Affino 9.0.1 - The Next Generation Tech Update

Affino 9 introduces the next generation of the Affino SaaS Service. This year has seen the biggest technical shift in Affino for over a decade, and after thirty five updates to Affino 8 we are introducing the first version of Affino 9. It is a radical shift to a new generation of open source technologies with a firm AI and Open Source foundation.

 

2023 has been an exciting year and feels like the coming of age for AI as a Service (AaaS) and together with the rapid maturity of AI foundational technologies including Langchain and vector databases, we are seeing the biggest and most radical shift since the introduction of cloud computing. We are entering an era of AI enhanced productivity across the board, so embracing AI technology such as LLMs (large language models) and Vector Databases has become fundamental to how future applications will be developed.

 

In many ways we started this journey years ago with the adoption of Python as one of our primary programming languages, and increasingly built Affino on a serverless architecture for many of our new services including our Affino Analytics Dashboard. So many technologies have coalesced to usher in the AI age and we have ensured that Affino has the firm foundation to do so with the launch of Affino 9.

 

The single biggest challenge for existing Affino users will be the switch over to the new service architecture. Because of the size of the shift our primary goal with the Affino 9.0.1 update is to change as little as possible in the Control Centre and Display side experiences, with the major new features kept for future updates. Instead the goal is to support the Affino community to ensure that all your business critical workflows, management interfaces, and user experiences are as close to identical before and after.

 

To aid with the transition to Affino 9, we will provide dedicated Affino 9 Staging services for all migrations, along with the Affino team being on-hand to guide and support with the transition.

 

Once you are up and running on Affino 9 you will benefit from the major AI, Commercial, Publishing and Next Generation Control Centre updates we will be bringing to you over the coming year, for what will be a transformed Affino service.

 

Key Enhancements

 

Key Technical Innovations

We have added a new big data architecture to Affino, as well as a framework to train and support multiple AI’s (LLM’s) and to store their associated Vector Data. We have moved on from many core proprietary technologies to their open source equivalents, and with the frameworks we were using, we have in many cases jumped to major new generations of those technologies.

 

How we develop Affino has evolved alongside the technical switch, with more AI co-pilot assistance when developing, the adoption of AWS serverless layers, key new open source frameworks, and we have continued the shift from per-Affino Instance databases to distributed data clouds, with the goal to ultimately move all the data on to distributed and big data services over the coming years.

 

The biggest shift with this release though is the move from a proprietary application server development framework to an open source one. To realise this ambition we have spent nearly two calendar years and many more man years in porting Affino to the new framework. Since the two frameworks, whilst using the same programming languages and underlying concepts vary considerably in terms of the syntax and features they support. To support the porting of Affino to the new framework we have created a new compatibility layer which has delivered very effectively, and in many cases we have been able to migrate more of Affino’s services to serverless approaches for improved performance, scalability and reliability.

 

AI Framework

Affino 9 has AI at its core, and this update sees a considerable extension to Affino’s underlying AI framework. Note that this is all behind the scenes, and whilst we have developed some great AI interfaces. these will be rolled out in the next major update so as to minimise the disruption in this new generation update cycle.

 

Affino Styling

Affino’s Control Centre Navigation has the new Affino colours in place and definitely pops a great deal more than Affino 8. It also provides a great transition into the upcoming Affino 9 design language which we will be bringing to all Affino Control Centre screens over the coming months, starting with the main Control Centres themselves and then initially being rolled out in the new AI assisted content management suite.

 

Over the course of the Affino 9 development we have identified dozens of styling improvements we can make throughout Affino, so the experience on both the Control and Display sides is now smoother than ever. We feel confident that your designs will still look great since we are very focused on the principle of this release being a major technical shift forward but one which has a minimal functional iteration aspect, and even in the event that you have customised your CSS or JS - these should remain unaffected.

 

Deprecated Templates and Design Elements - Important

We have updated the Design Centre to highlight deprecated Design Elements used in Design Objects and Skins, and if you enable Design Mode on the Display side on the App Bar then you will see all the deprecated design elements outlined and red tinted. It is essential that these are swapped out for the newer generation elements, some of which have been in place now for up to 8 years.

 

This is because after this initial Affino 9 release we will be looking to remove the current generation of deprecated Design Elements and Templates over the coming releases. It has been some time now since they were officially supported and the move to Affino 9 means that it no longer makes sense to continue to do so. Our efforts are much better spent with AI enabling Affino throughout.

 

If you need assistance with swapping out your deprecated templates and design elements simply reach out to the Affino team and we can provide assistance, training or even support you with the updates directly.

 

Upgrade Guidance

 

Affino 9 is a new generation service, with a fundamentally different set of underlying technical platforms. As a result there is a unique update process from Affino 8 to Affino 9.

 

Multi Step Upgrade Process

Affino will provide a dedicated Affino 9 Staging instance for 48 hours of intensive QA. Please liaise closely with the Affino team via your dedicated support forum during the Affino 9 QA period, to ensure all your issues are resolved.

 

When the upgrade is run, it first updates the Affino updater, this is the final Affino 8 Update. Next this is cloned to the new Affino 9 Staging service and the Affino Updater is run again to convert the site to an Affino 9 site. Note that this is a one way process which is why we are running this initially through a dedicated staging programme.

 

We have shared a test plan framework for the migration to Affino 9, however you should extend this to additionally test all your core workflows, and any custom services. In the event there are any issues the Affino team will look to resolve them the same day or first thing the next day, and if required extend the QA period, however the goal is to keep it focused and effective.

 

The Staging and Quality Assurance process is default set at 48 hours, and for most sites this should be sufficient. For more bespoke Affino implementations, and for those with multiple brands you may well wish to present a testing plan which takes longer, or which has two staging phases, i.e. an initial test period followed by a second one. It is essential that this plan and the timing is agreed with the Affino team at the earliest opportunity.

 

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.

 

The  Beta elements in this release are: panels, multi factor authentication, bot blocking, and the analysis dashboard segments, Magic Links and the Handoff API. To see the current list of Beta elements you can also navigate to them on the Support Menu.

 

Other Enhancements

 

Ad Campaigns - we have updated Campaign Themes so that rather than having an option to Remove Expired Ad Campaigns, we now have one for Hide Expired Ad Campaigns. This is for the simple reason that by removing the campaigns from the themes we were losing key ad campaign analytics, so now they are simply hidden and not removed from the Ad Campaign Themes.

 

AI - you will see references to AI in Affino, however these are simply placeholders for future rollouts, so for example the new AI Channel Type is visible but not supported in this release.

 

Articles - Article Analysis has been updated to be more context based, only showing key panels when relevant.

 

Awards - There are a host of awards updates in this release, focused on making awards easier and faster to use. Improved customisation by adding more text items; Added overall score to the overall judging screen as well as for each criterion; added ‘Judging submitted by first name last name’ to the category listing so it is possible to see when the judging of each award was submitted; Category Summary limit increased from 5,000 words to 10,000 words. Note that the next release sees major new features coming to awards, further rounding out its capabilities.

 

Bot Access Profile - now refers to User Agent rather than Browser String (it should have referred to User Agent from the outset).

 

Channels - it is now possible to copy a channel and move it to a new zone by selecting its parent channel, very useful when rolling out multiple or new sites on your Affino instance.

 

Client Campaign Dashboard - selected article stats are now always displayed irrespective of timeframe.

 

Contact List DE - we have further refined the ability to show rankings for only x users in a list. So for example you can list out the top 10 contacts from a list and the rest are shown without a ranking.

 

Directories - improved stying and layout, in particular on Mobile.

 

Editions - if is now possible to display the Release Date on editions, and we have updated the existing setting to say Show Publish Date. We have also generally improved the help and information around edition creation. We have also added support for Media 2 in the import, since this could be a file or an embed, this is only supported through the Media 2 Screen Name.

 

Events - new Hide ’All’ option to hide the all button on the events listing. Set in the Events Profile.

 

Event Profiles - have now been re-instated to provide options for how events are displayed. Initially the focus is on what combination of past and future events are / aren’t displayed and the filtering options.

 

Forums - we have refined the security and access rights further on the forums, so for example a projects moderator no longer needs to be a moderator on client forums to post addendums to project threads. Topic thread styling and functionality is also now much improved.

 

Link Articles - now support mailto: links

 

Media - we have implemented as a core Affino feature the ability to watermark PDF’s which are being downloaded from a media library. The watermark contains key personal information of the user, e.g. first name, last name, and email address to minimise the amount of sharing of the PDF’s.

 

Messages - Big styling updates on My Messages, including the ability to hide the main My Profile menu on the screen. We also updated a number of settings labels to provide more clarity on their purpose

 

Message Template Builder (MTB) - we have moved to the latest version of the latest generation frameworks for the message template builder. Note that this is a major update and has meant extensive refactoring of the MTB. If any issues arise with your message templates from this release please reach out to the Affino team for any assistance required.

 

Orders - subscription related delivery addresses are now labelled as Subscription Del. Address for clarity.

 

Order Export - Added Last Order Status and date stamp columns

 

Overlay Panels - Affino now supports both Content Security Right Inclusion and Exclusion to support more nuanced use cases for Overlay panels, e.g. for non-members, non-logged in users, up-selling and event promotions.

 

Payment Gateways - we have noticed recently that increasingly users have been setting data to be sent through from payment gateways to Affino which are not directly relevant to the Affino related transactions, so it is not even displayed but takes up considerable data space. Affino is now optimised to remove any payment gateway data not directly related to transactions in Affino.

 

Public Profiles - we have made a change to the articles listed on public profiles. Previously they were restricted to articles from the zone the user was on. We have removed this restriction so articles associated with a contact’s public profile can now be pulled in from all zones. Affino now also displays link articles on public profiles.

 

Site Search - deleted articles now rapidly removed from the Site and Scoped Searches. In addition we also now rapidly remove channels, contacts, form items, editions, forum elements, and media items. We have added the option to Ignore Article Priority on the site search. This is useful where you want to use article prioritisation when listing on sections, but not within the site search itself.

 

Social Media - improved support for Twitter / X allowing for larger images to be shared.

 

Subscription Renewal Profile - we have added new Include and Exclude Subscribers with Coupon. This way you can separate out the comms for users who are on different promotional price plans, e.g. students.

 

Topics - the Screen Name is now displayed on the Topic View screen

 

Two Factor Authentication (2FA) - improved session and authentication tracking, greatly reducing the frequency needed for re-authenticating.

 

Welcome - we have updated the registration workflow to support multiple Welcome screens on the same Registration Profile. This way a user who has multi-site access will automatically be taken to the welcome screen for the zone they are on. Note - for multi-site setups you will need to enable this to ensure that users are taken to the correct welcome screen once you update.

 

WYSIWYG Editor - this release sees an updated version of the WYSIWYG editor throughout Affino. A major update is that we have removed the right-click context menu throughout so that instead you can now use your default browser spell checks and context menus. The Data Tables and other elements previously available on the context menu are still available from the toolbar. We have also improved the auto-save feature within the wysiwyg editor and the editing sessions now last up to 90 minutes.

 

Zones - added an audit panel with all the key audit attributes.

 

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.

 

Note that we have hundreds of fixes not covered in the list below since they are either specific to the Affino 8 to 9 platform migration and would never have impacted on anyone, or because they are simply minor issues which we have fixed as part of the Affino 9 quality assurance process but were never identified previously.

 

It means the issues highlighted here are those which have been reported, fixed and will be meaningful to a number of Affino users.

 

Account Engagement Report (optimised, no longer display zero value items)

 

Advertisers (deletion)

 

Analysis Dashboard (new users, display errors)

 

Article Batch Delete

 

Article Listing (no. of articles listed)

 

Article Step (import, deletion)

 

Articles Report (selections)

 

Awards Entry (deletion)

 

Button DE (alignment, pop up)

 

Checkout (tax recalculation when switching addresses)

 

Client Campaign Dashboard (stats, leads export, Chrome downloading)

 

Comments and Ratings (refined, fixed moderation, paragraph formatting)

 

Contacts (removing topics)

 

Control Centre (mobile nav)

 

Conversion Events (multiple triggers improved and fixed, now firing more constantly, in particular for complex workflows including registrations)

 

Converting Articles Report (updated identification and retention)

 

Cookie Policy (fixes and switched the primary and secondary classes so that there is a consistency between the policy and the bar)

 

Deferred Income Report (currency selector)

 

Demographics (User Icon renamed to Avatar)

 

Directory (search, copying)

 

Dynamic Forms (data pre-population)

 

Events (past events now list in reverse chronological order consistently, event signup tab, events listing)

 

Feature Article (use main column width)

 

Forums (topics refined further, improved layouts)

 

Magic Links (usability, editing, simultaneous session limits)

 

Menu DE (multiple fixes)

 

Message Campaign (estimated reach optimisation)

 

Message Template Builder (multiple)

 

My Interests (improved styling)

 

My Preferences (improved styling)

 

My Profile (non-live articles no longer listed)

 

Opportunities (listing)

 

Orders (added checks to prevent duplicate payments being logged, Line Item Types)

 

Outgoing Feeds (updated to enforce all the URL rules in the feed)

 

Pro Forma Order (adding)

 

Public Profile (show more articles)

 

Recruitment (multiple fixes and styling enhancements)

 

Sales Report (usability)

 

Search (improved support for special characters)

 

Self Service Workflow (character limits)

 

Seminars (improved styling and usability)

 

Subscriber Export (addresses)

 

Text and Image DE (text width)

 

Topic URLs (zoning, rolled out where missing on some templates)

 

Unused Content Report (usability)

 

User Export (resolved issue with long bios)

 

User Import

 

VAT Number Validation

 

Removed

 

The following elements were removed from Affino in this release:

 

HR - we have deprecated all HR elements in this release. We have found that Affino’s HR module is not broadly adopted and as it is also a peripheral element we have decided to deprecate it. If you have an immediate HR project then now is the time to let us know as these elements are all set to be removed in an upcoming release.

 

The following payment gateways are no longer supported:

• PayPal - Website Payments Pro
• PayPal - Website Payments Pro (iframe)
• Pay360 - formerly PayPoint

Note: PayPal - Standard and Pay360 - Hosted continue to be supported

 

Integration Updates

 

The following integrations were updated in this release.

 

Google Base - updated integration to support larger product sets

 

Stripe - improved handling of orders which have a failed and then successful payment

 

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 - v4.4.0

 

DataTables updated to - no change

 

DropzoneJS updated to - no change

 

GrapesJS updated to - 0.21.7

 

GrapesJS MJML - updated to 1.0.4

 

JQuery updated to - v3.7.1

 

JQueryUI updated to - no change

 

JSoup updated to - no change

 

flatpickr updated to - no change

 

FontAwesome updated to - no change

 

HighCharts updated to - no change

 

TinyMCE updated to - v6.7.0

 

Video.js updated to - no change

 

Vue JS updated to - v2.6.12