The 15.6 Release provides several new features to drive increased engagement on your communities. First, we’ve added the ability to view attached PDF documents inline, without having to download them first. To enable members to more easily find private messages they’ve received, we’ve added the ability for you to enable members to search private messages from the main search component.
We’ve also made several usability improvements to Studio to make it easier for you to create and manage your community pages. Finally, we’ve continued to provide more control over what data to display in Lithium Social Intelligence reports. You can now filter your reports by device type: desktop, tablet, and mobile.
New features and enhancements
- Document viewer (open beta)
- Private message search
- Improvements to move message behavior
- Studio changes
- New advanced filter for device type in LSI
- Increased row limit in LSI CSV exports
- Browser support update
- Change Community Mailer information
- Component Caching - Open Beta
Document Viewer (open beta)
Sometimes, users want to view the contents of attached documents before downloading them to their local machine. In this release, we have added the ability to set up your community to enable users to view certain documents in an online viewer without having to first download them.
Important: We are limiting beta participation temporarily while we resolve issues some customers have experienced during the integration process. If you have already asked to participate, you will hear from us when we are ready to move forward again. Thank you for your patience.
The new Document Viewer supports inline viewing (via a lightbox experience) of these standard file types:
- Adobe PDFs
- Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel
- CSS, XML, and JS
- Text files
Note: Currently, RTF, Zip, and image files are not supported in the new viewer.
Here’s the new viewer in action
Clicking the document link in a post opens the document in a lightbox:
Tip: We recommend test driving this feature on your stage site first, so you can make any needed changes to your community skin/code before enabling this feature on your production site.
After you enable Document Viewer, you should review the list of allowed file attachment extensions you’ve defined under Community Admin > System > File Attachments.
Private message search
Community searches now return private messages in the search results. Additionally, you can now filter your search specifically for Private Messages from the Search drop-down menu:
Additionally, on the Advanced Search page, you can filter for Private Messages:
You must be signed in to your account to get private messages returned in your search results and filter for Private Messages from the search drop-down menu.
To enable private message search:
- Go to Community Admin > Features > Private Messages.
- Click Turn on private message search.
- Click Save.
Improvements to move message bahavior
We have improved how Lithium handles the moving threads that include lots (1000s) of messages. As of 15.6, we have improved the move message experience, as follows:
- Threads with fewer than 1250 messages are moved as they always have been (no change).
- Threads with 1250-2000 messages are moved as they always have been (no change), if the thread is not a root message, involves a non-forum board, or includes an advanced move selection option.
- Threads with more than 1250 messages that involve moving a root message, is forum-to-forum board move, and do not use any advanced move options are process in the background. While the message is being moved in the background, it will not be visible and conflicting tasks (such as deleting or moving any messages in the thread) will be blocked. When the move is complete, you are sent an email letting you know that the move succeeded and the thread will appear in the destination board.
- Threads with more than 2000 messages that are not a root move or involved a non-forum board or advanced move option, requires help from Lithium Support to move. In these cases, you’ll receive this message:
The messages you have selected have more than ({0}) replies and cannot be moved. You can open a Support ticket to have these messages moved.
Note: A "root" message is the original thread and all its replies.
Studio changes
We’ve made some changes to the Page tab in Studio to make it easier for you to manage your community pages. We have combined the Canvas and XML tabs into one view. Click the Switch to XML View or Exit XML View to toggle between the drag-and-drop UI and the XML UI.
We’ve also moved the Use Default button from the top of the page to the bottom of the page and renamed it Revert to Default Settings.
For custom pages, we’ve moved the Delete button to the bottom of the page next to the Reset and Save buttons.
New advanced filter for device type in LSI
LSI now includes a new advanced filter for device type.
Note: With the addition of the Device filter, we have removed the All and Mobile filter options from the main screen.
To a filter for a specific device type:
- Sign in to LSI.
- Go to the page where you want to view data and build your filter.
- (Optional) Set the date range for your report.
- Click Add a Filter.
- Open the Filter by menu and select Device.
- Open the Pick One menu and select the Desktop, Tablet, or Mobile device type.
- Click Apply when done.
Your filtered report appears. The page indicates any filter rules that are applied to the report in the header.
Note: A green pipe indicates an “equals” filter; a red pipe indicates a “does not equal” filter.
Learn more about applying advanced filters.
Increased exported row limit in LSI CSV exports
We have increased the number of rows exported in LSI reports from 1000 to 2000.
Browser support update
As of the 15.6 Release, Lithium Communities will no longer support Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 (IE8). Users who attempt to view your community using IE8 will receive a message telling them that their browser is no longer supported and that they should use a different browser or upgrade to a newer version of Internet Explorer.
The user-facing message, which can be dismissed by the user, displays as:
You can change this message by editing the text key: browser-support.alert.text.
You can read more about this decision and refer to our current list of preferred browsers.
Change community mailer information
You can now change the community name and community address displayed in the “From” field in community emails sent to users. Previously, you needed to file a Support ticket to change this information.
To change the community name and email address that displays in community emails:
- Go to Community Admin > System > Mailer.
- Enter the Mailer Email Sender Name and Mailer Email Address to display in the “From” field.
- Click Save.
You Found It. We Fixed It.
- We have fixed the issue where code inserted using the TinyMCE editor was wrapping.
- We have fixed the display issue where the TinyMCE editor expanded beyond the page margins when you tried to add a comment when changing the status of an idea.
- We have improved the text in the General Subscription Notification template to include the change in status of an idea in an Idea Exchange.
- Previously, when the admin denied the “Add labels” and “Add or remove labels” for Idea Exchanges, users were still able to add and remove labels. We have fixed this issue, and now the permissions are respected.
- We have added the ability to enable or disable the social network sharing options (Facebook, Twitter, Google+) on Reviews, like we do for other discussion styles, like Blogs, TKBs, Ideas.
To enable or disable these social networking links for Reviews, go to Community Admin > Features > Reviews and select the appropriate option for Display social bookmarking links. - We have fixed the error that used to appear when assigning a custom avatar to all roles.
- We have optimized the calculation of visits in LSI to more closely mirror Google Analytics' methodology. As a result of this improvement, your visit count might be slightly different than reports you have previously run.
- On a user's profile page, we have moved the location of a user's email address from the public statistics section to the private statistics section, shown here:
Component Caching - Open Beta
In 15.6, Lithium is introducing a new component cache to improve page load time. This feature is in Open Beta. You implement component-level caching by including the @liaMarkupCache directive within custom components. This cache, along with the application and user caches are all tools available for community performance tuning.
Note: The component cache is disabled by default. Contact Lithium Professional Services or Lithium Support to enable it for your community. The directive is used in components. It is not supported in endpoints.
Components that make multiple Community API REST calls to generate content can impact performance. The @liaMarkupCache directive caches a component's markup in memory after FreeMarker processing on the first page load where the component is rendered. With this caching directive, you pay the performance cost of making the REST calls once, and then receive the performance benefit of calling cached data for subsequent requests for the specified time-to-live (TTL) period.
Caching gives the biggest benefit on components that make the most API calls and/or process the most data. Caching might result in slightly stale data to be shown for the TTL duration, so consider caching where you are comfortable with this user experience.
For more information about the component cache, see Component Caching with @liaMarkupCache.
