Hi, everybody!

In an effort to liven up these Software Update blog entries, I looked up some National Days that we in the US are all (apparently) celebrating this week. When I looked at the calendar I was initially pretty enthusiastic - I figured I could easily make some good references in this blog post to National Systems Administrator Appreciation Day (observed on the last Friday in July). Then I realized that they’re going to have some competition for their attention though, because the last Friday in July is also National Get Gnarly Day (“an opportunity to embrace new ideas and toss out old ways”), which...I’d kind of like to hear what the sysadmins have to say about that, actually.

In other gnarly Finalsite-related news, we’ve got another batch of updates to tell you about. In Composer you might notice some visual tweaks and updates - we’ve made sure that the ‘move’ handle that appears when you hover over an element is always accessible and usable, for instance. Resources elements can be linked to internal pages and external URLs now, to make clickable buttons out of uploaded Resources. 

Due to ongoing structural changes being implemented by various social media platforms as a result of GDPR regulations, congressional inquiries and other highly visible events that don’t look great on the nightly news, it’s become difficult-to-impossible to keep the dedicated Facebook and Twitter elements in Composer working correctly. Since the Feeds element is already designed to handle social media content, and since the Embed element can display social media content, we’ve removed the dedicated Facebook and Twitter elements from Composer, and deactivated the ones that were in use. Site Admins should check site pages that have social media elements, and convert them to Embed elements if necessary. Facebook elements - which are currently not functioning correctly - will automatically be hidden on your website; your users won’t see them, and you can take your time in making these updates. We’re not hiding the Twitter elements this week because they are functioning as expected (for now), but soon we’re going to automatically convert all of the dedicated Twitter elements to Embed elements. They will function the same way for end users, but using Embed elements will mean that Finalsite won’t have to try to keep up with all of the changes that social platforms are pushing these days.

Over in Resources, we’ve added the ability to link a Resource > Single-format element to a page on your site, or an external URL. This is a new, improved way of using an image as a button to link out to a page. A new “usage” column in the module displays a counter of the number of locations on the site where each resource is used. You can use this column to sort the “All Resources” and “Folder” views, to identify at a glance your most (and least) popular files. We’ve also given Posts admins the ability to decide what happens to associated Resources when a Board is deleted.

As ever, keep reading for the full list of updates in this week’s release. 

Composer

• Added visual styling to ensure the “Back” button is not obscured on Page/Banner/Element Restore pages.

• Tweaked the ‘Move Element’ handles on elements in Compose mode to ensure they’re never obscured.

• The dedicated social media platform elements (Facebook and Twitter) have been hidden from all interior site pages on Composer. (Home pages have not been touched, as those elements generally have a custom treatment.) 

  • Facebook elements have been removed.

  • Twitter elements have been converted to Embed elements showing the equivalent content.


Resources

• Fixed a bug that was preventing users from deleting a resource and its folder from the Deleted Resources screen.

• The “Link to” controls in Resource elements can now point to internal pages and external URLs.

  • Try adding an image element and then linking it to another site page to quickly and easy add a linked-image to your Composer page.

• Added a column to Resources that indicates the number of times a given resource is used on site pages. 

• Fixed a bug causing some users to see an error when enabling Resources.

• Added a text reminder to Resources > Permissions that reiterates that those module-level permissions are blanket permissions to view all resources.

• Fixed a bug that was causing all files imported from File Manager to show the .cfm file extension.

• Enlarged the Search text input field and ensure it doesn’t overlap other page elements.


Posts

• When an admin goes to delete a board, and that board includes one or more Posts that link to resources, the system will now prompt the admin about what to do with those resources when the board is deleted. Users can cancel the deletion, delete the board and all associated resources, or delete the board but first select a new folder in the Resources module to move those files into.


Integrations

• The School Volunteer SSO and Smart Tuition SSO will no longer output null values for accounts with misconfigured importIDs.