their updates are correctly displayed before sending.

ArangoError: AQL Collection or View Not Found

Addressed an issue with the "retrieve-documents" function that triggered an ArangoError due to a missing collection or view named "anthill". The log details indicate the error occurs while parsing, with the response status marked as EXCEPTION and a failure to retrieve documents from the database. This fix ensures proper retrieval and handling of document requests, preventing disruptions caused by missing database elements.

Ably errors from the Editor messenger when dragging and dropping

Users may encounter error messages from Ably when dragging Layouts or Media Components from the left-side panel in the Editor messenger. This issue is under investigation to ensure a smooth and error-free experience while managing components within the Editor.

Scrollbars visible in Windows browser

In this update, we've resolved an issue where scrollbars were unnecessarily displayed in the DS selection wizard, left-side panel panes, and canvas area on Windows browsers. This fix ensures a cleaner, more streamlined interface, enhancing user experience and navigation.

Receive the DS lists data duplicated from the BE

We've implemented a check in the frontend on the setDesignSystemContent client operation to prevent duplicated DS lists data from causing the layouts to show up double in the layout panel temporarily. While this provides a quick fix for the MVP, a more permanent solution is needed to address the root cause of the duplication coming from the backend.

Document Publishing Issue Between AOM and Aprimo

Occasionally, the event flow breaks after the document-published event, causing documents to publish in AOM but not in Aprimo. This disruption prevents the event from reaching the backend to trigger the publish in Aprimo. An incident was observed with eid 244199230104.