The next major release, Elcom V11.5, is just around the corner! Driven by your advice and feedback, V11.5 is filled with new and improved functionality for publishers and end users.
You can look forward to greater flexibility and streamlined processes, making it easier for staff to perform their tasks and deliver great digital experiences.
Our team are busy performing the final rounds of testing and getting it ready for release early next year.
In the meantime, here’s an exclusive sneak peek at what’s coming.
Publishing
Simplify the publishing and authoring experience
In V11.5, we continue to focus on making the publishing experience more intuitive for non-technical users, with a series of new capabilities coming your way.
Highlights include:
Automatic article publishing
With the Structured Authoring module, staff can automatically publish articles from a template by filling in a form. Now more article attributes and metadata will be available for articles including the ability to add in start and expiry dates.
Share drafts with stakeholders
Need to get feedback or approval on a draft article before it’s published for your audience? Now you can email a link to the draft to any stakeholder and they can view a copy of the article without having to log into your site.
Easy event promotion
Want to allow your external audience to submit events on your website? Simply set up the page with the Event Structured Authoring interface. External audiences then fill in a form that publishes their event using a standard template, once approved by an administrator.
Dynamic Widgets
Improve the design and usability of dynamic content
We know that many small changes can make a big impact. In V11.5, you’ll find improvements to dynamic widgets, aimed at delivering an enhanced and seamless experience for your audience.
Highlights include:
Improved UX and layout
New display options provide an enhanced user experience (UX) for audiences. Look out for the ability to add a load more results button, toggle between grid and list views, and show and highlight feature articles first on a page.
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Improved usability
Increased search options for widgets, additional tags for use in widget templates, new widget sort order capability and refine widgets by event specific data; all make it easier for audiences to find what they need.
Additional event fields
Using dynamic widgets to showcase upcoming events? Now you can display additional event fields based on type, category, start and end date and event ICS file to allow end users to add the event to their personal calendars.
Forms and Workflows
More ways to streamline and automate processes
V11.5 sees greater granularity in two of our most popular features, forms and workflow, creating more robust and powerful automation efficiencies.
Highlights include:
More flexibility for forms
Additional form field options make forms more valuable for publishers and administrators. Now you can add a help placeholder and help text next to a field, add a user selector drop down field to a form, as well as populate a field from an external source.
Share forms without hassle
The process of sharing forms just got easier. When forms are submitted, users have the option to email multiple people including article owners and users selected on the form. In addition, workflow baskets can be setup so that approvers can only see and approve certain form fields.
Improved form validation rules
In addition to adding in a confirm email address field and using the new Google reCAPTCHA provider, you can set up extended validation rules without requiring custom code. For example, when selecting the dates from a drop-down calendar, the end date of the calendar cannot be before the start date.
Stay tuned for Elcom V11.5
We hope this update has piqued your interest. We look forward to sharing the latest version of the Elcom Digital Experience Platform early next year.
Until next time!