Affino 8.0.31 - the Corporate Subscription and Ebook Release

This release sees a major evolution in Affino’s support for corporate subscriptions, making them both simpler and more powerful at the same time. We have extensively updated subscriptions listings in Affino to provide more useful information on each, and made it far easier to create new corporate subscriptions by copying subscribers from existing orders.

 

Also new in this release is Affino’s Ebook sales service. It is now possible to sell single copies by simply adding a PDF (downloadable document) to a Catalogue Item as a Digital Asset, select the timeframe, and putting the document on sale through the store.

 

The latest Alpha version of the Analysis Dashboard is a major step forward for Affino to deliver deep intelligence to brand owners. With the rapidly approaching demise of 3rd party cookies Affino has stepped up to deliver the industry standard analytics with full fidelity.

 

Other areas which have seen some key updates include Ad Campaigns, Awards, Broken Link Analysis, Imports, Contact Lists, Demographic Profiling, the Menu DE, Editions, Personal profiles and favourites, and editing screen names.

 

For details on each of these see below.

 

Key Enhancements

 

Corporate Subscriptions

Previously Affino has supported large subscription orders through the bulk creation of subscriptions via Pro Forma Orders, which can then be manually assigned or import assigned, as well as being assigned via email domains. 

 

This release supports copying subscribers (and their addresses) to Pro Forma Orders from any existing Affino order, making it a fast and efficient process which minimises any chance for errors, as it captures the latest subscription addresses. When creating orders there are now options for how subscriptions can be assigned on the initial order creation, including pre-assigning, auto-assigning to the buyer or leaving subscriptions unassigned for later auto or bulk assignment. It is possible on the Pro Forma to select a custom start date for the subscription (independent of the Order creation date).

 

Affino now intelligently auto assigns subscribers to specific order line items (previously this was not joined up). Affino can now assign subscriptions via IP Addresses and IP address ranges (in addition to email domains). This latest capability means that subscriptions can now be assigned in a host of useful new ways, e.g. day passes at libraries, on-campus term based subscriptions, and annual subscriptions assigned via a corporate VPN.

 

Along the way we have greatly improved the ability to drill down to specific subscriber groups, unassigned subscriptions (including the subscription export), the specifics of individual subscriptions. It is now also far simpler to un-assign and re-assign subscriptions where needed (with a full audit trail).

 

Ebook / Report / PDF Sales

This release sees the return of ebook sales to Affino. Simply associating a PDF to a Catalogue Item and setting the subscription timeframe means that users can purchase ebooks in PDF format and download them securely from the Digital Media tab in their My Account. The Digital Media tab has been greatly improved with much more information on each item as well as the enhanced downloading.

 

We have added analytics to the download, capped how many times each item can be downloaded per person and for what timeframe, and added a dialogue for the user to confirm their intent to purchase the specific item prior to downloading (which prevents users from simply downloading and then requesting a refund). All the details of the users’ interaction with the media are visible on each order and on their contact records.

 

We have updated My Library to feature a new Digital Media tab, which can be either displayed all the time with a call to action, hidden, or displayed only when the user has purchased digital media.

 

Analysis Dashboard (alpha)

The Analysis Dashboard, whilst still in Alpha has been transformed in this release. You will notice the data rapidly accumulating over the coming days and weeks, as Affino builds up the new data sets for the Analysis Dashboard. Note that these are completely new stats and separate from all previously existing Affino analytics, running on a completely new data architecture and underlying tech stack. 

 

This release sees the introduction of a new Hourly Page Views Days selector, so that some days can be excluded from this chart, which is useful if you have minimal traffic on certain days of the week and want the hourly chart to be more representative.

 

As part of our analysis journey this release sees further key improvements in device (in particular mobile devices), user, and bot detection further driving forward Affino’s data accuracy. This will impact all audience and usage stats being captured and will see considerably improvement in the overall accuracy of your Affino stats.

 

This release is expected to be the final alpha version. We will be analysing a host of client data sets over the coming weeks, once they are updated to this version, so that we can resolve any site specific data issues before moving the Analysis Dashboard to Beta.

 

Imports

We have introduced a 10,000 record limit per import spreadsheet to Affino. In the past Affino has supported up to 100k records, but over the past few releases we have greatly improved the breadth, depth and capabilities of Affino’s imports, but at the same time the complexity and processing power required for the imports has ramped up by equal measure. We have therefore introduced the limit to ensure consistency in the import and overall Affino performance whilst running multiple imports.

 

Mailing List Unsubscribe Safeguard

We have seen a recent surge in poorly structured email agents and bots. There are two bad tendencies with these bots, the first is to ‘click’ on all the links in the emails, and to do so simultaneously. Affino simply does not count these if they happen closely together, however they can have a performance impact. 

 

The second more severe tendency is for these bots to also click the Unsubscribe link on the messages, causing users to be inadvertently unsubscribed. To combat this we have implemented an additional confirmation dialogue for emails for the first time, as otherwise it is possible that users are inadvertently unsubscribed from messages. This has been a somewhat reluctant step for us as we are big believers in one click unsubscribes, but the prevalence of so many new bots and their poor coding means that this safeguard has now become essential both for subscribers and the mailing list owners.

 

More Safeguards

This release sees a further host of safeguards added in a number of areas to minimise the chance of manual errors occurring, e.g. not being able to copy or delete a paid subscription on a specific order; or deleting campaign creatives from live campaigns. These safeguards all add up to a smoother experience.

 

Affino Tech Stack Updates

This year has seen a steady roll out of enhanced underlying services and a continuous process of security updates for Affino’s overall service offering. That has continued these past few weeks, with a number of key infrastructure updates. We are hopeful to see a period of stability over the coming months after what has been a highly active period for a host of our underlying tech providers. 

 

We are working on a major update for later this year which will result in replacing one of the key platforms Affino has been developed on this past decade with a superior alternative. The development is now underway, and we will share more details as we make further progress. This change will be highly significant and the upgrade cycle will be tightly managed to ensure the smoothest migration for all Affino clients when the time for the switchover arrives.

 

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 Alpha / Beta elements in this release are: primarily around ebook sales and the analysis 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.

 

Other Enhancements

 

Ad Campaigns - we have added support for mailto: URLs for Creatives.

 

Awards - it is now possible to select whether or not to include and make required the nominee email address. Affino now also displays the Nominee on the Confirmation screen.

 

Broken Link Analysis - We have increased the limit of the most recent stored broken links from 500 to 5,000.

 

Catalogue Items - when relating goods to Catalogue Items, e.g. Media, Affino takes the catalogue item off sale to enable all the settings to be completed before the item is placed back on sale. Affino now displays a dialogue advising that the good has been taken off sale and why. We have added support for setting whether or not a digital good can be downloaded when purchased and for how long the download is active, e.g. 1 month or 100 years. This used to use the same settings as Subscriptions but was causing issues so we have now introduced a dedicated set of settings for this. We have also made it harder to accidentally delete Catalogue Items you do not wish to remove.

 

Catalogue Item Import / Export - added support for the media download duration from My Account with the following fields: DownloadDurationYN, DownloadDuration, DownloadDurationNumber

 

Channel - it is now possible to set the Geo Targeted Country Group on each Channel, this will then be used with the upcoming Geo Targeting Design Element.

 

Contact - We have extended the Digital Assets listing with the Order No. And No. of Downloads, e.g. 4 of 5, for each digital asset. We have also added the Subscriber column to subscriptions, this is useful in the event that subscriptions are unassigned / reassigned.

 

Contact Lists - this release sees some important updates to Contact Lists, it is now possible to see exactly how many contacts there are for each status when filtering on contacts. It is also possible to see the number of companies for each status, e.g. of 100 contacts invited to a webinar 30 are confirmed from 25 companies.

 

CRM Profile / Subscription Statuses - we have added a number of new colour options for the following subscription statuses: Active Awaiting Payment, Cancelled, Inactive Not Paid, Lapsed Awaiting Payment and Renewed. We have also updated the subscription listing and detail to show these colours.

 

Currencies - easier to view and edit the Geo Targeting countries on each currency.

 

Demographic Information / Profile - it is now possible to secure Demographic Fields, this offers great new utility meaning that depending on the membership level or audience segment is it now possible to ask exclusive questions to different membership groups. One example is the ABC audit question for controlled circulation subscribers.

 

Editions - it is now possible to display all the key meta data on editions including Section Name, Original Section Name, Date and Time as well as Topics and Bookmarking. Editions appear on their own tab in the My Library (note the tab can be hidden if required).

 

Menu DE - this is an important update for the Menu Design Element. It is now possible to edit the fields, previously was only possible to add and remove them. It is also possible now to selectively hide them using the new Exclude Security attribute on each menu item. It’s a multiple selector and the menu item is hidden if any of them applies. We have further added a Live attribute to each menu item. This is to cater for seasonal / event driven menus which you might want to hide some elements and then selectively display at specific points in the year without having to re-create them.

 

Message Creatives -  we identified a couple of important improvements which are essential to the best use of Creatives on Messages and Message Campaigns and have now implemented them. It is now possible to have the same creative appearing multiple times on each message, and when selecting the creative you now also select the Campaign so that the impressions are accurately tallied against each campaign.

 

My - we have added a host of new sticky ‘My’ filters, meaning that once selected Affino remembers the preference. So for example with Tasks users might choose only to see their own tasks by default but managers would likely not have it set most of the time. We have added sticky My filters to: Accounts, Contacts, Contact Lists, Contact Notes, Opportunities and Tasks.

 

My Favourites / Bookmarks - There is a new option to display bookmarks to all users on a site whether logged in or out. Note that to display bookmarks it is necessary to update the Design Element settings to display them by selecting ‘Show Bookmark Icon To Guests’)

 

My Library - new optional Digital Media Tab which displays when users have purchased media (can also be turned off or permanently displaying with a call to action to purchase media.

 

My Profile - Affino now displays the Date / Time information on each article on a person’s public profile depending on the settings of the originating channel. This is so that evergreen content is not timestamped, e.g. a football (soccer) drill by Arsene Wenger which never goes out of date.

 

Scoped Search - it is now possible to sort the topics on the Scope Search by their Sort Order. Each filter as set on the respective Article, Edition and Media Library Sections has a new Scoped Topic Filter Sort Order setting. Note the default remains to sort alphabetically.

 

Screen Names - we have moved the Screen Name field up to sit right below the Title / Name field on Articles, Media Items, Channels and Sections. This means you can now realtime see how the screen name is updated with any change in the title. Affino also displays the original screen name below, in the edit mode. This should greatly reduce issues with screen names changing as the content is evolved.

 

Subscriber Export - New unassigned filter added to enable quick exports of unassigned subscriptions.

 

Subscriptions - this release sees a major evolution in how subscriptions are handled in Affino. One key improvement is that it is now simply to unassign and reassign subscriptions, including paid ones.

 

Topic Related Content DE - added box-shadow style option

 

Topic Profiles / Topic Channel - new editable Topic Detail on Topic Channels which highlights that the topic numbers on the topic channel reflect the content available to the user, i.e. if the user only has access to 100 stories then those are the ones highlighted against each topic. This is default shown on the Topic Channel between the Title and the first topic.

 

Two Factor Authentication - note that there are a number of new settings for Two Factor Authentication in Affino in this release, however the service is not live yet, only the settings.

 

User Experience - in the last release we introduced a new security protection layer to Affino to further tackle XSS, JS and SQL injection attacks against Affino. This resulted in a number of user experience issues, as well as API performance issues in the last release. These have been resolved with this update.

 

User Import / Export - We have added the option to use Contact List Codes on the Contact List Import and Export, this is to address the fact that frequently contact list names are very similar. If both the name and code are present on the import then the Code takes precedence. 

 

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.

 

Accounts (Control view, opportunity sort)

 

Ad Campaigns (now show error notice for invalid media uploads, prevent campaign creatives being deleted)

 

APIs (resolved critical issue with new security layer preventing API access)

 

App Bar (edition copy)

 

Article (view)

 

Article Import / Article Step Import (notifications)

 

Article Export

 

Article Steps (image previews)

 

Attendees (numerous fixes, especially for multiple purchases in a single order)

 

Awards (multiple refinements, including presenting the Pay Now button at exactly the right point for all payment variations)

 

Catalogue Item Import (related catalogue items, nulls)

 

Channels (deletion)

 

Checkout (simplified address settings, delivery address capture, delivery address hiding)

 

Contact (auto archive date display, adding a subscription, phone numbers)

 

Contact Lists (Accounts, adding contacts, now excludes accounts which have been left)

 

Contact Listing DE (styling)

 

Control Centre Links (removed character limit)

 

Design Objects (copying, filtering by type)

 

Dynamic Form (created by, security clearance)

 

Forums (code box, restriction error, control screen formatting)

 

Imports (line items)

 

Login (redirects)

 

Mailing List Subscribers (duplicates)

 

Media (now display the insufficient security clearance notice when applicable for media downloads)

 

Menu DE (horizontal menu on mobile)

 

Messages (control listing / view, campaign placement areas, paragraph spacing, error shown when message templates are expired (i.e. templates originated in old versions of Affino and no longer supported, subject editing, campaign banner URL - note you will need to review these once updated, message type, message editing, converting articles in messages)

 

Message Analysis (optimised and speeded up to process A/B targeting and open rates faster, plus numerous fixes)

 

Message Campaign (zone filter, country targeting)

 

Orders (listing, view invoice, multiple, direct debit renewals, subscription listing, attendees)

 

Order Export

 

Order Import (direct debits)

 

Password Reset Profile

 

Pro Forma Order (add, edit, address)

 

Products (improved logic on hiding non-sale associated products)

 

Profile (editing loop)

 

Promotions Report (currencies)

 

Redirects (long redirect URLs)

 

Referral Analysis (numerous tweaks and enhancements)

 

Scoped Search (styling, date filters)

 

Sections (changing presentation styles, copying)

 

Security Rights (no longer possible to delete if set on forms)

 

Send Info 

 

Subscriptions (tightened up subscription copying rules, editing no longer changes the purchaser, improved un-assigning subscriptions)

 

Subscription Renewal Profile (Sub Order Types, WYSIWYG)

 

Tax Transaction Report

 

Topics (child topic sorting)

 

User Sessions (erroring out)

 

User Topics Import

 

Removed

 

The following elements were removed from Affino in this release:

 

No elements were removed in this release.

 

Integration Updates

 

The following integrations were updated in this release.

 

GoCardless - improved web hook support

 

PayPal - improved web hook support

 

Stripe - numerous enhancements to better automatically handle Stripe transactions, improved web hook support

 

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 updated to - v3.8.0

 

DataTables updated to - no change

 

DropzoneJS updated to - no change

 

JQuery updated to - no change

 

JQueryUI updated to - no change

 

flatpickr updated to - no change

 

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 - v5.10.5

 

Video.js updated to - no change