We're pleased to announce the next patch release of sharedo - version 7.5.2 - is in general availability as of this afternoon, 19th July 2023

Focussing on defect fixes and small usability improvements, this release consists of 12 priority fixes along with 11 small quality of life features to enhance usability and configuration efficiency.

Feature and enhancement highlights for 7.5.2

A few highlights of the new features in this release - a full list is shown below.

Reporting job optimisations

Sharedo ships and transforms data from the transactional store into a reporting schema on a regular basis. With large data sets these jobs can take significant time to run. For this release we have optimised these processes to drastically improve their performance and reduce resource consumption. For instance, the incremental job now takes 85% less time to complete (i.e. if it took 5 mins before, it takes 45 seconds in 7.5.2).

Allow control over when a section in a form view aggregator will refresh

The form view aggregator allows for composing  multiple capture forms into a single wizard style view. In some circumstances the call to action for a given section may update some of the data, but the form wouldn't refresh as it was unaware that data could change. Whilst these sections will continue to reload under the conditions they expect data to change, we've added some advanced configuration to the aggregator sections to allow specifying what UX events will trigger the data for the section to reload - providing for more granular control in these scenarios.

Document filed event now available in workflows

When a document is filed from a repository to a particular work item, the system will raise a “document-filed” event which can now be leveraged as a trigger for visual workflows. This allows for additional processing to happen after filing, following prescribed or assistive processes as required. All the fields about the document being filed are provided in the event, which can be mapped to variables in your workflow.

Send email workflow block can now use system email addresses

A new option has been added to the send email workflow block to allow selection of a system email address in the “from” field to allow for straight through processing of outbound emails. Prior to 7.5.2, if a workflow created an outbound email on behalf of a participant (such as case owner), then progressed it's state to pending (to send it), the from address would typically be set to the personal address of the participant and the system wouldn't necessarily be able to send the email due to mailbox restrictions. With 7.5.2 the email activity can be created to use a system account instead.

Clear warnings on process failures due to incomplete data

Sometimes workflows will be unable to complete because of incomplete data. This incomplete data may not be severe enough to stop the workflow from progressing, but should be flagged that it completed with warnings. For example, a workflow may be fired on matter creation that will generate a prepare document task to send a letter to the “client” participant. There are several warning scenarios that could apply here, where the workflow would still create the task, but it wouldn't be able to automatically progress it to generate automatically. e.g.

• The role isn't populated - there is no client participant.
• The document template for the prep doc references one that requires a correspondence address, but the client participant either has no addresses defined, or does not have one of the required type.

In 7.5.2 a non-stopping failure like this will now be surfaced in the process info dialog to indicate clearly that the step executed with warnings. Drilling into the step will also show more detail about what data was incomplete.

Export solution - automatically include matching rules referenced in workflows

If you define a workflow that runs a matching rule, then export it, you would have to manually remember to include the matching rule definition as well. With 7.5.2 any referenced matching rules become mandatory dependencies for the export package.

Ability to create custom view/data aspects directly from the IDE

Prior to 7.5.2 it was only possible to create custom aspects for the data capture blades by using a plugin and some C# code. In this release we have added an aspect adaptor that allows aspects to be created in the IDE directly without having to resort to server side code. This is an advanced and relatively complex subject, more information on how to use this feature can be found in the developer guide here:

Developer guide 13 - Advanced - creating custom capture aspects in the IDE

Offers - Quality of life improvements and minor UX enhancements

This feature wraps a number of quick enhancements to offers;

• Ability for offer types to use standard aspects including “Details” and “Participant picker”
• Improved use of space on financials display
• Financial details chart of account codes now respect closed state

Allow for any template to be selected on document packs, not just a default

Prior to 7.5.2, on a document pack, you have to specify one template as mandatory. A small change in 7.5.2 now allows no templates to be marked as mandatory, but the document pack task will enforce at least one of them being selected.

Allow documents to be attached (e.g. as evidence) to budget line items

Budget line items now support the ability to upload/attach documents to them.

All features/enhancements in 7.5.2

Full list of all feature and enhancement tickets shipped in this release:

All defects resolved in 7.5.2

Full list of issues resolved in this release: