Blog Post

Release Notes
6 MIN READ

14.9 Release Notes

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

The 14.9 Release highlights improvements to Ratings and Reviews and Community Mobile v2, along with administration features to help drive greater community member engagement and give community managers more control over the communities they manage. This release includes new email templates and revamped documentation for Ratings and Reviews, along with video playback support for Community Mobile v2

New features and enhancements

Ratings and Reviews improvements  

Note: These Ratings and Reviews additions are available with Reviews Version 2. (Go to Studio > Features to set the Reviews feature version.)

Product review subscriptions and notifications

Community members can now subscribe to product reviews and receive email notifications about comments on the review conversations they participate in.

The subscription process for reviews is different than the process for other conversation styles in the community, such as forum discussions, where you subscribe to a particular topic within the community post.

In a forum, for example, a community member subscribes to a topic on a Topic Page or from a reply form. Because product reviews are displayed on a website’s product pages using ActiveCast widgets, community members create review subscription settings via their My Settings page in the community.

  • Users who create a product review or comment on product reviews are automatically subscribed to it if Automatically subscribe me to all topics or reviews I participate in is selected in My Settings > Subscriptions & Notifications > Notification Settings.
  • Users receive email notifications about comments posted about a product review they posted or commented on if Notify me when I post, reply, submit a review, or comment is selected in My Settings > Subscriptions & Notifications > Notification Settings.

Note: Administrators can configure these settings as default notification settings in Community Admin > Users > Notification Defaults.

 

Important: If these settings are not enabled, users will not be subscribed to product reviews nor receive email notifications about new review comments for reviews they subscribe to.

Helpfulness ratings notifications for reviews

Users can choose to receive email notifications when another community member rates a product review they posted as Helpful.

 

To enable helpfulness notifications for your community:

  1. Go to Community Admin > Features > Ratings.
  2. Select the Turn on Notifications for helpfulness
  3. Click Save.

Additionally, users must enable Helpfulness ratings on my reviews in My Settings > Subscriptions & Notifications > Notifications Settings.

 

Note: An administrator can configure the default setting for this in Community Admin > Users > Notification Defaults.

New review notification email templates

We have added two review notification email templates. You can edit the content of these templates in Studio > Text Editor > Email Text. For instructions on how to edit email text, see About email text and templates.

 

Note: These templates do not introduce new Velocity context objects.

Reviews notification email template

The Reviews notification email template (email_content.template.reviews.text) is sent when a user comments on a product review.

The system sends an email to community members subscribed to a product review when a user posts a comment to that review. If there is a URL set for the product being reviewed, then the notification email links to that URL. If there is not a URL configured for the product, then the template defaults to the product page in the community.

  • Reviews must be enabled in Community Admin > Features > Reviews > Review Settings.
  • To receive notifications of review comments, a user or administrator must have configured the following Notification Settings: Notify me when I post, reply, submit a review, or comment and Automatically subscribe me to all topics or reviews I participate in. A user sets these configurations in My Settings > Subscriptions & Notifications > Notification Settings. An administrator sets notification defaults for users in Community Admin > Users > Notification Defaults.

Helpfulness notification email template

The Helpfulness notification email template (email_content.template.helpfulness.text) is sent when a user rates a product review as helpful.

The system sends an email to the author of a product review when the product review receives a positive Helpfulness rating.

  • Reviews must be enabled in Community Admin > Features > Reviews > Review Settings.
  • Ratings must be enabled in Community Admin > Features > Ratings
  • A user or administrator must have enabled notifications for Helpfulness ratings on reviews. A user will configure this in My Settings > Subscriptions & Notifications > Notification Settings. An administrator can set default notification settings in Community Admin > Users > Notification Defaults.
  • Helpfulness must be configured as a rating style supported in the community. To do this, enter “helpfulness” in Community Admin > Features > Ratings > Supported rating styles.

Improved ratings and reviews API documentation

We have overhauled the API documentation for the Community API calls used with the Ratings and Reviews feature:

Also, check out our new Review data model article in the Developer Network. Visit the Ratings and Reviews section of our Documentation Knowledge Base for updated administrator documentation.

Deprecated APIs

We have deprecated two calls on the User resource that are tied to an outdated rating system:

  • User/average_message_rating
  • User/average_rating

Instead, we recommend using calls on User/reviews.

Video playback support for Community Mobile v2

The Community Mobile v2 media experience now supports playback of inline video content.

 

Learn more about uploading video.

Ability to disable spell check for search

You now have the ability to turn off spell check in the Search tool for your community. Typically, customers choose to disable spell check in search when they have terms that they don’t want spell check to auto-correct.

 

To enable or disable spell check in search for your community:

  1. Go to Community Admin > System.
  2. Click Search.
  3. Set the Turn on spell check option as needed.
  4. Click Save.

New permission for featuring TKB articles

You can now give users permission to feature or stop featuring articles in the TKB.

When a user features a TKB article, the article is displayed in the Featured TKB Article component:

Featuring articles is a great way to enable people to highlight specific content within a TKB. For example, you might want to promote a specific author, customer story, or solution for a support call driver.

 

Note: The article must include a teaser to enable it to be displayed in this component. Also, the most recently featured article is displayed at the top of the featured topics list.

 

To set the featuring TKB articles permission:

 

  1. Go to Community Admin > Users.
  2. Click Permissions.
  3. Scroll down to the Knowledge Base Articles group and set the Feature and stop featuring articles permission as needed.
  4. Click Save.

 

When enabled, you can feature the TKB article from the article options menu:

Include images and attachments with Salesforce cases

You can now enable users to be given the option to include inline images and attachments when escalating a topic to Salesforce.

 

Note: When enabled, this feature provides a checkbox where the user can choose to include all inline images and attachments to the case. Users cannot choose to include or not include individual items.

 

To enable users to attach images and attachments to Salesforce cases:

  1. Go to Community Admin > Mod Tools.
  2. Click Salesforce.
  3. Select Enable users to include inline images and attachments.
  4. Click Save.

You Found It. We Fixed It

  • On certain topic pages on Mobile v2, the icon for flagging a message was missing, preventing users from flagging topics. This issue has been fixed.
  • When users attempted to visit posts for closed groups via subscription notification URLs, they received an error instead of the sign in page. This issue has been fixed.
  • Issues with regard to posts with labels not showing when filtering for posts with that label are now fixed. Now, when you filter for posts that use a particular label, the posts are displayed in the filter results.
  • Previously, if you included an at-sign (@) in an FAQ question text key, Studio Publish would be disabled. This issue has been fixed.
  • Previously, if you tried to add a label to a forum post using Internet Explorer 8 or 9 resulted in the label not being added to the post, even it labels are required post in the forum. This browser-specific issue has been fixed.
  • The issue with a user ban being released when switching between a “login ban” and an “IP ban” has been fixed. Now, the ban continues to function properly, regardless of the new ban criteria.
  • When choosing to “Send Email to Self” from Studio to test how an email template looks, the HTML version of the email template was always being sent, even if you set the admin user preference to send the plain text version. This issue has been fixed.
  • When the “Display rich content from pasted URLs” setting under Community Admin > Posts & Topics is enabled, posting certain URLs produced a “Please enter a valid URL” error message. This issue has been fixed and valid URLs no longer produce this error.
  • We have fixed the issue where the REST API call <DOMAIN>/restapi/vc/posts/count returns the wrong number of posts.

 

Refer to the attached Known Issues list for an update on open issues that we’re currently investigating.

 

 

 

 

Updated 6 months ago
Version 3.0
communities classic
release notes
JohnD's avatar
Khoros Alumni (Retired)
Joined March 14, 2013
View Profile
Node avatar for Release Notes
Release Notes

Review release notes and updates for all of our products! Select a tag to browse by product or resource type.

  • Claudius's avatar
    Claudius
    Boss
    11 years ago

    "We have fixed the issue where the REST API call <DOMAIN>/restapi/vc/posts/count returns the wrong number of posts."

     

    THIS. Looks like we're going to upgrade to 14.9 ASAP. Our front page looks pretty boring with all the boards just having 2000 replies :smileytongue:

  • tdeboard's avatar
    tdeboard
    Mentor
    10 years ago

    Pending a better permission allocation solution from Lithium for this feature, you might look into creating a new 'Admin' role and limiting the base of permissions within that you do not want these intermediary users to have access to. 

     

    We have a few different 'Admin' based roles that have been limited in strategic ways to control what info/tolls can be accessed by different level/scope of our users. I know this isn't the solution you'd be looking for ultimately, but it might serve as a stopgap measure if another solution isn't available. 

     

    Hope the thought helps!

  • Ditte's avatar
    Ditte
    Executive
    11 years ago

    Hi JohnD 

     

    Quick question:

    Is this fix retroactive? 

    "Previously, if you tried to add a label to a forum post using Internet Explorer 8 or 9 resulted in the label not being added to the post, even it labels are required post in the forum. This browser-specific issue has been fixed."

     

     

    Cheers,

    Ditte

     

  • Mark_Hopkins's avatar
    Mark_Hopkins
    Boss
    10 years ago

    John,

     

    We are now on 14.9.   I like that Lithium has picked up the pace on releases and implementing changes / features quickly.  Kudos Lithium.

     

    It may just be me, but a byproduct seems to be that the admin controls for users keeps changing as well and it becomes a bit of a head scratching moment to devine what switch now controls which feature.

     

    Case in point:   There used to be permissions to get at admin metrics, and another to allow user reports, and another for CIC (sunset) and LSI.

     

    Today, I'm trying to give a non-admin permission to get at admin metrics and can no longer do this - at least not in a way I can figure out in 15 mins of trial and error.  I can give LSI permissions easily - check.  I see a setting to give user reports permission in admin, but even when checked that is not available to the person and neither are the admin metrics.

     

    I know there may be a strategic goal to move metrics all into LSI,  and maybe that will be good, but there was a wealth of info available in advanced metrics and I'd really like to surface that for some people without making them admins.

     

    Thoughts?

     

    EDIT - Interestingly, I solved the problem by using a role that had been created some versions back and included the permissions for admin metrics.  Giving this role enables what I want, but I doubt I could create the role anew based on the current set of selectable permissions.  However, an unwanted (in this case) byproduct of that pre-existing role is that it may give some access to community structure which I don't want this user to have.  I have edited the individual user settings and denied anything I can conceive of which would trigger access to community structure.  Does the role override the individual settings for the user?  If so, I would need to edit the role and remove them, but that would break things for others.  

     

     

     

    Mark

  • JohnD's avatar
    JohnD
    Khoros Alumni (Retired)
    11 years ago

    Ditte - I believe this fix was backpatched to 14.7 and 14.8. Cheers.

     

  • jashurst's avatar
    jashurst
    Expert
    11 years ago

    Regarding the new permission for featuring TKB articles, a trial in our v14.7 community shows that users with some types of non-Administrator roles already see the "Feature this Article" option in the "Article Options" pull-down menu. Prior to v14.9, which permission setting granted this ability? After updating to v14.9, will roles that had this permission granted now have it denied unless we set the new permission to grant?

  • Mark_Hopkins's avatar
    Mark_Hopkins
    Boss
    10 years ago

    tdeboard,

     

    It does in a way.  See my edit above - I have reverted to use of a pre-existing role, however that role provides unwanted permissions and I don't see how I can start over at this point as the admin metrics are no longer a line item.

     

    As I think about this, I do appreciate the delimma for Lithium as changes from new features necessitate recombinations of things to keep a reasonable number of controls and a desire to keep them grouped and well organized.   I do think organizational / grouping progress has been made over time.

     

    How does lithium deal with legacy roles that were created when different combinations of permissions were available.  That's a pickle.  One I appreciate is challenging to solve.