AgileBase Changelog
From GTwM
New announcements are at http://blog.agilebase.co.uk
Older announcements are archived here:
Contents |
Version 1.8
Released 27th Nov 2007
This release adds features and fortifies functionality that increases the scope of applications that can be built using databases. portalBase has always been strong on reporting, now more advanced business operations can be built in as well. Work includes
- A move from the concept of report groups to application modules. Each module contains a set of reports plus any custom functionality necessary for it
- Making custom data entry tasks easier, using wizards. For example, bulk entry or entry into many datasets can be simplified
- More custom functionality can be created per organisation, for example for printing custom forms, exporting data in particular formats or charting
- Tables are hidden for users who don't have manage privileges, to make the user interface simpler by emphasising the use of modules
Other improvements include
- Visual charting of summary data
- Relation fields are better displayed when viewing and editing data
Versions 1.7.3 - 1.7.8
Released Oct/Nov 2007
Incremental bugfixes and improvements
- URLs, email addresses, postcodes and documents now have links when reports are embedded in wiki pages
- GUI error when setting group privileges fixed
- Some edge case filtering crashes fixed
Version 1.7
Released Sept. 13th 2007
Wikis, email, communication! This release is focused on communicating the information stored in your database with the wider world (or company).
Reports, summary reports or individual records can be embedded into wiki pages, or emailed. portalBase now integrates with MediaWiki, the preeminent wiki software that runs Wikipedia. This lets you create for example dashboard pages to communicate key metrics to individuals easily - they just need to look at a web page. If they wish to examine a report in more detail, it can be clicked on and will load in full in portalBase.
Other new features
- Access controls on individual wiki pages
- An additional advanced filter: you can now use 'OR' when filtering to search reports for a number of terms simultaneously
Version 1.6
Released 15th August 2007
This version is a cleanup release improving the server architecture and fixing a couple of minor issues. As well as this though, a few new features have been finished.
New features
- Monthly usage reports can now be emailed to administrators, displaying information such as a login history, the level of usage per table/report and a history of schema changes
- Corporate firewalls are less put out by portalBase now running on the standard web port 80
- Uploaded images have previews, improving image library applications
- In the delete record warning, more information is given about any associated records that would also be deleted
- Tables can now be removed by administrators (as long as all reports and dependencies have been removed)
- The master user can remove entire organisations (as long as they have no data)
Bugfixes
- Cloning records used to fail in particular cases, fixed
- Creation time, creator and other metadata are set properly when cloning a record
- Application restart no longer required on some (theoretically any) errors that may occur while editing the database schema
- Wiki content is shown in the view tab as well as the edit tab
- Other minor fixes
Version 1.5
Released 19th May 2007
This release is largely to increase the agility of database schema editing, making portalBase very easy to use as a rapid prototyping environment to build, update and pull down schemas quickly. There are a number of other improvements as well.
New features
- Editable field properties: many field properties can now be altered after field creation
- Editable report sorts: report sorting can now be modified at any time
- Ability to edit hierachies of reports: in cases where report B depends on report A, e.g. if B summarises A, changes can now be easily made to A (as long as they don't break B). This is something that the underlying database and many administration tools don't directly support
- Links to uploaded files can now be exported and imported
- More flexible date importing: dates can now be imported in a wide variety of formats
- Variable text length in reports: the amount of text shown for large text fields in reports can be increased or decreased
- Finding non-blank records: a quick filter has been added to let you filter for non-blank values: use '!?' in the filter row at the top of the screen. Explanation: ? on its own selects any blank values, ! negates the search
- Other minor user interface improvements
For general information about GT portalBase, please see [1]
Version 1.4.2
Released April 17th 2007
This release focuses on increasing data safety in portalBase, along with one bugfix.
Remember that server data is backed up daily and a backup history kept for 30 days. Monthly backups are also available going back 12 months.
New features
- Record metadata: portalBase now stores the record creation time, creator, last update time and person who last updated each record. The information is available to be added in to reports and can be used for sorting, filtering, in calculations etc.
- Cascading deletes: portalBase now warns you if you're about to delete a record which will force the deletion of related data, for example if deleting an organisation, contacts belonging to that organisation may be deleted as well.
- Other minor improvements
Bugfixes
- Password updating: some users encountered problems editing their username and password, resulting in the user being unable to log in. A fix covering the major issue is now in place although a minor issue remains: one must wait a couple of seconds after making a change to user details to ensure it is saved. This will be addressed in a later release.
Version 1.4.1
Global edit bugfixing
Version 1.4
Released March 10th 2007
This release introduced one major new feature - global editing, as well as fixing some minor issues
- Global editing: users can now make an edit that affects many records at once rather than just one. As this is quite a powerful feature, it's initially restricted to just people with MANAGE privileges on a table. Normal EDIT privileges won't allow you to globally edit records. To make a global edit from within a report:
- filter records down to display just those you want to edit
- if necessary, click the 'more' link to make sure all records to be edited are displayed
- click on the 'global edit' tab
- type a change in one of the fields and click the 'update globally' button that appears
Issues fixed include
- Downloading CSV and PDF files: these files will now be downloaded properly when clicking 'download' - there's no need to right-click and select 'Save Link As...' any more.
- Popup blocker: portalBase interacts with the Firefox popup blocker better so new users won't be confused
- Various minor performance improvements and bug fixes
Version 1.3
Released Feb 24th 2007
Features for client projects added and some particular robustness improvements
- Statistical, financial and other data analysis is a lot more powerful: you can now use aggregate functions in calculations in normal reports, as well as in quick summary reports
- wikiBase (beta): a revolutionary way of integrating a wiki into a database. wiki pages can be linked to individual records for a marriage of highly structured and loosely structured data
- Editing robustness: data editing is more resilient in the face of the vagaries of client/server communication over the internet and is even able to cope with temporary losses of network connection
- When using large reports, the number of records shown can be modified to trade off amount of data displayed against performance. Use the 'more' link to increase the data shown by a factor of 10. Note that at the current speed of standard laptops, certain operations begin to degrade somewhere above 1,000 records
- Various minor performance improvements and bug fixes
Version 1.2
Released Dec 5th 2006
Some major feature additions requested by clients
- Roles are now implemented: users can be members of roles and roles can be granted privileges
- Views can be exported to CSV spreadsheet format
- Advanced filtering. As a reminder, normal filtering works by returning any rows that start with the text you type. If you start the filter with a star, any results which contain the filter text are returned. In this function, the following filtering options are also available:
- You can filter for empty / blank values by typing the question mark symbol into the filter box
- For numbers and text, > or < at the start of a filter mean greater than or less than
- An exclamation mark at the start of a filter means NOT, e.g. !a means doesn't start with 'a'
- Sorting: clicking on a column heading sorts by that column. Clicking again sorts in descending order and clicking a third time (or clicking on another column) removes the sort
- Sticky filtering: filtering now remains on until turned off, even if you move to a different report. This saves having to turn it on all the time if you're a heavy filter user.
Version 1.1
Released Nov 2006
Various client-requested features
- Numbers can now be displayed in templates in cheque format, e.g. 34.45 -> thirty four pounds 45p
Also some minor features and bugfixes
- For template programmers, report filtering can now be exact, rather than 'starts with'
Version 1.0
Released Nov 7th 2006
- Reports can be grouped into logical categories, independent of table
- Importing is improved in that you can now import relation fields by display value as well as internal value
Version 0.9.1
Released Oct 20th 2006
Version delivered to Castell Howell
- Method of selecting parent or associated records, e.g. the project for a task, is improved - a relation chooser now appears in pane 3
Version 0.9
Release date: October 2006
Some practical usability updates prompted by live testing on the GTWM internal intranet.
- The addition of an optional processes button which links to online process maps for the company
- A 'view' pane for easy viewing of all data related to a record
- The ability to switch between administrator and business user interfaces
- Other minor GUI tweaks and more bugfixing
Version 0.8
Release date: September 2006
These release notes describe major changes to portalBase since the beginning of July 2006.
- The underlying storage mechanism has been changed from using a cutting edge technology to a more mature database product, which provides increased reliability.
- Real world and automated testing has lead to much bugfixing
- Ability to re-order report fields
- Record counts: the number of records returned by the current report is shown in brackets after the report name in pane 1. If there are a lot of records, a link 'all' will be shown instead which will load the full set in pane 2 and show the count.
- Filtered records: When filtering a report, the number of records returned by the filter is shown when you hover the mouse over pane 2
- Import functionality: Data can be imported from CSV, e.g. from Excel
- Cloning records: Individual records can be cloned, saving work retyping similar data in some situations
- Simple lookups: Most fields can easily be created as dropdowns, with dropdown content autopopulated from the current table and filtered report values
- Document upload
- Calendar: Google calendar has been integrated
- Wiki: A wiki has been integrated
Versions 0.1 - 0.7
Released 2004, 2005, 2006
These versions were internal development and then early adopter/lead client beta versions
