Releases/Winter 2024
The Winter 2024 release (17.0) was released on January 30, 2024.
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Resco mobile platform (Microsoft, Salesforce, Resco Cloud)
AI-assisted help in Woodford
The AI assistant Help is a helper utilizing the language model Chat GPT, which we have trained with all knowledge about Resco technology. This assistant is capable of assisting you with any questions regarding customization, configuration, and processes in the Resco platform, Resco products for Power Platform, and essentially, you can ask it any question related to Resco technology. To enable the AI assistant, contact us at product@resco.net.
Data model explorer
Data model explorer is a new tool available in the Project menu in Woodford. It serves as an overview of the tables used in your app project. At a glance, you can identify large tables with many columns and review their conflict resolution or synchronization strategies.
Migration from Xamarin to .NET platform
Android and iOS versions of the Resco Mobile CRM app were migrated from the legacy Xamarin framework to the latest version of the .NET platform. This change ensures that Resco technology will benefit from state-of-the-art Microsoft cross-platform framework and runtime.
Sync improvements
Fast and reliable sync is very important. We have added new options related to synchronization. We have also renamed some of the existing options for consistency and clarity.
In the Sync Advanced section of Woodford project configuration:
- Download page size - Default: New parameter. Specify the maximum number of records to download in one request. This is the new default value. It used to be hardcoded to 500 records. This parameter is initially set to 1000.
- This parameter can be overridden by Sync config.
- A similar setting is now also available in the Setup/Settings section of Resco mobile apps. If some users experience server timeouts (may happen for some complicated cases), they can reduce the page size and unblock failing sync.
- Download page size - Emails: Renamed from # Emails / Download batch.
In the Background Sync section of Woodford project configuration:
- Auto Sync Interval: Renamed from Auto Sync Delay.
- Trigger Auto Sync: Renamed from Auto Sync.
- Delay triggered sync after change: New parameter. Delays triggered auto sync 10x seconds after change (0 = immediately).
- Delay triggered sync after change (in Online mode): Renamed from Auto Sync in Online.
Dataverse plugins management update
The screen for managing Dataverse Plugins in Woodford is now easier to use. You can search/filter the entries and change their ordering.
Salesforce QoL improvements
- No need to reconnect organization after sandbox refresh or organization changed
- Until this release, Salesforce admins had to go through the tedious process of reconnecting Resco with Salesforce whenever their organization name or ID changed. Admin had to back up all Resco-related data such as App Projects or Mobile Reports. This procedure was especially daunting after a full refresh of the sandbox. Now, it is no longer needed. The only reason an admin needs to reconnect is when the URL of your organization changes.
| Note | This is only applicable for organizations connected using version 17.0 or later. So if you have organization connected earlier, you will still need to do one more reconnect. |
- Faster metadata update
- We are listening to feedback regarding long metadata update times, and in this release, we made sure it is way faster than before. Moreover, objects are now listed on the screen as the metadata is updated. You can also easily copy the log for later analysis.
- Whitelist localizations
- Localizations are updated along with metadata. You can now significantly speed up the process by making only selected languages available in Resco. Use the Salesforce object blacklist and add only the necessary languages to the whitelist.
Salesforce: Download only Files linked to records
Download of Salesforce Files can constitute a significant portion of the total synchronization time. Sync filter used to be the only option for limiting unnecessary downloads, but this is fairly limited, especially since filtering based on linked records is impossible. The default behavior of Salesforce API is to supply Files owned by and shared with the current user. Now, Woodford administrators have more control over which files are available offline. There's a new global setting in the project Configuration: Download only files linked to records (if enabled for entity). When set to "True", file ownership and sharing is irrelevant for offline availability. You can then finetune the behavior in entity settings:
- When Sync linked files is set to "All", only files linked to the records available offline are downloaded.
- When Sync linked files is set to "None", no files are downloaded.
Salesforce API 59.0
Resco now supports Salesforce API 59.0 (Winter 2024). The previous maximum supported API version was 52.0.
Support for new languages
Four new languages are now available in Woodford.
| Language | ISO code | LCID |
|---|---|---|
| Dari | prs | 0140 |
| Hausa | ha | 0104 |
| Kinyarwanda | rw-RW | 1159 |
| Kurdish | ku | 0146 |
Bring some color to flexible forms
As you probably know, forms in the mobile apps can be displayed in two ways:
- Tabbed view: one tab at a time + tab selector at the top or bottom
- Flexible view: all form content displayed at once, available by scrolling if it does not fit on the screen
This release brings more control over how flexible forms are displayed. First of all, we're introducing the industry-standard term cards. This is what we call the individual blocks on flexible forms. Previously, we used to call them tabs - but flexible forms have no tabs.
More importantly, you can now define a custom color scheme for cards. Colors allow users to easily distinguish where cards start and end. This is important because cards group related information into a single block, reducing the chance for confusion among the users. Cards also apply to questionnaires: one question group equals one card, adding clarity.
So, how to get started? Edit the theme in Woodford and enable Advanced color settings. Note the new set of colors in the Card section. So go ahead and make your cards stand out.
Code editor in Woodford
Woodford is mostly a no-code/low-code tool. However, some no-code features also have a code representation, and some, such as JSBridge, are code-only. For users who prefer code, we have now integrated a better code viewer/editor in Woodford.
In this preview version, the new code editor is used in:
- Offline HTML: replacing the previous text editor window.
- Rules editor: new feature displaying the rule code in XML format
The new editor has useful features such as line numbering, syntax highlighting, or HTML/XML syntax validation.
Not older than X days
Often, users need to see recent tasks/workorders/bookings in their apps. We have introduced a new "Not Older Than X Days" FetchXML operator that simplifies the sync filter and works better/faster than existing filters.
Display options as segmented buttons
In Resco, text input fields can be formatted as a dropdown list. In this release, the app can display such dropdown lists as segmented buttons. Two option switches can also be displayed as segmented buttons.
Use styles to enable this feature: either a style specific for component type "SegmentedButton" or a generic style with Max items count set to "2" or more.
Display multi-dropdown as "chips"
Controls that allow you to select multiple options (such as dropdown lists and multi-dropdown lists) can now display selected items as chips. Just like in the previous section, use styles to enable this feature.
Storage analyzer: questionnaire statistics
A new report in the Storage analyzer offers more insights into the questionnaires and their local storage consumption in the Resco Mobile CRM. The report includes:
- Number of templates and data questionnaires (answers), as well as their storage needs
- Template statistics by storage type, template dependency, versioning
- Largest data questionnaires
- Largest templates (used/unused)
- Largest columns for templates/data questionnaires
- SyncDownloader stats highlights
Save photos to device gallery
You can now configure Resco Mobile CRM to automatically save all images/media you capture using the app into your device's photo/media folder.
- Woodford admins can enable this globally using project Configuration.
- App users can control the behavior is the app's Setup/Settings.
In both spots, the parameter name is Save captured images to gallery.
JSBridge: Is the question answered?
The property IsAnswered has been exposed for the MobileCRM.UI.QuestionnaireForm.Question object. This allows you to use JSBridge to verify whether a particular question is answered. It can also be used for Image/Media type questions.
MobileCRM.UI.QuestionnaireForm.onChange( (qForm) => {
var changedItem = qForm.context.changedItem;
if (changedItem == "imagemedia"){
var imageQuestion = qForm.findQuestionByName("imagemedia");
if (imageQuestion.isAnswered === true){
//TODO
}
}
}, true, null)
OData service: filter by expanded entity
The OData service API has been updated to support filtering by expanded entity. Filters like this are now possible:
https://{company}.resco.com/odata/v4/annotation?$select=id,subject,filesize,__objectid_id&$expand=objectid_product&$filter=objectid_product/id ne null
This feature also applies to Resco Cloud connector for Power Automate.
DocuSign SDK update on Android
On the Android version of Resco mobile apps, we had to update the DocuSign integration SDK. Unfortunately, the migration is as not seamless as desired.
- Before upgrading your app, make sure to synchronize all your documents signed in the offline mode.
- After upgrading your app, the app displays an error when signing. To solve the problem, go to app's Setup/Settings, delete your DocuSign profile, and then sign in to DocuSign again.
| Warning | When you upgrade the app with offline-signed documents queued for synchronization, the signatures are permanently lost! Moreover, you will experience Sync Errors. Use the Clear Error & Ignore option to ignore the changes. |
Resco modules for Power Platform and Dataverse (Microsoft)
Guide readers can report issues
Users of Resco Steps+ (Guides on the Power Platform) can now comment on individual guide steps and suggest improvements. See Allow users to report issues.
Sample Power Automate flows
Power Automate is a powerful tool, but coming up with the right usage scenario can sometimes be daunting. Our consultants analyzed what some of our partners and customers are doing and came up with a list of examples of how Power Automate and Resco can be used to streamline processes. See Sample Power Automate flows for more information.
Inspections and questionnaires (Microsoft, Salesforce, Resco Cloud)
Use optical character recognition (OCR) to answer questions
A regular maintenance visit, for example, inspecting a piece of machinery, can often be smooth if your questionnaire is well-designed and guides users through all the necessary steps. The process of registering a new piece of machinery into the database can be much more complicated and prone to errors. If the inspector has to read some details about a piece of machinery and enter them into the app... OCR comes to the rescue. Users can take a photo of the product label, let the device extract text from the image, and use the text as answers.
- Edit a questionnaire template.
- Go to Options and set Feature version to 3 or later.
- Select a question of the type "Text" or "Multiple Lines of Text".
- On the Properties pane, select Enable OCR.
- As OCR reference image, do one of the following:
- Select one of the existing images from the questionnaire template. The image answer will be used as an OCR source. This must be a single-image answer (Max Count=1).
- Leave the field empty. Users can create or choose an image as usual, but the image won't be saved as part of the questionnaire.
- Save all changes.
In the app, OCR is available for Android, iOS, and Windows UWP editions of the app; both offline and online. The exact function and performance depend on the capability of the device's native OCR library. As usual, large and high-resolution images may take a while to process. Resco cannot guarantee the quality and/or performance of the OCR library.
The app displays the image with extracted text superimposed on it. Users can select which line of text from the image they want to save into a particular text field. They can edit the extracted phrase before storing it as the answer.
Export and import wizard
The process of exporting and importing questionnaire templates has been redesigned to support different scenarios. Users have more control over what and how to export and import. You can effortlessly import new versions of existing questionnaire templates. Reports related to questionnaires no longer get disassociated.
When exporting, you can select whether to include version history and associated reports.
When importing, you can choose if the template should be appended to an existing versioned questionnaire or created as a brand new template. You can also convert non-versioned questionnaires to modern versioned format.
Questionnaire options
Many questionnaire settings previously buried in the Properties pane or the toolbar now receive more prominence in the Options window. The options are logically organized into multiple tabs. See questionnaire options for more details.
Complete questionnaire and open a new instance
In various scenarios, inspectors start a new questionnaire immediately after completing the previous one. To simplify the workflow, questionnaires can now include commands that open a new instance of the same questionnaire: "Save, close and open new" and "Complete, close and open new".
Which answers to copy in repeatable groups?
Repeatable groups can be configured to copy answers from the previous instance when creating a new instance. In this release, you have more control over which answers to copy. You can specify whether to copy answers for each question.
Access style editor from style selector
When editing a questionnaire template, as you apply styles to your questions, a new button is next to the style selector that takes you directly to editing the selected style. This minor convenience feature saves time: you no longer have to search the potentially long list of styles to identify the one you want to edit.
Resco Guides (Microsoft, Resco Cloud)
More AI goodness is coming to Guides. We now offer three features aimed at the guide editor and one for the readers.
The following AI-assisted functions are available in the Guides library.
- Generate a guide from a document.
- Translate a guide.
- Generate tags.
In the mobile app, we're introducing the AI Assistant. Users can ask the assistant a question, and AI generates an answer using information from the available guides.
These functions are available on demand. Contact Resco to enable them in your organization. For more information, see AI tools.
Resco Cloud
Web app modernized (Resco Cloud)
The browser version of Resco Mobile CRM (web app, available with Resco Cloud backend only) now supports modern theming (dark/light mode), as well as the new way of rendering segmented buttons (including vertical).
Improved cloning/pulling from connected environments
The process of cloning and pulling from connected environments has been redesigned to be more stable. Depending on the amount of data, these activities can take hours. Users no longer have to wait in front of their browser windows. Once the new process is initiated, the first phases are completed within minutes, and the bulk of the action (data transfer) is then performed as long running jobs.
- CloneEnvironmentJob: copies data as well as processes, plugins, and app projects when cloning organization
- PullFromEnvironmentJob: copies data when pulling from an organization
The jobs are executed in 5-minute intervals: 4 minutes of busy action and one minute standing by.
Custom fonts in server reports
Resco CRM Connector API allows you to generate reports from a web request. Unlike the classical use case for mobile reports, the report generation does not happen in Resco mobile apps, but on the Resco Cloud server. Until now, custom fonts were ignored in server-generated reports (because the fonts are stored in mobile app projects that are unavailable on the server). With this release, you can copy the fonts into a custom folder on the server to make them available in the reports.
1. Configure the font folder in the file web.config:
<!-- Default report content files --> <add key="ReportContentPath" value=".\App_Data\ReportContent" />
2. Copy the font files to the folder on the server.
This feature is only available for Resco Cloud on premises.
Resco CRM Sync: upload filter
When using Resco CRM Sync, for example to exchange data between a Resco Cloud organization and a Dataverse organization, you can filter which records to upload to the remote organization. Essentially, this feature works just like the Sync Filter but in the opposite direction.
Feature requests
Not a product feature, but worth mentioning: We have changed the way how you can send us feature requests. Check out Resco Support portal or read about the benefits of the new process.