MM5.4 Major new features

Owned by Stefan Fodor (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Feb 17, 2021 by Gosia Creosteanu (Unlicensed)
5 min read

New features in Business Workflows

Improved experience with Business Workflows

Release 5.4.0 brings several changes in the Business Workflows meant to improve the user experience:

  • The users can now receive notifications when a new task is assigned to them.

  • Overview for automation and workflows is now separate. Automations and workflows now have their own areas. where users can both preview the available workflows and create new ones. They both can be found under Settings. Thanks to this working with these functionalities is now more intuitive.

  • The button for deleting stages/transitions was moved to a more discreet place in order to achieve a cleaner look for the stage/transition editor.

  • It is now easier to access transition editor. Once the user hovers a mouse pointer over a transition, it gets highlighted and a new menu appears. From here the user can open the editor or delete a transition.

Metadata constraints

From version 5.4.0 the workflow administrators have much more flexibility in terms of setting up constraints, while editing transitions in a business workflow. The new field selector is intuitive and only shows the relevant metadata fields based on the selection made for the constraint.

One example of the many possible use cases is the situation in which the value input by the user who requests to download an asset is compared with a specific metadata field. If the user’s value matches the value in that metafield, the request is approved automatically.

Attachments on constraints (file constraints)

The second new type of constraint in transitions is file constraint. The workflow administrators can now set up uploading a file as one of the requirements when requesting asset download. This can be e.g. a consent form in a strictly specified format such as pdf document.

New features and improvements in the task list

It is now easier to work with tasks thanks to three different improvements:

  • pagination was added to the task list

  • it is now possible to sort the tasks

  • on the right side of the screen the users can now access a variety of filters.

Enhanced task details (from version 5.4.1)

As the versatility of workflows grows with each version, we accounted for their increased capabilities by enhancing the design of the task details view. Upon clicking on a task, the user is presented with a module containing several tabs that can be accessed as long as they have information in them:

  • Summary - who created the task, the date of creation, promoted input constraints as well as a short summary of assets, attachments and comments.

  • Details - information concerning all input constraints apart from attachments.

  • Assets - all assets the task concerns in either box view or list view.

  • Attachments - attached files.

  • Comments - all comments made for the task.

 

NOTE!
The Workflows feature is intended for early adopters and is hidden behind a feature flag.

Enhancements in Download Request

New settings with more flexibility in terms which asset are subject to download request

Media Manager 5.4.0 introduces more flexibility in terms of which assets and media formats need to be requested for download and which of them don’t have such a requirement. Based on the concept of whitelisting and blacklisting, it is now possible to achieve one of following scenarios, all easily changed in the settings:

  1. Most assets in the system should require download request, but there should be some exceptions of assets that should should be freely downloaded. In this case, download request is a default option and the latter category is whitelisted.

  2. Most assets in the system should be freely downloaded by the users, with the exceptions of some assets that can only be downloaded upon request. In this case, free assets download is the default option, but some assets are blacklisted.

  3. Most media formats of an asset should require download request, but some formats can be downloaded freely. An example of this could be allowing free download of only the lowest possible resolution of an image or a video.

  4. Most media formats of an assets can be freely downloaded by the users, but some selected ones are blacklisted in the settings and therefore require download request. An example of this could be allowing the users to download an image or a video in its highest quality only upon request.

Dynamic assignment

There is not more flexibility in terms of who will handle the download requests. This feature is a response to customer demand and it’s especially valuable in the systems, where different assets have different users responsible for them and in power of making decisions related to those assets. In this case, if configured in the settings of Media Manager, the download request will be assigned to the correct content owner.

Status over the download requests

From now on it’s not a requirement for the users to be workflow administrators to see the task list. While workflow administrators can see the list of tasks assigned to them, other users can track the status of their previous download requests on their own task list.

New and improved menu for settings

The settings menu was completely re-designed in version 5.4. From now all the settings and relevant system information can be found in one place: under the cogwheel in the upper right corner of the top bar. The following areas are included:

  • General settings: the place where the system administrator can, among others, change the theming and logo, set up the single sign-on or change the way the download approval works.

  • Automation: the section in which the user can configure and preview automated jobs.

  • Workflows: the section in which the user can configure and preview workflows.

  • Logs: the section where the user can access the system logs.

  • DigiBatch status: the section where the user can preview the details of system jobs.

  • System monitoring: this menu item gives access to the monitoring dashboard.

UI enhancements

Improved experience with editing metadata

We addressed the feedback from the users who were in doubt, whether they can leave the metadata editor after saving the changes, especially in case of multi edit, when the saving process can take longer time. This is why from now on, when the user hits Save, a notification will appear in the lower right corner, informing the user that it’s safe to leave and continue with other work in Media Manager.

UI improvements

The users will notice a few smaller improvements in the appearance of some elements of Media Manager. We now have a better looking login modal, a new way of entering the profile settings and a more intuitive way of adding multiple assets to a collection as well as downloading collections.