Blog Post

Release Notes
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13.6 Release Notes

JohnD's avatar
JohnD
Khoros Alumni (Retired)
12 years ago

Lithium 13.6 offers more ways to be notified about activity and rank changes in your community, enables members to share richer and more engaging content, and provides more role management responsibilities to users.

 

Lithium 13.6 enables you to:

  • Better control the frequency and volume of community notifications for yourself and your community members.
  • Create better engagement in your community by notifying users by email when their posts have received Kudos.
  • Send email notifications of user rank changes to all members who have a specific role.
  • Give your users a better way to share by letting them embed rich content links and preview URLs used in community posts from trusted providers such as Instagram, Spotify, Vine, Slideshare, The Guardian, and many more.
  • Enable users to manage another user’s role without needing to provide them Community Admin access.
  • Create more customized contest quilts.
  • Perform better searches in Chinese.

 

New Features and Enhancements

 

Lithium Communities

  • Improved notification management settings UI (GA)
  • Kudos notification emails (beta)
  • Notification email template updates
  • Team user rank change notification emails (beta)
  • Adding rich content to posts (GA)
  • Enable users to manage another user’s role
  • TKB comments expanded by default
  • Contests v3
  • Improved support for Chinese search
  • New FreeMarker objects

 

Lithium Social Intelligence

  • Improved usability for report filtering

 

Lithium Social Web

  • Tag archiving
  • Additional language support
  • New Publisher permission

 

Lithium Communities

Improved notification management settings UI (GA)

 

In 13.6, we completed the overhaul and simplification of how administrators and users manage notification settings. Admins control the default notification settings for all new users in a new Notifications Defaults tab, which has all notification settings for new and existing notification types in one place. For more details about this feature, refer to the 13.5 Release Notes.

 

Note: You must contact Support to have the new notification system enabled for your community.

 

In their My Settings area, members control their own subscriptions and notification settings in the Subscriptions & Notifications tab (previously named Subscriptions & Bookmarks).

 

Additionally, we have relabeled and re-organized the Subscription & Notifications tabs to be clearer and to bring the most used tabs to the forefront.

 

 

 

  • My Subscriptions: Lists all your email subscriptions (topics, questions, articles, labels, groups, etc.)
  • My Bookmarks: Lists posts you have bookmarked.
  • Search Subscriptions: Enables you to create a subscription that emails you when a message matches a specific search query.
  • Notification Settings: Enables you to configure your email notifications, including frequency.
  • Email Format: Enables you to configure how your notification emails are formatted.

The new Notifications Settings page has fewer sections, emphasizes what each setting controls, and is easier to scan:

 

 

 

Note: In most cases, the names of the existing notification settings have been updated to reflect the new layout and organization, but their meaning remains the same.

 

Kudos notification emails (beta)

Notifying users that their posts received Kudos is a great way to let them know that they’ve added value to the community and helps drives ongoing engagement.

 

Note: Currently Kudos notifications are sent out for each Kudo received; digest notifications are not yet enabled.

 

By default, Kudos notification emails are disabled at the community level, but enabled for users.

 

Before enabling Kudos notifications, you must enable Kudos:

  1. Go to Community Admin > Features > Kudos.
  2. Click Turn on kudos.
  3. Click Save.

 

To enable Kudos notification emails for your community:

  1. Go to Community Admin > Users > Notification Defaults.
  2. In the Notifications section, click Kudos on my posts.
  3. Click Save.

When users receive a Kudo, they receive an email similar to this:

 

             

 

Some users might not want to be emailed each time they receive Kudos, especially if they are extremely active on the site. Users can choose to disable these notifications.

 

To disable Kudos notifications, users can:

  1. Log in to the community.
  2. Go to My Settings > Subscriptions & Notifications.
  3. Click the Notification Settings tab.
  4. Click to clear Kudos on my posts.
  5. Click Save.


Notification email template updates

All of the Lithium-provided email templates have been updated to include instructions and links to the page where customers can opt out of future notifications of the given type.

 

If you have not made any changes to the existing email templates (located in Studio > Text Editor > Email Text), you don’t need to do anything to get these changes.

 

However, if you have customized the default templates, you must file a Support ticket to have us manually update them with the latest text.

 

Team user rank change notification emails (beta)

In addition to users being notified about rank changes in the community, some admins want community members with specific roles to be notified of these rank changes, too.

 

To notify selected roles of rank changes in the community:

  1. Go to Community Admin > Users > Ranking.
  2. Click Settings.
  3. In the Notify these roles about any user rank changes field, enter the user roles, separated by commas.
  4. (Optional) In the Do not notify about these ranks field, enter the roles (separated by commas) for which you do not want email notifications sent.
  5. Click Save.

 

Adding Rich Content to Posts (GA)

Members like sharing photos, videos, and other rich content in their communities. Lithium now enables members to display a preview of URLs they add to a post.

 

When members paste a URL to a post using the rich text editor, the Lithium application displays a rich preview of the URL as long as the URL is from a supported provider. For example, when users paste a URL for a Vimeo video, a preview is displayed below the post that includes the embedded video, video title, URL, and a description if available.

  

The following graphic shows a preview for a link pasted from a supported content provider:

 

       

 

Note: URL preview is only accessible in the rich text editor, and users must paste the URL instead of typing it for this feature to work.

 

To display larger video previews, users with proper permissions can use the video icon in the Rich Text Editor to see the dialogue that lets them enter in a video URL. 

 

      

 

Refer to the 13.1 and 13.3 Release Notes for more details about these two ways of embedding content in posts.

 

How to get it?

 

Contact our Support team to enable Rich Content Link Previews in your production community.

 

To display URL previews in posts, go to Discussion Styles > Posts & Topics > Posts Display in Community Admin and enable the Display rich content from pasted URLs setting.

 

Also, if your site/page has been customized, you must add the media-snippet component (<component id="media-snippet"/>) to the main-right content on the forum message quilt in XML view. Then, save and stage that version.

 

 

Enable users to manage another user’s roles

You can now enable community members with specific roles to change another user’s role without giving them access to Community Admin.

 

To enable community members with a specific role to change other user’s roles:

  1. Go to Community Admin > Users > Permissions.
  2. Click Roles.
  3. Find the role you want and click Edit.
  4. Scroll down to User Management.
  5. Grant the Manage roles in user profiles permission.



  6. Click Save.

Note: The Manage Users permission has been renamed to Manage roles, user bans, and abuse notifications in Admin and in user profiles. Users with this permission can make changes in Community Admin and User Profiles;  as such, they no longer require the Update Communities permission to make these changes.

 

After users with the role has been given permissions, they can change other user’s roles, as follows:

  1. Sign in to the community.
  2. Click the name of the user whose role you want to change.
  3. In the Manage Roles section, choose a role from the drop-down list and click Add.

      

 

TKB comments expanded by default

In 13.6, comments made on TKB articles are now expanded (shown) by default when users view the TKB article.

 

 

Contests v3

The new version of Contests enables you to create more granular contest quilts for better customization, without the risk of breaking previous CSS.

 

Note: Contests is an add-on feature that you must purchase. For more information about and pricing options for the Contests feature, contact your account rep.

 

Contests v3 introduces a few new CSS classes. After switching to V3 of contests, you can preview existing contest pages in your stage community, spot check any customizations, and make any necessary CSS updates before deploying changes to your production community.   

 

Existing Contest customizations on your community are not affected until you update versions.

Read our TKB article about Feature Versions for more details about updating to newer versions of a feature.

 

To enable Contests v3:

  1. Go to Studio > Features.
  2. From the Contests drop-down menu, select 3.
  3. Click Save.

 

Improved support for Chinese search

For communities using the Chinese language, Lithium now provides better tokenization of search queries, resulting in better and more relevant search results. 

New FreeMarker objects

We’ve added two new methods to the Utils FreeMarker context object. These are additional methods you can add to Utils OWASP HTML stripper builder calls:

  • utils.html.stripper.from.owasp.newOptionsBuilder.allowUrlProtocol(String protocol) – enables you to define specific protocols to allow within third-party HTML
  • utils.html.stripper.from.owasp.newOptionsBuilder.allowStandardUrlProtocols() – allows all standard protocols within third-party HTML

Find details about all the Utils methods here:

https://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/developers-knowledge-base/Context-objects-for-custom-components-utils/ta-p/9345.

 

Lithium Social Intelligence


Improved usability for report filtering

 

In 13.6, we have moved the links that enable you to filter reports by board, conversation, and member above the metric graph instead of in the metric results table. Clicking one of these filters updates data in the graph and table.

 

           

Lithium Social Web


Tag archiving

Admin users can now archive and restore tags in the admin console.

 

To archive and restore tags:

  1. Go to Account Admin > Rules and Routing.
  2. Click Tags.
  3. Hover over the tag you want to archive and click the archive link.
  4. To restore a tag, go to Manage Tags, click the archived button, and restore the tags you want.

Note: You can archive tags at any time, even if they have been applied to conversations. Likewise, you can restore archived tags at any time.

 

Additional language support

The Lithium Social Web user interface is now available in French and German.

 

 

 

 

New Publisher permission

Access to the Publisher tab is now controlled by a separate permission, which can be selected or unselected by an Admin. You can grant access to the Publisher tab to any LSW user.

 

To grant a user access to the Publisher tab:

  1. Go to Account Admin > Account Setup.
  2. Click Users.
  3. Add a new user or edit an existing user.
  4. Click Publisher to grant access to Publisher tab.



  5. Click Done Editing.

  

You Found It. We Fixed It.

 

  • Admins with Studio Publish permissions no longer get locked out of the community when a publish action such as “Accept” or “Go Live” is running. (Community)
  • The View All link on the My Subscriptions component now uses the same CSS class (lia-link-navigation view-all link) as all other View All links. (Community)
  • Studio no longer throws an error when trying to send a copy of the @mentions email notification to you when you click Send Email to Self. (Community)
  • Members can no longer turn on Quick Reply if the Admin has disabled Quick Reply at the Community level. (Community)
  • Members using the Internet Explorer browser can now paste text and URLs into the Rich Text Editor without receiving an error. (Community)
  • Members can no longer see the My Settings > Subscriptions & Bookmarks > Search Subscriptions tab when Search Subscriptions are disabled in Admin. (Community)
  • (This fix applies only to customers using the Ratings, Reviews, and Moderation features). Prior to 13.6, rated and reviewed posts awaiting moderation were mistakenly included in the calculations for the average rating score. For example, if a product received 3 reviews with ratings of 1, 3, and 5 but none of these reviews had been moderated, the average rating score should be zero. However, prior to 13.6, the ratings for these unmoderated reviews were included in the calculations, resulting in an average rating of 3. This calculation error has been fixed. When this fix is applied to your community, the average rating scores for your products might change (positively or negatively), depending on how many unmoderated, rated reviews are now be excluded from the calculations. (Community)
  • Graphs in Lithium Social Intelligence now display properly in Internet Explorer 8 and 9. (LSI)

 

Updated 5 months ago
Version 10.0
  • Hello! I noticed a small typo that could be misleading:

     

     

    Enable users to manage another user’s roles

    You can now enable community members with specific roles to change another user’s role with giving them access to Community Admin.

     

     

    And, yes, I'm seeing someone for my pedantry. :womanwink:

  • HI,

    Is there a list of the new instructions and links brought by the new email templates please ?

     

    Clement

  • JulieH's avatar
    JulieH
    Lithium Alumni (Retired)

    Hi clemlith , we are working on  updating the Studio Guide to include a table that explains each email templates. We expect the new version sometimes next week, stay tuned!

  • SuzieH's avatar
    SuzieH
    Khoros Alumni (Retired)

    Yes. I was going to post a comment this morning to follow up. (Was traveling and updating the doc on the road.) I added a table that describes the purpose, trigger, and audience for each template. Still in progress, but you should have a good start there. I'll be posting updates as I can.