M-FILES NEW FEATURES AND ENHANCEMENTS

Transcription

1 M-FILES CORPORATION M-FILES NEW FEATURES AND ENHANCEMENTS VERSION 1.3

2 Contents 1. Introduction System Requirements How to Upgrade Contact Us Metadata Card Configurability Configuration Conditions Behaviors Metadata Card Behaviors Property Group Behaviors Property Behaviors Localized Configurations Improvements in Assignments Assignment Completion Criteria in Task Assignment Approval Assignments Electronic Signatures in Assignments Parallel Approvals in Workflows Improvements in State Transition Actions Specifying the Name and Description for the State Transition Permissions Electronic Signatures Automatic State Transitions in Workflows State Transitions Based on Workflow Assignments State Transitions Based on Metadata Improvements in Electronic Signatures... 21

3 6. Combo URLs Paging for Listings of Search Results and Views Faster and More Scalable Full-Text Search Other improvements Encrypting Existing Files in the Vault Support for Importing Nested User Groups from Active Directory New Protocol Support in Federated Authentication Improvements in Microsoft Azure Active Directory Integration Support for New File Formats in Preview, Annotation and Hit Highlighting Distributing Vault-Specific Registry Settings from M-Files Server Hyper-compression for imported images Extraction of Message Properties Disabling the "Look for different inflected forms of the words in Quick Search" Option Improvements in M-Files Mobile Language versions of M-Files software Change History Reference Documents... 33

4 1. Introduction M-Files offers a variety of new features and enhancements to increase performance, reliability, productivity and efficiency. This document walks you through the main enhancements in detail. 1.1 System Requirements The main compatibility differences between M-Files and M-Files 2015 are the following: M-Files supports Windows 10, Microsoft Office 2016, and Autodesk AutoCAD M-Files no longer supports Windows 2003 Server. The technical specifications for M-Files are detailed in the Technical Data Sheet. 1.2 How to Upgrade M-Files customers with an active Upgrades and Support Subscription have the right to update their M-Files software at no charge. If you need support for installing or upgrading the software, or if you want to gain as much benefit as possible from the features in M-Files for your company's specific needs, our consultancy services are available. Our customer service staff is also available to assist you with any licensing and subscription related matters. Please see the detailed step-by-step upgrade instructions to get started with M-Files Contact Us Please contact an M-Files Partner or our sales team for a custom online or on-site presentation of M-Files tailored for your business needs. us at sales@m-files.com. For technical support, please send requests to support@m-files.com or visit 4

5 2. Metadata Card Configurability The metadata card in M-Files is fully configurable to help your organization capture metadata more efficiently and more accurately. You can create multiple configuration rules and determine the hierarchy between the rules. The rules are evaluated hierarchically. Document Projects Account Proposal Agreement Customer project Internal Project Customer Vendor NDA Maintenance Image 1: The metadata card configuration rule hierarchy (example). Each configuration rule consists of conditions and behaviors. Conditions determine when the configuration is applied, and behaviors define how the configuration is changed. Configuration rule (e.g. "Agreement") Condition (e.g. Class = Agreement) Behavior (e.g. set description for the Document Date property) Image 2: The metadata card configuration rule structure. The table below shows a simple configuration example for agreements: RULE NAME RULE HIERARCHY CONDITIONS BEHAVIORS Document Root level item Object type = Document None. Agreement Child to Document Class = Agreement Set Use the first effective date of the agreement as the description for the Document Date property. NDA Child to Agreement Contract type = NDA Hide the Effective through property Maintenance Child to Agreement Contract type = Maintenance Make the Effective through property mandatory 2.1 Configuration Metadata card configuration is applied via M-Files Admin (see below). 5

6 Image 3: Metadata card configuration. For comprehensive configuration instructions, please refer to the Configuring the Metadata Card document in M-Files Knowledge Base. 2.2 Conditions The metadata card configuration conditions can be based on either object type, class, or property values. 2.3 Behaviors The following behaviors can be determined for the metadata card once the condition rule criteria is met: Metadata Card Behaviors You can create a description section shown on top of the metadata card. The description can contain text and hyperlinks. It is also possible to add a picture to the metadata card description area. 6

7 Image 4: Metadata card description Property Group Behaviors You can define multiple collapsible property groups to be used on the metadata card for better organizing the properties. The groups can be also hidden, for instance, in certain workflow states. Image 5: Metadata card groups. Configuration options for property groups: 7

8 BEHAVIOR NAME Title IsCollapsible IsCollapsedByDefault Priority HasHeader IsHidden IsDefault DESCRIPTION The title text of the group (for example System Properties in the screenshot above). Defines whether the group is collapsible or not. Defines whether the group is collapsed by default. The priority order of the property group in relation to other property groups. Defines whether the group has a visible header (title text). Defines whether the group is hidden. Defines whether the group is the default group. All properties without an assigned group are added to the default group Property Behaviors Property behaviors can be used for helping the user fill in the metadata card. The configuration options are: Tooltips Descriptions Default values Showing and hiding properties Making properties mandatory or optional to fill Tooltips Tooltip texts are shown when the user hovers the cursor over the property. A tooltip text can be localized to and shown in any preferred language. Image 6: Metadata card tooltip. Descriptions Description text is shown when the metadata property field is selected. The description text can be localized to and shown in any preferred language. Image 7: Metadata card description. Default values The default values for properties can be configured in multiple ways. For text properties, they can contain text, whereas for date properties, they can be dynamic. In the example below, the default value for the Document date property is set to Today and the default value for the Effective date property is set to Today + 14 days. 8

9 Image 8: Default values on the metadata card. Showing and Hiding Properties Properties can be shown or hidden based on other metadata of the object. In the example below, the Unit(s) property is only shown if the value of the Scope property is Unit. Image 9: Showing and hiding properties. Making properties mandatory or optional to fill Properties can be set mandatory or optional based on other metadata of the object. In the example below, the Unit(s) property is mandatory if the value of the Scope property is Unit. Image 10: Mandatory and optional properties Localized Configurations M-Files supports 29 languages. In addition to this, the metadata structure elements can be exported and translated to multiple languages. Administrators and users can define the preferred metadata structure language. In M-Files , you can also localize the metadata card behavior so that, for example, the metadata card descriptions and property tooltips are shown in different languages to different users. 9

10 Image 11: Metadata card configuration can be localized. 3. Improvements in Assignments In M-Files 2015 and earlier, the assignment objects can be used either as standalone task assignments, as assignments related to a document or another object, or as separate workflow assignments. The logic in the assignment objects was always similar: there can be one or many assignees, and assignees can mark the assignments complete or leave them open. Once all assignees had marked the assignment as complete, the assignment object was considered as complete. M-Files extends the assignment capabilities in numerous ways. The main enhancements are: Possibility to complete a task assignment when any of the assignees has completed the task Approval assignments Support for electronic signatures in assignments 3.1 Assignment Completion Criteria in Task Assignment In M-Files 2015 and earlier, the assignment object was considered to be completed once all assignees had marked the assignment as complete. In M-Files , you can configure the assignment completion criteria on the Assignment Details tab of the assignment class properties. 10

11 Image 12: Configuring assignment completion criteria. In the example below, Mia assigns a task to Ivan and Isa to update brand guidelines. Image 13: Creating an assignment that any assignee can complete. 11

12 The task is assigned to Ivan and Isa. They receive an notification from M-Files and the assignment is show in their Assigned to Me view. If Ivan marks the assignment as complete, Mia is notified and the whole assignment is considered to be completed, and thus is removed from Isa's Assignment to Me view. Image 14: Marking an assignment as complete. 3.2 Approval Assignments It is now also possible to configure approval assignments in M-Files. The main difference between a task assignment and an approval assignment is that the assignee can either approve or reject an approval assignment. Task assignments can be marked as complete but cannot be rejected. The approval criteria can be configured for the approval assignments. You can determine, whether all assignees must approve the assignment or whether it is sufficient that any of the assignees approves the assignment. Regardless of how you configure this setting, the approval assignments are always considered to be rejected when any of the assignees rejects the assignment. 12

13 Image 15: Configuring approval assignments. Assignees can approve or reject the assignment by using the Approve and Reject buttons on the tasks area, or by using the and buttons on the metadata card. Image 16: Approving and rejecting assignments. 13

14 The table below explains how different configurations and approval statuses affect the approval assignment status: APPROVAL CONFIGURATION APPROVAL STATUS ASSIGNMENT STATUS All must approve All must approve (Some have approved) (Open) All must approve (One has rejected) All must approve (All have approved) (One has rejected) 3.3 Electronic Signatures in Assignments Customers with the Electronic Signatures module can also configure M-Files to require the users to provide an electronic signature for completing, approving, or rejecting assignments. This is important if your organization must comply with certain industry regulations, such as FDA 21 CFR Part 11. Image 17: Approving and rejecting assignments. 14

15 It is also possible to configure multiple signature meanings that the assignee can choose from. This helps with configuring workflows and assignments in highly regulated environments where the intent of each electronic signature must always be captured and where assignees might have multiple roles in the process. Image 18: Configuring the signature meaning. 4. Parallel Approvals in Workflows In M-Files 2015 and earlier, you can create only one assignment per workflow state. In M-Files , you can configure multiple assignments per workflow state. Each assignment can have a unique set of assignees, as well as a separate assignment class, title, description, and deadline. With the assignment class, you can define the assignment type (task or approval assignment) and the assignment completion criteria (see chapter 3 for details). In the example below, separate assignments are created to capture the brochure approvals of the Brand Manager and the Medical Affairs Manager. 15

16 Image 19: Configuring multiple assignments in workflows. 5. Improvements in State Transition Actions You can now configure multiple state transitions between two states. This is practical if you want to allow both automatic and manual state transition from the Approved state to the Rejected state, for example. You can access the state transition properties by double clicking the state transition arrow in the workflow diagram. 16

17 Image 20: Accessing the State Transition Properties window 5.1 Specifying the Name and Description for the State Transition You can specify a name and a description for the state transition. For instance, in the workflow diagram in Image 20, you might want to call the action of moving a document from the Listed for approval state to the Approved state as Approve. Image 21: Configuring name and description for state transitions. After configuring the state transition name, the new name is shown in M-Files Desktop (that is, Approve instead of Approved). Image 22: State transition name shown in M-Files Desktop. 17

18 5.2 Permissions The permission to perform a specific state transition are now configured in the state transition properties window. In M- Files 2015, this setting was configured in the workflow state properties window. 5.3 Electronic Signatures The electronic signature settings for specific state transition are now configured in the state transition properties window. In M-Files 2015, this setting was configured in the workflow state properties window. 5.4 Automatic State Transitions in Workflows In M-Files 2015, you can configure automatic state transitions in the properties window of each workflow state. M-Files extends these capabilities in two ways: it is now easier to configure the state transitions caused by status changes in workflow assignments, and it is easier to configure conditional state transitions State Transitions Based on Workflow Assignments In the example below, two assignments are sent when the brochure enters the Waiting for approval state. The other assignment captures the approval from a brand manager and the other assignment captures the approval from medical affairs managers. These assignments are independent and both approvals are required for moving the brochure to the approved state. On the other hand, if either a brand manager or a medical affairs manager rejects the assignment, the brochure cannot be published and is automatically moved to the Rejected state. You can configure this behavior by setting triggers for the Waiting for approval -> Approved and the Waiting for approval -> Rejected state transitions. You can access the trigger options by first adding a state transition between the states and then by double-clicking the arrow in the diagram: 18

19 Image 23: Configuring state transition triggers. In this example, you would specify the Trigger the state transition once all separate assignments are completed or approved option in the Waiting for approval -> Approved state transition. Then you would specify the Trigger the state transition if any separate assignment is rejected for the Waiting for approval -> Rejected state transition State Transitions Based on Metadata You can also automatically trigger state transitions based on the metadata of the object. In the workflow example below, all purchase invoices must be approved by the manager of the department (specified in the metadata). Purchase invoices worth $10,000 or more must be additionally approved by a member of the Finance user group. The workflow is configured so that the invoices are moved automatically from the Approved by Manager state to the Invoice Approved state if the value of the invoice is less than $10,000. If the value of the invoice exceeds $10,000, it is moved to the Waiting for Finance Team Approval state. 19

20 Image 24: Approval workflow for purchase invoices. To configure the automatic state transitions from the Approved by Manager state, double-click the state transition arrows and configure the Trigger the state transition once the object fulfills the specified criteria option. For the Approved by Manager Invoice Approved state transition, you would specify Sum in USD < as the criteria. For Approved by Manager Waiting for Finance Team Approval, you would specify Sum in USD >= as the criteria. Image 25: Configuring conditional state transitions. 20

21 5.5 Improvements in Electronic Signatures You can specify the users that are allowed to make the state transition between different states. You can also configure that the state transition can be executed only by providing an electronic signature. These features are unchanged from M-Files 2015, but you now have an option to let the user choose the signature meaning from the list. This feature is also supported with assignments and explained in more detail in chapter Combo URLs Objects and views can be referred to with two kinds of hyperlinks in M-Files. M-Files URLs (with the m-files:// prefix) are supported in M-Files Desktop and M-Files Mobile. M-Files Web does not support M-Files URLs but the objects can be referred to with http(s) URLs instead. Since it is not always possible to know whether the recipient of the hyperlink wants to access the object in M-Files using M-Files Web, Mobile, or Desktop, M-Files adds support for Combo URLs that contain hyperlinks for all clients: Invoice # Fortney Nolte Associates (Desktop, Web, Mobile) Image 26: The Get Hyperlink feature in M-Files Desktop. 21

22 Image 27: The Get Hyperlink window in M-Files Desktop. Image 28: The Get Hyperlink feature in M-Files Web. 22

23 Image 29: The Get Hyperlink window in M-Files Web. Image 30: The Get Hyperlink feature in M-Files Mobile. 23

24 7. Paging for Listings of Search Results and Views M-Files helps in making listing views less cluttered as users can paginate the listings. In the example below, the search found 46 documents with the keyword proposal. The first 10 results are shown, and the user can show all results by pressing the Next button. Image 31: Paging of listings. The pagination settings can be configured either by admins or by end-users via the context menu of the listing area: 24

25 Image 32: Configuring the page size in listings. 8. Faster and More Scalable Full-Text Search The recommended maximum number of objects in an M-Files Standard document vault is one million objects. Although, this is not a hard limit, the full-text search index often becomes a bottleneck in the system if you go beyond one million objects in the vault. For M-Files Enterprise Edition users the new recommended maximum number of objects per vault is as high as 10 million objects. Solid performance in big repositories can be achieved by leveraging the new full-text search indexing capabilities offered to the Enterprise Edition customers. These technologies allow using multiple indexing servers for the repository. Please contact us for more details and recommendations. 25

26 9. Other improvements 9.1 Encrypting Existing Files in the Vault M-Files 2015 introduced the possibility to encrypt file data at rest. This feature has been further developed for M-Files You can now ensure that existing file data at rest is encrypted as well. Image 33: Encrypting existing files. It is also possible to re-encrypt the files with a new encryption key. First, change the encryption key in the vault by disabling and re-enabling the encryption (in the vault properties dialog). Then run the Update Encryption Status of Existing Files operation. 9.2 Support for Importing Nested User Groups from Active Directory Users from a nested user group hierarchy are now imported as a flat list of users. This feature is supported with Microsoft Active Directory and Microsoft Azure Active Directory. 9.3 New Protocol Support in Federated Authentication M-Files 2015 supports federated authentication via the SAML V2.0 protocol. M-Files adds support for OAuth 2.0 and LDAP protocols. Refer to the Using Federated Authentication with M-Files document in M-Files Knowledge Base for more information. 26

27 9.4 Improvements in Microsoft Azure Active Directory Integration M-Files provides a synchronization plugin for Microsoft Azure Active Directory for importing users and user groups from Azure Active Directory to M-Files. 9.5 Support for New File Formats in Preview, Annotation and Hit Highlighting M-Files is able to generate the viewer file for new additional file formats. M-Files now supports the following file formats in Preview, Annotation and Hit Highlighting: Microsoft Word files (docx, docm, dotx, dotm, doc, dot) HTML and web archive files (htm, html, mht, mhtml) Microsoft Excel files (xlsx, xlsm, xltx, xltm, xlsb, xls, xlt) Microsoft PowerPoint files (pptx, pptm, ppsx, ppsm, potx, potm, ppt, pps, pot) OpenDocument files (odt, ott, ods, odp) Visio Drawings (vsd, vdx, vss, vsx, vst, vtx, vdw) files (eml, emlx, msg) RTF files PDF files NEW: Image files (tif, tiff, jpg, jpeg, bmp, gif, png) o Applies to annotation and preview only NEW: Text files (txt) See the following Knowledge Base articles for more detailed information about these features: Supported File Formats in Annotation Supported File formats in Hit Highlighting Supported File formats in Preview 9.6 Distributing Vault-Specific Registry Settings from M-Files Server M-Files Desktop offers numerous configuration options. You can, for instance, define whether files are checked in or left checked out when the user closes them. Each user can configure this setting in the user-specific settings of M-Files Desktop Settings. You can also deploy select configuration settings to all users in your organization. Previously, the configuration was deployed by exporting the configuration as Windows Registry file (REG file) and then deploying these files to users using Group Policy Objects or similar mechanisms. In M-Files , you can save the configuration to the named value storage of the vault. The settings are applied to the client computer upon user login. See Distributing Vault-Specific Registry Settings from M-Files Server in M-Files Knowledge Base for a comprehensive configuration guidance. 27

28 9.7 Hyper-compression for imported images With the intelligent hyper-compression option in Connection to External File Sources feature you can compress the file size of imported documents significantly without losing the quality of the scanned images. This feature is particularly useful when scanning images that contain both text and graphics and that have for instance black text on white background and colorful images in the same document. Image 34: Hyper-compression of imported files. 9.8 Extraction of Message Properties You can now extract properties from messages when moving them to M-Files. M-Files Admin provides integration settings for defining mappings between property fields and M-Files properties: 28

29 Image 35: Client Integration Settings. Image 36: Additional Conditions in M-Files search. 29

30 9.9 Disabling the "Look for different inflected forms of the words in Quick Search" Option By default, the search in M-Files looks for different inflected forms of words in Quick Search. If the user searches for the word criteria, the search also finds objects with the word criterion in the content or metadata. This kind of lemmatization usually leads to better search results but the downside in some use cases and with some languages might be that the search may return too many or unrelated results. You can disable this feature via the Additional Conditions window in M-Files Desktop. In some cases it may be desirable that searching by inflected forms is disabled by default. Currently, it is always enabled by default in the simple search. Image 37: Additional Conditions in M-Files search. Image 38: Look for different inflected forms of the words in Quick Search. In M-Files , you can also set this option to disabled by default. Use the following JSON configuration to disable this feature on all clients (refer to chapter 9.6 for instructions on distributing this setting): 30

31 Storage type: MFConfigurationValue Namespace: M-Files.Core.Client.Settings { } "MFShell": { "SearchBar": { "DefaultStemmingEnabled": false } } 10. Improvements in M-Files Mobile M-Files Mobile apps for Android, ios, and Windows Phone are updated quarter-yearly. These updates are independent of M-Files Server, Web, and Desktop updates. The latest enhancements in M-Files Mobile focus on improvements in federated authentication and offline use. Please review the M-Files Mobile Apps Feature Comparison document in M-Files Knowledge Base for up-to-date feature support information. 11. Language versions of M-Files software Albanian NEW Arabic Bulgarian Chinese (Traditional/Taiwan) Chinese (Simplified/RPC) Croatian Czech Danish NEW Dutch English Estonian Finnish French German Greek Hebrew Hungarian Italian Japanese Norwegian NEW Polish Portuguese (Brazil) Romanian Russian Slovenian Spanish Swedish Turkish Vietnamese In addition to providing these software localizations, M-Files lets you to translate the metadata structure to any language. Users can individually select the software and metadata structure language of their preference. 31

32 The M-Files Web language is determined by each user's browser settings, but it is equally possible for the system administrator to override the language selection via the M-Files Web configuration site. The language of an M-Files mobile app can be changed via the language settings of each device. 32

33 12. Change History The table below describes the essential changes by document version. VERSION DATE ESSENTIAL CHANGES Initial published version Chapter 1.1 modified Chapter 2.1 added Chapter 6 modified Chapter 9.6 added Chapter 5 added Chapter 6 modified Chapter 9.7 added Chapter 9.8 added Chapter 9.9 added 13. Reference Documents M-Files Technical Data Sheet Distributing Vault-Specific Registry Settings from M-Files Server How to Upgrade M-Files Software Configuring the Metadata Card M-Files Mobile Apps Feature Comparison Using Federated Authentication with M-Files 33