Appspace 8.10 Aries Release Notes for Cloud

This release introduces Flexible Guest Registration, a significant enhancement to Visitor Management (VM) designed to streamline guest check-ins and provide organizations with greater adaptability in managing visitor information. This feature addresses the challenges faced by businesses with active reception desks or those managing visitors who may not have personal email addresses, such as minors accompanying adults. By accommodating alternative check-in methods, Flexible Guest Registration ensures a smoother and more efficient experience for both visitors and staff.

Key Enhancements and Functionalities:

• Optional Email Registration: The email field is now optional during registration, simplifying the process and enabling visitors to be registered using only their first and last name. Administrators can also configure alternative contact methods, such as phone number support for check-in/check-out notifications and alerts.
• Name-Based Identification at the Kiosk: Kiosks now utilize essential personal information, such as first and last names, for quick and efficient visitor identification. Administrators can customize data requirements to streamline the registration process by requiring only necessary fields.
• New Kiosk Check-In Flow for Visitors Without Email: This feature provides a new check-in flow for visitors without email addresses. Visitors can check in using only their full name, and the system automatically searches Visitor Management (VM) and Space Reservation (SR) records to find a matching meeting. If a match is found, the kiosk displays possible meetings with host names for easy selection. Visitors then complete a simple form with optional details to finalize check-in and trigger a host notification. An alternative check-in flow is also available for visitors who cannot locate their meeting, enabling them to select a host and provide visit details.

Flexible Guest Registration offers customizable VM workflows, enhanced flexibility, improved reception-assisted experiences, and accommodation of varied visitor profiles. This results in operational efficiency, increased user satisfaction, and enhanced security through a more controlled and adaptable visitor registration process.

This release introduces Flexible Spaces, a powerful new feature that allows organizations to dynamically manage reservable spaces by combining or separating rooms based on meeting or event requirements. This capability, ideal for facilities with movable walls or modular partitions, enables efficient space utilization and prevents underutilization of large rooms by smaller gatherings.

Key Enhancements and Functionalities:

• Connected Spaces Booking: Users can now reserve multiple adjacent spaces as a single, unified area, seamlessly merging rooms to accommodate larger groups.
• Admin Configuration: Administrators gain comprehensive control through the management console, configuring booking rules, defining connected resources, and specifying locations for connected spaces.
• End-User Booking: Employees can easily book and utilize connected spaces through the Employee View interface, with clear visibility of available flexible spaces.
• Concierge Support: Concierge users receive tools to assist with reservation adjustments, space setup coordination, and seamless event support.

By enabling dynamic room configuration, Flexible Spaces maximizes efficiency, improves space management, and enhances reservation flexibility. This leads to streamlined operations, reduced scheduling conflicts, and ultimately, a more productive and adaptable workspace.

• Mutually Exclusive Resources: This rule prevents users from booking specific resource types concurrently. For example, a user cannot book both a desk and a private office at the same time.

Key Enhancements and Functionalities:

• Improved Fairness and Accessibility: Users are ensured equal access when booking shared spaces.
• Optimized Space Utilization: The new rules reduce wasteful bookings and improve availability of reservable resources.
• Reduced Administrative Overhead: The new booking rules are automatically applied, eliminating the need for manual intervention.
• Better User Experience: This new feature safeguards rooms from booking conflicts and improves trust in the reservation system.

Limited Release

• Key Enhancements and Functionalities:
  Proxy Booking: Executive assistants are able to book appointments and meetings, and also perform checkpoint-related activities, such as checking in reservation attendees on behalf of their executives, with full visibility of the executive’s schedule and preferences.
• Multi-Executive Support: Executive assistants can manage schedules for multiple executives simultaneously, with clear differentiation and easy switching between executive profiles.

• Enables the creation of events with multiple resources via the Outlook plugin.
• Sync-back functionality has been improved to add/remove specific resources from events.
• A Complete Checkpoints button has been added to the Outlook Plugin, allowing users to handle pending checkpoints while editing the event directly within the plugin.
• Room selection is disabled for occupied rooms or those violating rules for multi-resource reservations, with clear visual indicators and messages.
• Resources for reservations are set to a limit of 50 to maintain performance and usability.
• Selected resources are grouped under a single Workspace list for a more organized view.
• Various other improvements.

Key Enhancements and Functionalities:

• Discover More: Explore richer user profiles showcasing. interests, skills, and expertise – find the right people for your projects with ease.
• Connect with Purpose: Shared interests and skills are highlighted, making it easier to find common ground and spark meaningful conversations.
• Showcase Your Strengths: Update your profile with your unique skills and interests, increasing your visibility and attracting potential collaborators.

This release introduces enhanced content collaboration with reviewers:

Authors can now streamline their review process by adding reviewers to stories and pages. Reviewers receive timely notifications, enabling efficient feedback cycles. Direct in-content commenting allows for precise feedback, improving clarity. The consolidated review section provides a centralized location for all reviewer comments, simplifying feedback management and implementation.

Key Enhancements and Functionalities:

• Unified search: Unified search experience across Appspace and Microsoft SharePoint.
• Document links in search results: Users can click on SharePoint search results to open documents directly.
• User-specific search results: Results are based on the user’s access permissions in both platforms.

The Topic Sitemap is a new feature designed to improve user experience and navigation efficiency by introducing a tree-structured sitemap for Topic pages. Administrators can configure this sitemap within the Topic’s settings, ensuring better organization and accessibility. By implementing a hierarchical navigation structure, the feature provides a clear overview of how pages are related and categorized, making content easily discoverable for employees.

This enhancement is useful for users managing large volumes of pages within the company’s Employee Communications platform, including marketing campaigns, project updates, internal communications, and knowledge base articles. Additionally, the tool streamlines tasks such as booking appointments, managing agendas, and coordinating complex schedules on behalf of executives, further improving workflow efficiency.

Key Enhancements and Functionalities:

• Contextual search: Provides an enhanced search with more specific results.

• Organize pages hierarchically: Create a nested structure with parent and child pages, categorizing content by department, project, or topic.

• Expand and collapse branches: Easily navigate through the tree structure to view pages at different levels.

• Drag and drop pages: Reorganize pages within the tree structure with a simple drag-and-drop interface.

• Visually represent page relationships: Understand the hierarchy and connections between different pieces of content.

• Ordered Pages: Users can arrange pages alphabetically, by date updated, or even with a custom order.

These improvements make finding the information you need quick and easy, similar to a well-organized library.

This release introduces Document Libraries, a new feature for Communities designed to revolutionize how you organize and share files. Similar to the Media Library for media assets, Document Libraries provide a centralized space for efficient document management.

Key Enhancements and Functionalities:

• Centralized Document Storage: Community administrators can create Document Libraries to manage and organize all files uploaded within the community.
• Folder Organization: Administrators have the ability to create folders within the library, ensuring documents are categorized for improved accessibility.
• Configurable Permissions: Administrators can define specific permissions for uploading, deleting files, and creating folders, offering granular control over document management.
• Updated ‘Files’ Section: Once configured, the Files section will display all uploaded documents and include folder management capabilities for better organization and easy navigation.
• Integration with Key Workspaces: Seamlessly integrate Document Libraries with Communities, Channels, and Topics, contextualizing files within relevant discussions and workspaces.

Document Libraries enhance collaboration and boost productivity by providing a centralized, organized, and easily accessible repository for essential files. This eliminates time wasted searching for documents, streamlines teamwork, and ensures information is always available in the right context.

Users are offered the flexibility of choosing between the traditional dropdown menu and the more expansive Mega menu, catering to individual preferences and organizational needs. Account owners can configure the Mega Menu in Admin View by navigating to Settings > Configuration > Navigation.

Key Enhancements and Functionalities:

• Prevent information overload: Sites that have a lot of content can overwhelm users with traditional menus. The Mega menu presents this information in a digestible and organized way.
• Greater navigation options: With the Mega menu, a larger number of links are displayed, allowing for a wider range of choices and calls to action.
• Increased visibility: The Mega menu showcases more content upfront, such as nested pages, which are hidden in standard menus.
• Improved findability and enhanced user experience: Scrolling through long lists or using multiple clicks to find information is frustrating. Mega menus provide a clear and intuitive navigation path to the desired content, making it easier to locate specific pages.

In this release, inherited software update settings are now displayed on the Device Configuration Page, improving visibility and management for System Administrators:

• Automatic Updates:
  • Devices in the root location show the root’s inherited Automatic app update value.
  • Devices in sub-locations display the inherited Automatic app update value from their sub-location or the root, following the location hierarchy.
• Manual Updates:
  • Devices in the root location show the root’s inherited Manual app update value.
  • Devices in sub-locations display the inherited Manual app update value from their sub-location or the root.
• Handling of Unscheduled Manual Updates:
  • If Manual app updates are unscheduled in the root location, no inherited value is displayed in sub-location settings or Device Configuration Pages.
  • If Manual app updates are unscheduled in the sub-location, no inherited value is displayed in the Device Configuration Page for those devices.
• Feature Flag Requirement: Location-Level Software Updates feature flags must be enabled to view and configure these settings at the root location.

This update ensures software update schedule values are preserved across changes between automatic and manual update modes. Specifically:

• Automatic Frequency Retention: Switching to manual/inherited and back to automatic retains the original automatic update frequency.
• Manual Schedule Retention: Switching to automatic/inherited and back to manual retains the original scheduled update date/time.
• Unset Schedule Handling:
  • Tizen devices, when switching back to manual with no prior schedule, display the “Schedule Update” button.
  • Electron devices, when switching back to automatic with no prior frequency, default to “Daily at 03:00 AM”.
• Device-Specific Notes:
  • Electron devices support both automatic and manual scheduling.
  • Tizen devices support manual scheduling. If you choose automatic updates, the devices will update after a reboot without a set scheduling frequency.

The batch scheduling process for app updates has been refined to apply exclusively to devices with a Manual Software Update configuration. Devices configured as Inherited (Manual) or Inherited (Auto) are now excluded from batch scheduling.

• When a selection includes both Manual and Auto update devices, only the Manual update devices will receive the scheduled update date and time.
• When a selection includes both Manual and Inherited (Manual/Auto) update devices, only the Manual update devices will receive the scheduled update.
• When a selection includes Manual, Auto, and Inherited (Manual/Auto) update devices, only the Manual update devices will receive the scheduled update.

Key Features:

• Automated SharePoint Updates: Configure rules to automatically publish content updates to specified SharePoint locations.
• Seamless Integration: Extends existing content notification framework to include Microsoft SharePoint.
• Rule-Based Configuration: Define specific triggers and conditions for content updates, ensuring relevant information is distributed efficiently.
• Consistent User Experience: Maintains a familiar workflow for users already utilizing content notifications with other platforms.