New in Universal (oct 2020): First process flows, previewing documents and more

Hello everyone! This sprint we've added some nice features and squashed a lot of bugs.

As always, we've made a demo for you: try it here. Before trying it out, press 'Clear Cache' on the login screen. You can read the GUI user manual to get familiar with Universal.

We'll keep you updated regularly about Universal's progress.

Extra release (1.5.2)

We made an extra release (1.5.2) since the publication of this post. It contains:

• A fix to allow the previewer to display files that become a pdf (e.g. Word, pdf, PowerPoint)
• Added support for the suggested action: start task
• Fixed an error when executing some process flows (Cannot read items of undefined)
• We now strip query strings from the Location header (so Universal doesn't break when URL hardening is activated)
• Popups from the HTML control now break the sandbox

Universal version 1.5.2

Like with every blog, we've released a version so you can test Universal out for yourself. Don't forget the documentation and be sure to keep the following in mind:

• Edge has been updated to use Chromium, which greatly changes the way it works under the hood. We now also recommend this browser to be used for Universal.
• Universal must be deployed on the same server as Indicium or it should be an allowed origin in appsettings.json.
• Universal only works with version 2019.1 and up of the Thinkwise Platform.
• Furthermore, make sure you run all hotfixes on the IAM and SF that you plan to use for Universal.
• Make sure you are on the latest version of Indicium Universal.

Download Universal version 1.5.2 here

Process flows

We've done a lot of work on process flows. We've added a lot of start actions (those are actions the user performs that start a process flow) and one suggested action (those are actions that the process flow wants to perform).

We've implemented the following actions that can start a process flow:

• Opening a document
• Activating a document
• Executing a task
• Executing a report
• Adding a record
• Editing a record
• Deleting record

We've implemented the following suggested action:

• Refresh
• Start task

Besides the refresh action it's also possible to use all connectors since those are handled by Indicium:

• Database connector
• FTP connector
• HTTP connector
• SMTP connector
• Run AutoML model
• File connectors
  • Copy file
  • Copy folder
  • Create folder
  • Delete file
  • Delete folder
  • Move file
  • Move folder
  • Read file
  • Write file
• Convert
  • Convert JSON to XML
  • Convert XML to JSON

Some other things to note:

• We prevent multiple process flows from starting against the same document.
• We ignore incoming process flows if there is already one active.
• Suggested actions always wait until it's completed succesfully or until it's failed.
• We clear out the process flow if the document gets closed or if the flow succeeded.

Next sprint we'll add the suggested actions for opening a document.

Preview component

The preview component now uses a PreviewUrl provided by Indicium. Indicium transforms the documents into a format that Universal can use. This means we now support previewing Excel and msg/email formats.

Documents that become a pdf (e.g. Word, pdf, PowerPoint) are also supported.

This is what it looks like:

Unit tests

In the past three weeks we've added another 41 unit test cases to the components and inner workings of Universal. This brings us up to 1711 test cases in total.

Lots of minor fixes/tasks

Bugs

• Fixed a bug where you couldn't delete anything anymore when a delete failed (e.g. because the record had children)
• You can now correctly search for a quote (')
• Fixed a bug where lookup controls wouldn't load options if the data was filtered by a previous column (e.g. project > subproject > activity, what is shown in subproject depends on the project you've chosen).
• You no longer get a fatal error when you press multiple times on a scrollbar in iOS
• Fixed alignment of the bottom border of domain controls in the form
• A date primary key now gets passed as a date rather than datetime
• Fixed a bug where Universal could crash if mandatory task parameters weren't filled in
• Fixed some lookups not loading in tasks or reports

UI/UX

• The topbar now has the correct background color
• The theme type (light or dark mode) now gets applied correctly from the SF settings
• If a column is a lookup, we now always show a lookup control in the grid, regardless of the chosen control type
• Implemented disabling tasks when there are no records (enable_tab_task_when_empty in the SF)
• Technical database messages are translated properly now (e.g. Hour analysis rather than dbo.hour_analysis)

Technical

• Resolved security issues in 3rd party packages
• Added support for meta version 2021.1
• Did the groundwork for multirow selection
• Links from the HTML control now break the sandbox
• Query parameters for the Location header are now stripped away

What we'll be working on next sprint

The next sprint we'll be working on:

• Technical changes for 2021.1
• Mandatory exclusive prefilter groups
• Redirect to Universal after resetting password
• Untranslated lookup selection
• Research for the pivot grid component
• Domain combo control for the grid
• Process flows: opening a document
• Hiding the open documents
• Badges per variants
• Squashing some bugs