We're pleased to announce the beta release of the Lithium Community Android SDK. The SDK helps you integrate community with your Android application, streamlines the process of getting started, and helps you create more engaging native experiences based on community. We've also continued to improve our Profile Plus and Salesforce connector functionality.
New Features
Lithium Community Android SDK Beta
We're happy to announce the beta program for the Lithium Community Android SDK. The Community Android SDK provides flexibility for Community developers wanting to integrate Community with native mobile apps.
Developers can get started quickly with our mobile Support UI or go deep with a fully-customizable, API-backed integration.
Getting Started
We've tried to make getting our Android SDK up and running as easy as possible. Check out the SDK projects on Github, and follow the instructions to get started. Our example project provides a starting point and a reference for using the SDK libraries in your app.
- Github: Lithium Android SDK Core
- GitHub: Lithium Android UI Components
- GitHub: Lithium Android SDK Example
About the SDK
The Android SDK and its related libraries are all available under the Apache 2.0 open source license. The SDK consists of the Community Android SDK Core and the (optional) Community Android SDK UI Components libraries.
SDK features include:
- Platform and custom API Providers
- Push notification support (Google Firebase)
- User Authentication (Lithium Registration and LithiumSSO)
- SDK UI (optional)
What's in the Support UI?
The Support UI (li-android-sdk-ui) provides a basic, support-focused Community UI for mobile applications. The UI includes the ability to search, browse, post, respond to, and interact with forum and blog content on the community. You can use the UI out-of-the-box as a whole or as individual components. Alternatively, you might use the UI as a starting point for more complex implementations. See the li-android-sdk-ui wiki for details about our Support UI activities and fragments.
See our Tech Blog post for screenshots of the UI components.
Participating in the Beta
Anyone can join this open beta program. If you're interested in starting with the SDK, please comment on our Tech Blog post.
As part of the beta program, you'll have access to the Lithium Android development team. Reach out to us with feedback and ideas on the Current Betas board. Simply add "[aSDK]" to the subject line. We'd love to hear your experience with the development cycle - let us know what you like, what could be improved as well as anything about UI or customizations you created. The Beta program runs till the end of April, so we ask that you jump in early.
Documentation
What about iOS?
We know that Android isn't enough! Look for a similar iOS library in the coming months.
We've made updates to two Profile Plus components and deprecated our call-to-action components.
My Interests component
In 16.12, we renamed the My Interests component (component ID: “profileplus.widget.my-interests”) to My Connected Social Networks. We have now updated the component name in the Studio > Page tab as well. The component ID has not changed. The in-app help text in Studio has been updated to reflect the simplified component.
Call-to-Action components now deprecated
We have deprecated our three Call-to-Action (CTA) components used to connect with Profile Plus:
- Connect (Feed Graphic) - Component ID: profileplus.widget.connect-graphic-2
- Connect (Profile Graphic) - Component ID: profileplus.widget.connect-graphic-1
- Connect (Text) - Component ID: profileplus.widget.connect-text
Instead, we recommend using the call-to-action functionality built in to the Personalized Content Feed component. The three deprecated CTAs will be removed from Studio in an upcoming release and will no longer be supported in quilts.
Actionable Interests component
In 16.12 we removed the “Top Experts by Interest” section of the Actionable Interests component (Component ID: profileplus.widget.actionable-insight). The component now displays trending topics and related topics (topic similar to topics selected for you by Profile Plus based on your social network interactions). The component enables you to hide sections of the component using the “hide” XML parameter. The parameter now supports the values “trending” and “related” in order to hide a section if desired. We have deprecated the “experts” value.
Simplified Personalized Content Feed component
In 16.12, we simplified the Personalized Content Feed component. You can read about those changes in the 16.12 Release Notes. We have backported these changes to Community 16.9 and 16.10. If you are using the Personalized Content Feed, review the component in your stage environment to determine if additional Sass styling is required to make the component compatible with your Community's skin.
API Documentation errata
We have fixed the example for uploading an image using Community API v2. The example now uses the correct multiform request format and required payload parameter.
New features and improvements in our Salesforce connector include:
- Previously, all replies to an escalated message appeared in the associated case in Salesforce unless the reply was authored by a user with the same email address as a CRM agent in Salesforce or the email address associated with the Integration User system account. We have updated the case reply sync feature so that all replies are not synchronized with the associated case.
- We have increased the length of the Salesforce field that is mapped to the Lithium Community user roles value. The limit of this field has been increased from 50 to 500.
- We have added a few Salesforce trigger configuration options:
- Enable Community User Trigger: When enabled and when “Create New Contact record” is enabled, upon user synchronization or case escalation, a Community User record is created in Salesforce representing each registered community user with a verified email address and a corresponding Salesforce Contact record is created and linked to the corresponding Community User record. If this option is disabled, a Community User record is created upon user synchronization or case escalation, but a Contact record is not created.
- Enable Postback comments Trigger: When enabled, posting a comment and marking it as a Accepted Solution in Salesforce performs the same actions on the community topic. If this option is disabled, neither the comment nor indication of the Accepted Solution are added to the community; additionally, the “Lithium User Replied" flag on Case object is not marked.
- Enable Case Trigger: If this flag related to Case trigger is turned OFF then following are the implications:
When enabled, any Postback comments added upon case closure are also updated on the associated community topic. If this option is disabled, comments are not posted back to the community.
Note: The Case and Contact objects are standard objects. As such, your company might have made customizations to these objects. As part of our managed packaged, we also have triggers on these objects for package-specific functionality. If our package triggers conflict with the triggers your have implemented, then there is no way for you to change/modify anything as our triggers are managed in the package. Normally, you should enable all of these flags. You should turn them off only when there is a conflict with another customization. When disabled, some package related functionality will not work.
You Found It. We Fixed It.
Lithium Community
- We have fixed the issue where "Private Messages read" admin metrics were not being recorded on community sites using Responsive.
- We have fixed the issue where searches on sites where both TKB v2 and hierarchical labels are enabled were taking more than 20 seconds to produce results. Now, search results are returned is a much more reasonable time frame, less than 5 seconds.
- We have added additional security tests and protection when permissioned users upload SVG images to your community to protect your community from malicious code that could be included in the SVG image. SVG image upload is still disabled by default and users must be granted permission by your community admin to upload SVG files.
- We have fixed the issue when after pushing changes from Studio to your production site resulted in the admin user seeing an HTTP 500 error page. Now, the user receives the intended success confirmation page in Studio.
- We have updated the change password fields under My Settings > Personal > Password to honor the Sign-in attempts before lockout and Sign-in lockout time settings defined under Community Admin > System > Auto Signin/Cookies.
- Previously, if you tried to edit a TKB article with a TOC, which was created using Internet Explorer you'd receive an unexpected error. This issue has been fixed, and you can now edit the article normally.
- Previously, when you added a table to a TKB article on a Responsive community, the table would appear almost completely collapsed, making it difficult to add any content. This display issue has been fixed.
- We have fixed the display issue where content copied from an Excel file and pasted into a community post would bleed over the margins in the published post.
- Previously, when you ran a search to find members with a specific rank, the search page displayed results that included more than just the specified rank. This issue has been fixed.
- We’ve added support for text key scoping at the page level using the @page annotation for custom pages overriding out-of-the-box Community pages.
Salesforce Connector
- We have fixed the issue where the "Lithium User Replied" checkbox was not being cleared (unchecked) in Salesforce after a private message reply was received from the community.
- Previously, when setting up an integration between the community and the Salesforce instance and applying custom Salesforce settings, the settings would fail if there was an ampersand (&) in the community username or password. This issue has been fixed.
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