Linchpin Intranet Suite 3.1

Summary & Highlights

Welcome to Linchpin Intranet Suite 3.1!

We are happy to announce a new update for our beloved Linchpin Intranet Suite. This version of the suite revolves around user profiles. We improved the look of the profiles greatly and enhanced the people directory to make it easier to find colleagues. 

We prepared a short summary of the most important changes, so you can keep track of them. If you want more info about a specific function, use the navigation to jump to this function's release notes.

Let's begin with the changes to Linchpin User Profiles. In this release of the Linchpin Intranet Suite, we introduce a great addition to user profiles. The profile header image greatly enhances user profiles and makes it even simpler to truly personalize your profile. Furthermore the position of the profile image is now central, to shift the focus on the user. User profiles revolve around the users, after all. That's why we believe that they should be displayed centrally.

Secondly, we enhanced the people directory. The people directory displays all users within a Confluence system. While it's already a great help in itself, we added the possibility to filter for profile fields within the directory. Now users can search for any users speaking certain languages, working in certain branches and so on. The filter function is configurable, of course, so you can decide what profile fields are used as filters. 

Furthermore, we improved the onboarding experience. The detection for Linchpin Onboarding got better. It should now decide better if a new user should be onboarded or not. Furthermore, each notice can now be scheduled to be displayed only once for each user. Also, notices can now have a start and expiration date, so you can prepare them in advance.

Another big update affects Linchpin Mobile. In this suite release, we introduce to you a mobile app with a completely new technical foundation. That's correct, you read that right. We changed our technology behind the mobile app. It now looks more modern, works faster and is more stable. And if that's not enough, we also added the compatibility with Data Center's read-only mode. Oh, and Vimeo videos can now be played within the app, too. 

And last, but not least, the changes to Linchpin Enterprise News. When using Bitvoodoo's view tracker 5.7.0 or later, new news will now be marked as unread. Furthermore it's now possible to translate news categories using Linchpin Translations (included in the suite). And the news hub sidebar now makes it possible to access news categories.

Overall improvements

• Most apps are now compatible with the Confluence Data Center read-only mode.

Bugfixes

• VERSION 3.1.1 Addresses an issue where profiles changes were not properly handled for delivering personalized content
  
• Fixed a potential deadlock in the Confluence Plugin State Map leading to stalled updates in rare cases
  

Onboarding & Assistance

We improved the detection for Linchpin Onboarding. It should now decide better if a new user should be onboarded or not. Furthermore, each notice can now be scheduled to be displayed only once for each user. Also, notices can now have a start and expiration date, so you can prepare them in advance.

New features

• Onboarding: New users can be offered spaces to subscribe to for their personal news feeds.
• Assistant: Each notice can be scheduled to only be shown once for each user instead of being shown repeatedly.
• Assistant: Each notice can now have a start and expiration date. Prepare notices in advance and don't forget to disable them when they lose relevance.
• Linchpin Manager and all its child apps are compatible with the Confluence Data Center read-only mode now.

Improvements

• Onboarding: We improved the detection if a new user should be onboarded or not.
• Assistant: We disabled Confluence keyboard shortcuts while the assistant pop-up is active.
  

User Profiles & Terms of Use

We gave people directory a new modern look and included a filter function. Now it should be easier to find the right experts. Furthermore, the user profiles received a great update. Users can now upload their own header image for their profile! And we introduced support for IdP as profile field source. Make sure to check out the documentation to learn more about it. We are also looking forward to your feedback!

New features

• The people directory now includes a filter option. You can search users based on their profile field values, like spoken languages, software expertise etc.
• Users are now able to upload a header image to their profile.
• First steps in supporting profile field data coming from identity providers (IdPs) via third-party apps: You can decide which profile fields should be filled by an IdP.
• We introduced a new profile field type to let users enter only valid phone numbers.
• The Confluence Data Center read-only mode is now supported.

Improvements

• The people directory has a modern look now.
• The "Custom User List / Search" now support confluence groups. The macros received some additional love as well. For example, the "Custom User List" pagination is now optional.
• The "My Contacts" macro and the Linchpin sidebar module look nicer when you have no contacts.
• Confluence 7.3 compatibility was added.
  

Bugfixes

• When using the new validated phone field, the user's country is detected more reliably.
• Cascading fields unfortunately don't work in the Custom User Search, but you could select them them in the past. Not anymore.
• When configuring dependent fields, you can now correctly create rules to match field values with brackets like "IT (System)".
• Uploading a profile picture via our REST API now works reliably. Previously, every second upload did reset the profile picture.
• User directory sync will no longer abort for users without a name attribute.
• We made exceptions concerning instant messenger fields.
• We fixed a bug where the "Content Responsibility" macro sometimes did not save the responsible user.
• We fixed a bug where cascading select fields were not updated correctly.
• We fixed a bug where profile picture was not always shown in IE11.
• Additional stability fixes were added.
  
• Special characters like '@' in usernames do not longer cause errors when these users edit their profiles.
• In newer versions of Confluence 7, the scheduled bulk profile update (XML) job is now accessible and configurable again.
• The scheduled job for bulk profile updates via User Directories no longer breaks as a whole if one User Directory is not available.
  

Navigation & Theming

Linchpin Theme now contains the Theme Wizard! The Theme Wizard is a tool which will create your first theme for you, in just two steps. Upload a logo and choose a primary color and the wizard will do its magic. You can, of course, manually configure your theme later. Furthermore, Linchpin Theme is now compatible with the "Aura" app. Our sidebar received some love, too. You can now display open Jira issues, open Confluence tasks and an "all updates stream" inside the sidebar. We also added a better configuration, so you can manually decide which modules to include in the sidebar. Also, the default Linchpin Theme header image was reworked.

New features

• Theme Wizard: Upload a logo, set a primary color and your theme is up and running.
• New content modules for the Linchpin Sidebar: All updates stream, open Confluence tasks, open Jira issues.
• New configuration for the Linchpin Sidebar so you can decide which content modules to show and which to hide.
• Added compatibility with "Aura" app.

Improvements

• The Linchpin Theme is now compatible with the read-only mode in Confluence Data Center.
• We added a Confluence 7.3 compatibility.
• We modernized our default Linchpin Theme header image.
• We prepared the Linchpin Theme for the people directory improvements that are included in Linchpin User Profiles 2.21.
• When using the Theme Wizard, you will now be asked for confirmation, just to be double sure you don't overwrite your carefully designed theme. In addition, the header background image won't be overwritten anymore.
  

Bugfixes

• Background images for the login screen are now rendered correctly in all browsers.
• Pages don't jump awkwardly up and down anymore when there's not a lot of content, instead they scroll smoothly. Gosh, that bug was annoying!
• Took the login button for anonymous users from the middle of the menu and put it back where it belongs.
• The Spaces macro no longer breaks the Cover Stories macro when used on the same page.
• The Spaces macro also is responsive now so it doesn’t break in narrow columns.
• We brought back the search within the „Saved for later“ tab of the Linchpin Sidebar in Confluence 7 and later.
• User mentions in the page history and edit mode are now colored correctly.
• Empty categories in a menu will now be hidden.
• The sidebar buttons were in the way on some space admin pages, they no longer are.
• When exporting a page as PDF, images of image teasers are now included in the document.
• When using the new Confluence search sidebar there no longer is a dead link.
  

News

One of the biggest news for Linchpin Enterprise News is the addition of translations. It is now possible to translate news categories with the help of Linchpin Translations (included in the suite). Furthermore, the news hub sidebar makes it possible to access news categories. Additionally, unread news are now marked as unread when using Bitvoodoo's view tracker 5.7.0 or later. We also fixed some bugs to improve the quality of the app.

New features

• When using Bitvoodoo's view tracker 5.7.0 or later, unread news in our news macros and hub are marked.

• Directly access news categories from the news hub sidebar.

• News categories are now compatible with Linchpin Translations which is included in the Linchpin Suite and allows translation of news category names.

• Added measurement of anonymous usage information of news teaser (see detailed information on this page).

Improvements

• Our news macros and news hub look more friendly when there are no news to display.

• News excerpts in Linchpin Mobile push notifications don't contain macro code anymore.

Bugfixes

• Mandatory news now work correctly with scheduled or approved news.
• Web/RSS feeds that expect a user agent can now be loaded.
• We fixed some optical bugs.
• We have restored IE11 compatibility (was broken in 2.11.0).
• The news subscription module for Linchpin Assistant and Linchpin Onboarding now works correctly (was broken in 2.11.0).
• You can now save the personalization for obligatory news subscriptions again.
• Images with very long filenames can now be used as news teasers.

• We fixed the "Unable to resolve owner of loading collection" error that could occur when using the news hub or news macros.

Microblogging

In the Microblog, we fixed a vulnerability and added some minor fixes. For more details, follow this link: 2020-02-28 Vulnerability notification: Microblogging for Confluence and Linchpin Intranet Suite.

Improvements

• Improved @mention behavior for Lucene stop words.

Bugfixes

• We fixed a vulnerability with the Microblogging app, where microposts could be edited by any user.
• Restored compatibility with Space Privacy (version 2.6.11) for user autocomplete.
• We fixed a bug that caused single subscribed topics to still be visible to users after the user lost view permissions to the topic's space.

Events

Linchpin Events is now compatible with the read-only mode. Also, some bugs were fixed and the quality of the app was improved.

Improvements

• We added the compatibility with the read-only mode.

Bugfixes

• We fixed an issue that prevented the Event List macro from displaying a preview in the macro browser.
• We fixed an issue related to filtering by unassigned event categories.
• We fixed an issue with displaying the single event view where any user interaction caused an error.
• We fixed a rare issue with events migrated from a very old version of this app.

Apps

The Launchpad received some love. We were able to fix some bugs.

Bugfixes

• Display problems with the Launchpad under Internet Explorer 11 were fixed.
• We fixed filtering of the people-picker in the admin area of the Launchpad, which caused non-administrators to be entered by mistake.
• Improvements of the read-only mode of Confluence were made.

Mobile App

Linchpin Mobile introduces a brand new user interface! It's a more appealing and modern design now. Also, Vimeo videos can now be played by the mobile app. Furthermore, Linchpin Mobile supports the read-only mode in Confluence Data Center now. Also, the performance of the app improved greatly.

New features

• Linchpin Mobile has received an appealing and modern design of the user interface.
• Vimeo video playback is now supported.
• We added the support for the read-only mode in Confluence Data Center instances.
• Added support for mobile user management of their own connections to a Confluence instance. This allows users who have received push notifications multiple times or lost a mobile device to remove outdated or insecure logins themselves. For more information, please visit https://seibert.biz/linchpinmobileconnections.
• We added mobile support for the "App" macro within pages and news posts. Now you can access apps shared in your intranet on the go.
• Background images for profiles are also visible in the mobile app now. Editing the background image on mobile is currently being worked on.
• The app will now tell you when the system you are using is in maintenance mode and therefore some functions are temporarily unavailable.
• You can send a bug report to the development team directly from the login screen now (without having to connect to a system f

Improvements

• We improved the editor for microblog posts and page comments.
• Massive increase in performance when opening the app and loading content.
  
• We improved the stability for Linchpin Mobile Gateway connections.
• Improved display of QR codes in the user profile with Internet Explorer 11.
  

Bugfixes

• We fixed an issue with the connection test for the Linchpin Mobile Gateway which failed although there was no actual error.
• We fixed numerous other minor (and also some not-so-minor) bugs.

• We fixed an issue that prevented Linchpin Mobile from being enabled in Confluence instances based on Java 11.

• We fixed an issue related to image file caching.

Languages and Translations

Mostly a bugfix release. We fixed the bug which caused troubles with translations upload in Confluence 7 or later. Default translations are now being handled more properly.

Improvements

• We improved the handling of default translations.

Bugfixes

• Fixed an issue with a notification after plugin reactivation.

• Fixed a translations upload issue with Confluence 7 and later.

Complete changelog

Here is a complete overview of all of the changes that we've implemented in our Linchpin Intranet Suite release - But be aware: It's a lot - don't get lost in this looooooong list! 

Here we go...

New features

• Onboarding: New users can be offered spaces to subscribe to for their personal news feeds.
• Assistant: Each notice can be scheduled to only be shown once for each user instead of being shown repeatedly.
• Assistant: Each notice can now have a start and expiration date. Prepare notices in advance and don't forget to disable them when they lose relevance.
• The people directory now includes a filter option. You can search users based on their profile field values, like spoken languages, software expertise etc.
• Users are now able to upload a header image to their profile.
• First steps in supporting profile field data coming from identity providers (IdPs) via third-party apps: You can decide which profile fields should be filled by an IdP.
• We introduced a new profile field type to let users enter only valid phone numbers.
• The Confluence Data Center read-only mode is now supported.
  
• Theme Wizard: Upload a logo, set a primary color and your theme is up and running.
• New content modules for the Linchpin Sidebar: All updates stream, open Confluence tasks, open Jira issues.
• New configuration for the Linchpin Sidebar so you can decide which content modules to show and which to hide.
• Added compatibility with "Aura" app.

• When using Bitvoodoo's view tracker 5.7.0 or later, unread news in our news macros and hub are marked.

• Directly access news categories from the news hub sidebar.

• News categories are now compatible with Linchpin Translations which is included in the Linchpin Suite and allows translation of news category names.

• Added measurement of anonymous usage information of news teaser (see detailed information on this page).
• Our mobile app has received an appealing and modern design of the user interface.
• Vimeo video playback is now supported in the mobile app.
• We added support for the read-only mode in Confluence Data Center instances for our mobile app.
• Added support for mobile user management of their own connections to a Confluence instance directly in our mobile app. This allows users who have received push notifications multiple times or lost a mobile device to remove outdated or insecure logins themselves. For more information, please visit https://seibert.biz/linchpinmobileconnections.
  
• We added mobile support for the "App" macro within pages and news posts. Now you can access apps shared in your intranet on the go.
  
• Background images for profiles are also visible in the mobile app now. Editing the background image on mobile is currently being worked on.
  
• The app will now tell you when the system you are using is in maintenance mode and therefore some functions are temporarily unavailable.
  

Improvements

• Onboarding: We improved the detection if a new user should be onboarded or not.
• Assistant: We disabled Confluence keyboard shortcuts while the assistant pop-up is active.
• Linchpin Manager and all its child apps are compatible with the Confluence Data Center read-only mode now.
  
• The people directory has a modern look now.
• The "Custom User List / Search" now support confluence groups. The macros received some additional love as well. For example, the "Custom User List" pagination is now optional.
• The "My Contacts" macro and the Linchpin sidebar module look nicer when you have no contacts.
• Confluence 7.3 compatibility was added.
  
• The Linchpin Theme is now compatible with the read-only mode in Confluence Data Center.
• We added a Confluence 7.3 compatibility.
• We modernized our default Linchpin Theme header image.
• We prepared the Linchpin Theme for the people directory improvements that are included in Linchpin User Profiles 2.21.
• When using the Theme Wizard, you will now be asked for confirmation, just to be double sure you don't overwrite your carefully designed theme. In addition, the header background image won't be overwritten anymore.
  

• Our news macros and news hub look more friendly when there are no news to display.

• News excerpts in Linchpin Mobile push notifications don't contain macro code anymore.

• We added the compatibility with the read-only mode.
• We improved the editor for microblog posts and page comments in our mobile app.
• Massive increase in performance when opening our mobile app and loading content.
  
• We improved the stability for Linchpin Mobile Gateway connections.
• Improved display of mobile login QR codes in the user profile with Internet Explorer 11.
  
• We improved the handling of default translations.
• Improved @mention behavior for Lucene stop words.
  

Bugfixes

• When using the new validated phone field, the user's country is detected more reliably.
• Cascading fields unfortunately don't work in the Custom User Search, but you could select them them in the past. Not anymore.
• When configuring dependent fields, you can now correctly create rules to match field values with brackets like "IT (System)".
• Uploading a profile picture via our REST API now works reliably. Previously, every second upload did reset the profile picture.
• User directory sync will no longer abort for users without a name attribute.
• We made exceptions concerning instant messenger fields.
• We fixed a bug where the "Content Responsibility" macro sometimes did not save the responsible user.
• We fixed a bug where cascading select fields were not updated correctly.
• We fixed a bug where profile picture was not always shown in IE11.
• Additional stability fixes were added.
• Special characters like '@' in usernames do not longer cause errors when these users edit their profiles.
• In newer versions of Confluence 7, the scheduled bulk profile update (XML) job is now accessible and configurable again.
• The scheduled job for bulk profile updates via User Directories no longer breaks as a whole if one User Directory is not available.
  
• Background images for the login screen are now rendered correctly in all browsers.
• Pages don't jump awkwardly up and down anymore when there's not a lot of content, instead they scroll smoothly. Gosh, that bug was annoying!
• Took the login button for anonymous users from the middle of the menu and put it back where it belongs.
• The Spaces macro no longer breaks the Cover Stories macro when used on the same page.
• The Spaces macro also is responsive now so it doesn’t break in narrow columns.
• We brought back the search within the „Saved for later“ tab of the Linchpin Sidebar in Confluence 7 and later.
• User mentions in the page history and edit mode are now colored correctly.
• Empty categories in a menu will now be hidden.
• The sidebar buttons were in the way on some space admin pages, they no longer are.
• When exporting a page as PDF, images of image teasers are now included in the document.
• When using the new Confluence search sidebar there no longer is a dead link.
• Mandatory news now work correctly with scheduled or approved news.
• Web/RSS feeds that expect a user agent can now be loaded.
• We fixed some optical bugs.
• We have restored IE11 compatibility (was broken in 2.11.0).
• The news subscription module for Linchpin Assistant and Linchpin Onboarding now works correctly (was broken in 2.11.0).
• You can now save the personalization for obligatory news subscriptions again.
• Images with very long filenames can now be used as news teasers.

• We fixed the "Unable to resolve owner of loading collection" error that could occur when using the news hub or news macros.

• We fixed a vulnerability with the Microblogging app, where microposts could be edited by any user.
• We fixed an issue that prevented the Event List macro from displaying a preview in the macro browser.
• We fixed an issue related to filtering by unassigned event categories.
• We fixed an issue with displaying the single event view where any user interaction caused an error.
• We fixed a rare issue with events migrated from a very old version of this app.
• Display problems with the Launchpad under Internet Explorer 11 were fixed.
• We fixed filtering of the people-picker in the admin area of the Launchpad, which caused non-administrators to be entered by mistake.
• Improvements of the read-only mode of Confluence were made.
• We fixed an issue with the connection test for the Linchpin Mobile Gateway which failed although there was no actual error.
• We fixed numerous other minor (and also some not-so-minor) bugs in our mobile app.

• We fixed an issue that prevented Linchpin Mobile from being enabled in Confluence instances based on Java 11.

• We fixed an issue related to image file caching in our mobile app.

• Fixed an issue with a notification after plugin reactivation.

• Fixed a translations upload issue with Confluence 7 and later.
• Restored compatibility with Space Privacy (version 2.6.11) for user autocomplete.
  
• We fixed a bug that caused single subscribed topics to still be visible to users after the user lost view permissions to the topic's space.
  
• VERSION 3.1.1 Addresses an issue where profiles changes were not properly handled for delivering personalized content