Affino 8.0.30 - the Production Release

The Affino 8.0.30 release is focused on delivering major improvements for the marketing, commercial, finance, content, operations, and project teams working with Affino.

 

There are over 400 improvements in this release, and in terms of focus areas - imports and exports again see a host of updates, as more organisations are on-boarding brands onto Affino, and increasingly bulk updating information in Excel and then re-importing it to Affino.

 

We have continued to build more smarts into the imports, with more in-line help on the import templates, more insightful feedback and error reporting on the imports, and we have made them all faster.

 

A major undertaking has been transforming the financial reports to be truly multi-currency for the first time. Previously they relied on a ’reporting currency’. Now it is possible to report by the underlying transactions in each currency throughout Affino.

 

Optimisation, security and performance is also a major theme of this release which sees the removal of hundreds of legacy coding and data elements from Affino Not only does this result in some nice performance and security benefits, it also is a significant step forward towards Affino’s move to the next generation service architecture.

 

Recent usability and optimisations improvements in Affino, and the enhanced inline help and help guides mean that we have just seen the lowest number of technical and support issues this past week since we started tracking them on a weekly basis.

 

Messaging sees many more refinements, with the great usability boost of having campaign placement areas in the messages, up to 5 per message (and message campaigns). This means that users no longer need to work within the templates when preparing a message, as the main message content, all articles, and campaign creatives can now all be managed simply on the message and message campaign edit screens. We have also introduced options on how Affino’s message stats are calculated (following a high volume of feature requests).

 

There are a number of elements in this release which are Alpha, primarily focused around Affino’s upcoming data dashboards. As companies using Affino are increasingly being challenged in capturing reliable data using JavaScript plugins, Affino continues stepping up to deliver the data and insight as part of our core service.

 

In this release you can see alphas of the new settings for Dashboard and Account Engagement Report, note though that this is primarily for Affino to start capturing the data and for us to ensure that the data capture is efficient and delivering the best insight for the official Q2 launch in the next major release.

 

Other areas which see a host of nice updates include ecommerce, contacts, editions (now with a much more powerful search), menus, searches and subscription management.

 

 

Key Enhancements

 

Multi-currency Reporting

Prior to this release, most of the financial reports were based on the ‘default store currency’ as opposed to the actual underlying transactions. This was not an issue for single-currency Affino instances as the reporting has been transaction based for some time, this release sees the transaction-based reporting now being in place.

 

This has meant extensive updates throughout Affino’s financial reports with the following now fully supporting multiple currencies: Tax Transaction Reports, Sales Report, Order Line Item Report, Sales Leaderboard, Subscription Expiry Report, Promotions Report, Tax Period Summary Report, Tax Transaction Report, Sage Audit Trail Export, Sales Invoice Export, Previous Orders Report

 

Additionally we have further refined a number of these reports with additional filters and other quality of life enhancements.

 

Imports and Exports - Major Updates

We have again implemented major updates to a host of Affino Imports and Exports. These add up to a great leap forward for productivity when it comes to bulk importing and updating content and data into Affino. A great example is the further evolution of Affino’s content import, see some highlights below, and check out the other Import / Export update notes to see how we have applied the same principles to a host of Affino’s core data flow services.

 

Following on from the breakthrough innovations for importing content into Affino in the last major release: auto format cleansing and scraping of media, this release sees a host of new data validations which provide advice on any issues you might have with the content being imported, and we have added a further 26 columns to the data import for: SyndicationYN, ThumbnailAlternative, ThumbnailAlternativeAlt, ManWidth, LabelImage, LabelImageAlt, IntroAlign, IntroWidth, TopAlign, TopWidth, Image1Align, Image1Width, Image2Align, Image2Width, Image3Align, Image3Width, Image4Align, Image4Width, Image5Align, Image5Width, Image6Align, Image6Width, AutoGenerateCalendarInviteYN, DirectoryShowRelatedJobsYN, DirectoryHideEmailYN, and DirectoryHideContactSupplier. We have also added an option to Open New Tab for all external links on both the article and article step import.

 

The addition of the new fields means that Affino now handles more advanced nuances on the styling of imported content, as well as greater scope for importing directory content. In addition to the new validation, we have further evolved the import notification to provide advisory on how the import is going, noting that the Article Import is a two stage process, with the first being the content import and the second the content transformation. 

 

There are now far fewer settings on the Article Import screen itself for simpler and faster imports. Many of the settings have become redundant over time, and in some instances add confusion, as we have progressively extended the Article Import to be more powerful and nuanced. The Article Import now also supports the [_null_] placeholder in many more columns, meaning you can reset and cleanse much more of the content. The introduction of an Article Batch Delete takes things further with the ability to try out content imports with ease, delete, and refine them prior to the final import.

 

Conversion Events

For most of the usage data we store in Affino we eventually aggregate it away. An example of this is page views. Initially we store every page view, and then over the course of the day this data becomes aggregated so that instead of every page view we count the number of times a page has been viewed, and how many overall page views per hour etc. This data in turn is then slowly aggregated away from the system over time.

 

Without this aggregation process Affino sites would very quickly build up terabytes of audience behaviour related data points and the cost of hosting and managing the data would be very significant. 

 

The one exception is that we do not aggregate Conversion Event data points. If you have set Affino to capture up to a million logins for each user Affino will do so and retain the data … until now, since that’s exactly what’s been happening and has led in some instances to uncontrolled levels of data growth.

 

In practice retaining so many data points is never actually needed. Instead of retaining every login, retaining the 1st, the latest and possibly some ranking ones, e.g. 10 logins, 100 logins gives you all the data you need for nearly any form of automation you might look to drive, or insight you might require. This also caps the need for more than 6 data points per user for login tracking, versus the 1,000’s we have seen on some Affino instances.

 

This release sees a cap of retained Conversion Event data in Affino to keep the number of records below 10 million overall data points. To that end Affino now provides multiple levels of advisory on the quantity being retained for each type, as well as the overall level being retained. Once Affino starts hitting limits for each type of event, as well as the overall quantity it will start removing the oldest stored records to stay within the limits.

 

The Affino team is on hand to advise on how best you can maximise the effectiveness of the retained conversion data, and how to configure each event to retain just the records needed to optimise your workflows and insight.

 

Messages & Ad Campaigns

There are a host of updates to messages, see below, one which is much requested and worth highlighting is that Affino now supports Ad Campaign Placements both on Message Campaigns and individual Messages. This means that users no longer need to go in and update message templates to change the creatives, now they can select them directly on Message Campaigns for ones which are to run over a period of time, and override creatives on each message. This greatly simplifies the message creation and reduces the chance for errors.

 

It means that should you wish to simplify the message creation process then simply update your templates to swap in Campaign Placements (1 to 5) where you currently have creatives selected directly within the templates. If you still want to select the creatives within the templates you can do so.

 

Message Campaign Tracking Advisory

As is sometimes the case, accurate activity reporting in Affino puts brands using Affino at a competitive disadvantage when a sector of software providers are on the whole less responsive to changing markets than Affino. The latest area affected in this way has been Open Rates for email messages. 

 

We strongly advise companies to stop using Open Rates on emails as sales / marketing metric. It is no longer reliable on any email platform, not just Affino, however it is one which has been in play for so long that many commercial promotion campaigns still have it as a metric. This is very unfortunate as it is now an incredibly unreliable one. It is worth noting that click tracking is not affected in the same way and is highly accurate in Affino.

 

For some time identifying open rates has become increasingly hard for messaging service providers, not least with the changes from Apple which make it virtually impossible to use detection pixels and other similar approaches to detect if an email has been opened by a person. Conversely, increasingly bots and other tech are accessing emails and are generating false positive opens.

 

Affino is effective at identifying and not counting bot activity, and it is this which creates a relative disadvantage for the Affino community when competing platforms report higher open rates due to the fact that they are less able / willing to identify false positives and remove them. It means that when Affino based brands are up against non-Affino brands they will report relatively lower open rates. This has been a factor of concern for a number of clients who are feeling added commercial pressure as a result.

 

To that end we are making it possible for you to base your stats on the full open rates, including known bots, so that the data is comparable with competing non-Affino based brands. Please note that this is time-limited, i.e. 12 months, and you will need to be educating your audiences that open rates are no longer an ideal metric. Note also that if you do select this option your conversion rates will likely be lower in many cases. The setting to change how message opens are tracked is in the CRM Profile.

 

Dashboard Data Capture (Alpha)

This release sees the introduction of an entirely new audience data capture architecture and infrastructure. At this point the rollout is entirely behind the scenes, however a whole new range of 1st party data will be captured to Affino’s new serverless audience insight cloud. This data will then be in place when we roll out the new Affino Analytics service in the next major release. Crucially as most of the activity happens off-site this will have only a small impact on any service performance.

 

New and updated indicators Affino will be providing through the Dashboard include: Sessions, Average Session Duration, Average Pages per Session, Unique Users, Page Views (enhanced), New Users, Returning Users

 

Account Engagement Report (Alpha)

We are in the process of rolling our a very significant enhancement to Affino to support Account Based Marketing and Account Based Sales, it is called the Account Engagement Report. Ultimately this will replace the legacy Account Report with a suite of intelligence which goes way above and beyond what is in place to-date. Affino will automatically pull in metrics specific to each account in minutes which previously would have taken hours to assemble and estimate.

 

Note that the version in this release is an Alpha, as there is a great deal of work being done to produce all the indicators and generate the dashboard / report in the most effective and useful manner which we will look to have in Beta in the following release. There are a host of new and updated settings in the CRM Profile which refer to the new Account Engagement Report, not all will be active at this point.

 

Upgrade Guidance

 

If you have a Staging site, we recommend updating to this release and testing thoroughly prior to updating your main Affino instance. Note that all active scheduled tasks are wiped when you update the site so make sure that any required ones are completed prior to running the update.

 

It is important to liaise with the support team to schedule in an update window where they can be on hand to support with the update. It is essential that you run through the complete update process starting with the Affino Updater, followed by the sequence of the system and design updates laid out on the Control > Update screen.

 

This release sees significant platform compatibility updates, and is running on a number of updated underlying services, so will require solid testing. There have been a number of security updates on Affino’s infrastructure recently which have required significant code updates in Affino as a result. It has been thoroughly tested, but the nature of such a broad release means we recommend thorough testing on Staging before updating your live site(s).

 

The new Alpha / Beta elements in this release are: Account Engagement Dashboard. To see the current list of Beta elements you can simply navigate to them on the Support menu to see which Affino elements are in official Beta and not yet fully live.

 

Note that this release sees the introduction of Message Types, please ensure that these are set on the Message Campaigns as they will greatly assist with classifying all your messages for ease of use. To see all your Messages and Message Campaigns, simply remove the Message Type filter until you have classified the campaigns.

 

Other Enhancements

 

Account Batch Delete (New) - it is now possible to add a Batch Code to account imports and then batch delete them in the event that there are issues with the full data set. This is particularly useful when migrating audiences to Affino where frequently the data being migrated needs to go through a transformation process prior to importing to Affino.

 

Account Import - Affino now supports far more columns with the [_null_] placeholder to better support clearing and cleansing Account data. It is now possible to set an option to open external links in a new tab when importing articles.

 

Articles - we have added the new Batch Reference on the Article Edit, we have also moved the Account field below Creator for consistency and usability. Added a Country Group selector field to Catalogue Items to allow products to be grouped together into country regions. This will enable a set of products to be displayed where there are different shipping options, based on the recipient’s delivery location, rather than their billing/invoice address.

 

Article Carousel DE - see Article Listing DE

 

Article Listing DE - we have changed the Article Listing DE so that only when a podcast or video file assigned as the multimedia file do we display them instead of the Thumbnail / selected Article Image. We have also updated the Audio to use the native Podcast player. Where the file is downloadable - Affino now displays the download link below the thumbnail. It is now possible to filter the articles both by Topics and the User’s Interests at the same time to show the user articles on just the subset of topics they are interested in within a focused area.

 

Article Step Import - it is now possible to set an option to open external links in a new tab when importing steps.

 

Awards - added [_Award_Category_] placeholder to display the category they entered on an award in the acknowledgement message.

 

Bots - as bots continue to evolve, and increasingly misbehave, including mainstream bots such as Google’s, we have implemented whitelisting of certain bots which otherwise would be auto-blocked by our DDoS mitigation measures. This does put extra strain on Affino’s infrastructure as we are essentially facilitating low level DDoS attacks but in practice the benefits outweigh the costs for a select number of bots.

 

Broken Links (report) - Affino now stores the full broken link path to make it easier to export them and set up redirects.

 

Buttons - we have added further button styling options including Transition, Line Height, Letter Spacing and Padding.

 

Campaigns - it is now possible to hide background creatives at a set screen resolution.

 

Catalogue Item Import / Export - Affino now supports Text to HTML formatting on catalogue imports. This is useful when importing from traditional product catalogues and converting line breaks into html paragraphs. It is now also possible to add a [_null_] to most fields on the Catalogue Item Import. This will be transformative in the ability to cleanse and refresh data within Affino. We have also added in the ability to import related catalogue items for each product. Note that some legacy columns have been removed. Added Account and TaxRuleOverride columns.

 

Charts - we have moved all of Affino’s core charts to Chart JS. This has been a major update to move to a contemporary open source charting framework. The previous one used by Affino has gone through something of a licensing transformation over the years and therefore had to be replaced. If you identify any issues with any charts in Affino please notify us through the forums. The new framework offers up a host of improvements and crucially supports Affino’s continued migration to a serverless infrastructure.

 

Checkout - Important Update to Note - with the advent of the new requirement for all orders above £30 to have verifications whether they are app based or SMS based, orders have increasingly been timing out. We therefore strongly recommend you increase the Order Timeout to a minimum of 35 minutes, and in some cases considerably longer.

 

Commerce - Country Groups Sort Order can now be set on the Store Profile to be used on the Product Detail to differentiate country regions. Used in conjunction with a Catalogue Group of products, this will display a dropdown menu filter of Country Groups on the Product Detail screen making it easy for users to purchase products specific to their region when landing on ones for other regions.

 

Contacts - we have enhanced the Notices on contact records to flag inactivity. It is now possible to set the Inactive Timeframe on the CRM profile. The other notice indicators have also been further refined. We have optimised the contact listing a great deal for this release, much faster now.

 

Converting Article Listing DE - see Article Listing DE

 

CRM - it is now possible to define the Inactive Timeframe for your audience, simply set it on the CRM Profile. This means that you have control on when users are flagged as inactive in the CRM. This is also where we have added the Open Rate Calculation option, i.e. to use the unfiltered or filtered open rate as the basis for all analytics. We have added ‘quick add’ buttons for contacts, accounts, contact lists, contact notes, opportunities and tasks right at the top of the CRM navigation for fewer clicks and more intuitive rapid adding of CRM content.

 

Analysis Dashboard Settings -  new settings screen where it is possible to set the preferences for the Analysis Dashboard. Note that we will be looking to keep these to a minimum to ensure consistency (and supportability) however we have started off with the ability to Exclude Channels, i.e. exclude specific channels such as the terms and conditions pages from the dashboard.

 

Editions - it is now possible to download editions on the edition listing. We have added Publish Start and Publish End attributes to Editions for consistency with the rest of Affino. Editions are now sorted by the Publish Start date on the display side (previously based on the Creation Date). We have also updated the date filters on the edition search to search by the Publish Start date.

 

Edition Import / Export - major update which adds consistency to the Edition Import and Export, alongside a number of key updates with a number of additional fields supported, and a number of the existing ones changed from single values to multiple ones, for improved bulk management of your editions.

 

Forums  - it is now easier to add / edit / copy posts as Affino displays the menu both on top and at the end of each post (if they’re long enough)

 

Imports - Important Update to Note - in this release we have changed how we report import errors. Previously when referring to a row number for errors, we referred to the spreadsheet row, now we refer to the import content row to make it easier to cross reference the content being imported, the error and the spreadsheet.

 

Invoice - now includes Shipping Tax Summary where applicable

 

Media Listing DE - enhanced listing to better handle a variety of media including podcasts, videos, and document downloads.

 

Media - downloads data is now retained for one year, extended from 30 days.

 

Menu DE (major updates) - In this release we have made it possible to include menus within menus for the first time which adds up to a great deal of reuse and simplification. We have introduced a new Menu Type - Horizontal Scroll, where Affino flattens the menu structure in sequence and makes the display scrollable if it exceeds the horizontal width. We have also refined how the Search and Login appear within menus using the Menu DE - it now looks better and more consistent.

 

Messages - a very useful update in this release addresses the issue that all the auto-generated / auto-responder messages can overwhelm the Control Centre Message listing. In this release Affino automatically only displays the Premium messages and you need to select the filter to display all the auto-generated messages as well. Note that we have removed the Classic Premium message option in this release. We have also added Message Types to better support managing and filtering them, these are: Newsletter, Notification, Promotional Campaign, and Auto Renewal Campaign. We have also increased the number of articles which can be auto included from 12 to 24 for both the Section listings and the Converting Articles listings. We have also updated how Link Articles work within messages, they now instantly redirect to the ultimate link whilst capturing the analytics data en-route. An important change in this release is that previously Affino only supported a limited number of Article types in the messages, we now let all article types be included, note though that not all the meta data from each unique type is yet available to display in messages.

 

Message Campaigns - we have added a really useful feature on the Message Campaign display screen whereby it is now possible to see the overall campaign reach, and then each of the progressive filters which impact on the final reach, including: Initial filtering out of disabled, pending, archived, bounced etc. users, followed by subscription preferences and permissions, unsubscribes, activity filters and any of the additional filters you might have in place for the main campaign.

 

Message Sending - we have further optimised message sending and, refined the priority sends in particular. This means that the engaged audience is always sent messages first followed up by the long tail of less engaged users. Overall it means more users receive their messages in a timely fashion and have faster response times when they click through to the website(s). The refined prioritisation is based on Last Login (up to 6 months), Last Open / Click (up to 12 months), Last Conversion Event (all time), remainder.

 

In the past when multiple messages were sent out at the same time Affino would randomly pick one of the messages in each send slot to send out, with this update Affino cycles through the messages being sent in parallel so that each cycle features a different message being sent out at the same time. This way none of the messages takes precedence. This is particularly important when multiple messages are being sent out to a large number of recipients.

 

Optimisation - we have optimised and greatly speeded up some of the key Affino Control Centre screens, reports and dashboards, especially for sites with 100,000’s active registered users. These include: Analysis Centre and Contacts (listing). We have further optimised all of Affino’s indexes, and refactored elements of the data services to deliver faster, more optimal results. We have significantly optimised Affino’s import engine so that it is up to 10x faster for some imports.

 

Orders - it is now possible to set a default Sub Order Type on online orders, simply set this in the CRM Profile. Added shipping tax summary and note to the Order Confirmation. Affino now displays the address for each subscription purchased on an order on each respective line item where there is an address, this greatly assists with support and reduces the need to click through to each subscription (essential for corporate orders with 1,000’s of subs).

 

Order Batch Delete (New) - it is now possible to add a Batch Code to order imports and then batch delete them in the event that there are issues with the full data set. This is particularly useful when migrating ecommerce and subscription transactions to Affino where frequently the data being migrated needs to go through a transformation process prior to importing to Affino.

 

Order History (My Account) - now shows the Shipping Tax Summary with an asterisk and note.

 

Order Import - numerous improvements to better support migrating orders and in particular subscription orders to Affino. We have added the following columns: EndUserExternalID, SubscriberExternalUserID, EndUserCode, OrderOwnerExternalID and OrderOwnerUserCode. Note we have removed PaymentGatewaySubscriptionID’s as they were causing issues in this context. We have also added the Delivery Address fields to the Subscription tab to support importing specific addresses for physical subscription deliveries. In addition we’ve added the SubscriberExternalUserID for simpler subscription import handling. Note we have also made a number of enhancements to the order import process, with many more defaults being set, more required fields and smarts around address population, i.e. a single address is populated to all the required address fields as needed for the import. There are also significant error notice improvements covering a host of scenarios, and a number of fields have now been made required to ensure consistency.

 

Order Line Item Report - added Sub Order Type filter

 

Prime Related Carousel DE - see Article Listing DE

 

Pro Formas - it is now possible to select the default Sub Order Type on the Pro Formas, this is set on the Store Profile. This will greatly help with filtering and tracking down Pro Forma based orders. It is also possible to edit the Invoice date and re-generate the Invoice PDF to match.

 

Products - we have further refined the Essential Extras on products, these are associated products which can be presented on page at the same time and all (or a subset) added to the shopping basket in one go for purchase. Note that there are multiple rules in place for what products can be displayed alongside the main product, e.g. you can’t have an auto-renewing membership alongside an event ticket or a physical good. We have also further enhanced the internationalisation aspects of the product display for easier and more intuitive region selection when products can be purchased for multiple regions.

 

Receipt - added tax summary, now included on email

 

Sales Leaderboard - now supports multiple currencies

 

Scoped Search - updated layout support for much cleaner CSS code, note that if you have created custom CSS around Affino’s scoped search you will likely need to update it. It is now possible to search within a Section which is hidden from the Site Search by using a Scoped Search on the section.

 

Search - a significant update to Affino’s Search is that for the first time we now include Editions within the search, including the option to search within the ‘Additional Search Data’ field which can include the full text content of a PDF / document.

 

Search Profile - added Number of Editions attribute to determine how many editions are displayed on the predictive drop-down.

 

Security - further enhanced to fend off HTML / JavaScript based SQL injections

 

Shopping Basket - added shipping tax summary and note

 

Social Sharing - we’ve updated the sharing to be a bit smarter in that if the set image is not available for sharing then Affino will check for alternative images on the article to share with.

 

Staging Sites - Affino runs a limited number of scheduled tasks on staging instances, this is done to minimise the chance of major issues arising. There is a small number of imports and exports supported and in this release we’ve added Contact List Import to the permitted tasks.

 

Styles - as with all releases there are a host of styling refinements in this one. We have done extensive work on improving the spacing for design elements and core templates at different breakpoints to make it look as consistent and good as possible. Also, see Button above.

 

Subscriptions - we have added the following filters to the Subscription listing: Subscription Format and Product Lines, we have also updated how they are sorted to improve the overall usability of the subscription listing.

 

Subscription Expiry Report - added Un-assigned option to the Sub Order Type to assist users with classifying the orders / filtering out those not worked on yet.

 

Subscriber Export - we have extended the Subscriber Export to better support Corporate Subscriptions, to that end we have added the following filters: Product Lines, Order No., Sub Order Type and Paid / Unpaid. We have also replaced the Subscription Expiry Month filter with new Subscription Expiry Date From / To selectors for more granularity. We have also renamed the Subscription Type filter to Subscription Format for clarity. Affino now exports the Delivery and Invoice Countries as opposed to the codes.

 

Subscription Import - numerous improvements to better support migrating subscribers to Affino. We have added the following columns: SubscriberEmail, and AutoRenewYN.

 

Tax Rate Override - we are extending the Tax Rate Override support for international sales to better handle subscriptions (including auto-renewals) and pro forma orders.

 

Topic Related DE - new Use Priority Listing option which moves all your Priority articles / products etc. to the top of the listing if selected. Note this only works if you select Most Recent on the Item Sort.

 

User Batch Delete (New) - it is now possible to add a Batch Code to user imports and then batch delete them in the event that there are issues with the full data set. This is particularly useful when migrating audiences and subscribers to Affino.

 

User Import - it is now possible to add a [_null_] to most fields on the User Import. This will be transformative in the ability to cleanse and refresh user data within Affino.

 

Fixes and Minor Enhancements

 

Fixes are elements which didn’t work as well as they should, and have now been made to work better. Minor enhancements provide subtle improvements that most people won’t notice (some will love), but which nonetheless improve on the overall Affino experience.

 

Account (contact notes)

 

Account Listing (control, multiple)

 

Ad Campaigns (meerkat creatives now shown over event navigation)

 

Affino Updater (now exclusively runs encrypted, i.e. https)

 

Articles (archived send via … , media download button, edit screen name, link to and from archived article, image wrapping, formatting, adding)

 

Article Archive Profile (deletion)

 

Article Carousel DE (navigation arrows)

 

Article Import (refined to better support complex content)

 

Article Listing DE (now passes through topics for Section and Show More links when selected, added a number of new error checks when setting up the Design Element, e.g. it’s no longer possible to add multiple new tabs with no content selected on them.)

 

Article Steps (edit, multimedia)

 

Attendees (customer, line totals)

 

Award (display)

 

Awards Analysis (alignment)

 

Awards Profile (alignment)

 

Broken Links (listing)

 

Carousel DE 

 

Catalogue Attribute Group (deletion)

 

Catalogue Item (removed unused Trading Zone setting, Digital Goods now shown as Live / Active rather than On Sale, Related Goods, preview, correct subscription plans now shown on Catalogue Items, Tax Rule info display)

 

Catalogue Item Export (fixed related items which were being incorrectly assigned)

 

Catalogue Items Import

 

Channel (copy)

 

Checkout (added checks to only permit purchases from valid countries selected for the Country Group on each Catalogue Item, shipping, payment methods, added extra safeguards to prevent duplicate purchases)

 

Comment and Ratings Profile (copy)

 

Contact (extra deletion checks, detail dates, digital assets, redirect on single contact in listing, use account address)

 

Contact List (accounts tab, filter fixes)

 

Content Subscriptions (improved support for bad audience data)

 

Converting Articles (data capture)

 

Conversion Events (purchase trigger only triggered once per order, deletion, made more robust)

 

Coupons (fixed issue with changing times, discount applied on product and in basket)

 

CRM API (user filter)

 

CRM Profile (multiple)

 

Design Objects (cell editing)

 

Directory Entry (multiple media related fixes)

 

Directory Step Profile (editing)

 

Dynamic Forms (improved referrer tracking, creator filter, search)

 

Editions (error notifications, start and end date validation enhancements, sort options)

 

Edit Profile (now retains full data when changing member type and refreshing the screen)

 

Email Logs (paging)

 

Events (iCal fix, now works consistently with UTC, hides ‘add to calendar’ for past events, event signup user journey fixes and optimisation, conversion event triggering, Design Style, load more, view all button, formatting, sticky menu)

 

Form Entries 

 

Forum (copy, text formatting, setting thread type on threads in the Control Centre, creator search, editing Forum Thread)

 

Heat Maps (stats display)

 

HR (salary)

 

Jobs (load more)

 

Live Design (icon now shows reliably)

 

Login (IP address detection)

 

Login DE (improved styling)

 

Mailing List Import

 

Media (additional search data, deleting image)

 

Media Workflow Profile (unique names)

 

Menu DE (improved panel swapping, improved the Search element in menus)

 

Message Analysis (optimisation)

 

Message Campaign (edit)

 

Messages (test emails now require subject, enhance article listing formatting, send button display, previews, Affino now regenerates messages for displaying old messages if they have been deleted, open rates - see above advisory, improved styling consistency across email clients, not least Outlook)

 

Message Sending (optimisation and recipient sort fixes)

 

Message Template Builder (bold spacing, paragraph spacing, messages template editing sessions now stay active when the message builder is open, i.e. no longer errors out with a timeout)

 

Metering (formatting)

 

My Account (Subscription Renewal Notice (fixed issue with the [_Renew_Subscription_] placeholder)

 

My Messages (multiple, including message sending)

 

My Profile View / Edit (updated smart URL to work across Zones)

 

Networking Analysis Export

 

Online Forms (creator search)

 

On Page Feedback Analysis (styling)

 

Orders (gift order filter is now a dropdown, delivery address, changing payment status, GoCardless payment support improved for imported orders, assign attendees, payment status filter, invoicing, batch deletion) 

 

Order Import (now automatically assigns the Zone to the order)

 

Order Line Item Report (sorting)

 

Password Reset (improved compatibility with password managers)

 

Permissions (deleting)

 

Pro Forma (now creates reliably from Contact view, account, editing (multiple), invoice generation and viewing)

 

Products (country groups, shipping tax, product listing labels, launch date removal, geo blocking label)

 

Promotions (catalogue group title override)

 

Public Profile (updated to work more consistently on multi-zone setups)

 

Registration (now redirects to source page after double confirm)

 

Sales Report (Export)

 

Scheduled Tasks (search indexing)

 

Scoped Search (improved UX, auto-removing blank spaces at start and end, and URLs, sort order)

 

Search (browser compatibility fixes, improved indexing and results, search now support many more special characters)

 

Search DE (added new Text Item for the Search Button on the search design element separate from the main search)

 

Seminars (now list out all speakers irrespective of account type, back to listing link)

 

Share Buttons (filter)

 

Shipping (added support for free shipping to more scenarios, improved error notices)

 

Shopping Basked (added advisory to inform the user that the products in the basket cannot be bought together as they are for different regions (country groups)

 

Site Analysis (new Chart JS charts, optimisation, stats aggregation fix)

 

Skins (skin generation, multiple fixes)

 

Store Profile

 

Subscription (edit, multiple, assignment, assign group, listing)

 

Subscription Renewal (fixed issue with Renew_Subscription … placeholder.

 

Subscriber Export (delivery addresses)

 

Tasks (marked as done)

 

Text (updated Numbered Bullets to better support the latest version of Safari)

 

Text DE (new option to not show topics names)

 

Topic Channel (multiple including no longer showing duplicate topics)

 

Topic Profile (edit)

 

User Export (registration filters)

 

User Import (added more import validation checks, member type fix)

 

User Security (extra deletion checks)

 

User Security (add, Contact Type filter)

 

Web Service Profile (edit)

 

Removed

 

The following elements were removed from Affino in this release:

 

Note that this release sees hundreds of templates and data tables removed as part of our regular due diligence, performance and security based cleansing of old, expired and simply un-used code elements.

Here is an overview of some of the elements removed:

• Facebook and LinkedIn Login Tokens (now redundant)
• Classic Media Editor, Music Player, Video Player, and Document Player
• Group Dashboard
• Broadcast Events
• Production Elements
• Legacy Personalisation elements
• Legacy Styling elements
• Legacy Syndication and Aggregation elements
• Legacy form elements
• Legacy user, session, tool, and functional variables and functions
• Legacy custom elements
• Legacy campaign elements
• Legacy integration services
• Access Points
• Age Restrictions (currently replaced by Permissions)
• Legacy CRM elements including Opportunity, Contract and Supplier profiles
• Live Edit - deprecated elements including legacy presentation styles
• Editions - sort options: Highest Rated, Most Viewed, Highest Taken Tests
• Order Lists - removed legacy Label option
• Plus over 75 data tables
• And dozens of redundant columns in existing tables

 

Catalogue Item Import - the following redundant columns were removed: DeliveryAccessPointYN and AgeRestriction

 

Integration Updates

 

The following integrations were updated in this release.

 

Sage Audit Trail Export - updated values to reflect recent Affino updates

 

Component Changes

 

Affino benefits from using some great frameworks, here are the updates we’ve rolled out for these frameworks in this release:

 

Chart JS - introduced to Affino, we are replacing the legacy HighCharts (very old version by now) with the fully open source Chart JC. This has been a major project and all the core Affino charts have been replaced with new Chart JS versions. If you notice any anomalies please don’t hesitate to be in touch.

 

DataTables updated to - no change

 

DropzoneJS updated to - no change

 

JQuery updated to - v5.10.3

 

JQueryUI updated to - v1.13.1

 

flatpickr updated to - v4.6.13

 

FontAwesome updated to - no change

 

HighCharts updated to - no change - Affino retains support for clients who wish to use HighCharts within their content, please remember that doing so requires a licence from HighCharts.

 

TinyMCE updated to - no change

 

Video.js updated to -no change