We're proud to introduce the March 2017 (V8.2) release of Kahootz.

There are a significant number of new features, updates to existing functions and interface improvements that will make it even easier for users to collaborate effectively.

The highlights are:

• Improved interface with new icons, styles, colours and improved responsive design on smaller screens
• A document preview feature for MS Office, PDF and text documents
• Optional 2-step authentication using Google Authenticator apps
• The ability to Tag items in workspaces and then browse or search for tags
• Improved 'Edit in Office' feature on documents to work in browsers without plugins
• Calendar event invitation that track who is attending
• New rating column types for databases
• An option to copy columns from an existing database
• Auto-refresh of calculated column values when you change a calculation
• A new 'My Activity' user dashboard item
• Additional keyboard shortcuts and accessible functionality
• A new Site Owner email address that lets unregistered users quickly contact the site owner
• Token-based authentication when subscribing to events with Outlook
• The ability to paste or drag and drop images directly into the rich-text editor

We hope you enjoy the new release.

The Kahootz team.

General Interface Changes

Restyle

To improve the user experience on PCs and mobile devices, we've updated the overall page style of Kahootz to use a more modern design that makes efficient use of screen space.

The new design is flatter, has less-rounded boxes and uses a slightly larger font. The drop-down lists for the 'Workspace', 'Manage' and 'My Workspaces' menus are now cleaner and consistent.

We've created new icons for the 'Account' menu, documents and folders and also various navigation aids like sorting and paging, show/hide and the action menu.

The responsive design was improved to show an optimum layout on more screen sizes.

User Interface

As part of an overall interface refresh, we've restyled the navigation links, forms, sort icons, popup windows, notification emails and much more.

We've improved the form input so that a 'busy' spinning image is displayed when you now submit the form, giving you immediate feedback that the system is processing your information.

When you're a member of 10 or more workspaces, you can reorder the 'My Workspaces' drop-down list to aid navigation.

New keyboard access shortcuts:

• f - show the actions menu
• Shift + t - tag an item from any view page

Improved the date-selector to make it much quicker to select dates for calendar events or tasks.

New Features

Documents

Kahootz includes a new Preview feature for MS Office, PDF and text documents. You can preview the contents of these documents directly in your browser, without having to download them first or open a separate application (e.g. MS Word) to view them. It also works across all browser platforms so you can even preview documents on mobile devices.

There's a new "Preview" section on the "View Document" page. When opened, it either shows the latest preview, if already available, or it generates a new one from the "latest version" of the document. All document downloads, previews are fully audited.

Preview lets you search the contents, page through the document or navigate via a sidebar that displays headings and sections. You can also zoom in and out, show full-screen or print from the preview.

Database

A new "rating" column type is available in databases to help gain feedback from workspace members on individual database entries. There are three types of ratings:

• Star rating – let users rate "an entry" from 0 to 5 stars. The result is the average across all responses
• Vote up / down – let users vote an entry with +1 or -1. The result is the aggregated total of all responses
• Like – allow users to 'like' an entry, the result is the number of likes.

Users can rate entries in any database view; they don't have to edit an entry to be able to rate it, which makes it quick and easy to rate several entries at a time. You can also see a breakdown of the rating responses and how each user responded.

Rating columns can be searched and included in database reports.

Text, number, phone, email, date and list columns can now have default values. These values are pre-filled when adding a new entry, and the user can change them if they want. Defaults for date columns are relative to the current date (e.g.' Date Due' defaults to now +4 days).

Security

All Site Owners may now enable Authenticator app on their phone (available for all mobile platforms) which will generate time-based one-time security codes that users enter when logging into Kahootz to double verify their identity.

Kahootz Enterprise accounts have additional options for 2-step authentication, including using SMS and voice calls for tokens, and controlling which users need two-step.

The password strength indicator which helps users create strong passwords is improved to encourage longer passwords which will increase security for all sites.

Tags

A new tagging feature to help users discover more content now lets you attach keywords to items in a workspace. These tag keywords allow you to group or categorise items based on user-defined criteria.

When you tag an item, start typing the tag name, and any matching tags will appear for you to select. If there are no existing matching tags, you can add a new one. You can apply multiple tags to an item and also remove existing tags.

You can search for tags to find tagged items, and there's also a new workspace dashboard item that shows you the workspace's tag cloud, highlighting the most popular tags.

Contact Site Owner

We've added the ability for unregistered users who want to access your site to be able to contact the Site Owner directly. Kahootz sites don't allow open-registration so an invitation must be sent to new users before they can register and join in. The new "Contact Site Owner" button on the top bar of the login page lets these unregistered users contact the Site Owners to request access.

Changes to Existing Functionality

Calendar

We've updated the calendar "Month View" to be more responsive and easier to use on smaller displays. The view changes from a traditional grid view to a month-list view which you can scroll up and down the list to view the events in that month. If you delete an event, a notification gets sent out so that users know not to attend.

The invite process has changed for both repeating and straightforward events, invited users can now say whether or not they will attend, and the event owner can see who has responded and who is attending.

The ICAL export for calendar events has been changed to token-based authentication so that it works with MS Outlook 2016.

Database - Create and copy

When you create a new database, you can copy columns from an existing database (in any of your workspaces). Previously you needed database templates to do this.

Database - Calculated Columns

For databases with calculated columns, all values are dynamically re-calculated when you modify a calculation which makes it much easier to set up and test.

Calculations on "date columns" are now possible, as well as a range of date-based functions.

Database - Search

Advanced search is now on by default and all columns are included on the search form. The filters on the advanced search page have been improved to let you do "not' searches (e.g., status is not OK) and specify things like "include all" or "include any" on Select-many column types.

The advanced search is also available as a popup form when viewing the database to make it even easier to search and filter your database view.

When viewing a database with a "select-many" column type in the "list-view" mode, you can now click on a value in that column to filter the list by that value.

Database - Other Views

The Table view has been improved for narrow screens and is now more robust when handling long text or formatted text columns with lots of data.

The Card view now gives a more modern look and feel, including a show/hide feature for long cards.

Documents

The "Edit in Office" feature now supports more browsers, assuming you have MS Office installed on the user's PC. You no longer require a browser plugin and works with Office 2010, 2013, 2016 and Office 365 subscriptions.

We've simplified the progress-bar uploader interface.

When you upload multiple documents, you can now add comments to the notification.

Folders

When moving items between folders, the list of target folders is now shown as an expandable tree to make it easier to navigate when you have a vast folder hierarchy.

Any review status information for documents shows the folder view for users who can modify them to help you manage large numbers of document reviews.

Bookmarks

Bookmark thumbnail images can now be created for HTTPS / SSL sites.

Notifications

You can now reply to the initial notification email sent out regarding new items.

Only one "Overdue tasks" notification will appear in the notifications list. Each time a new one is generated, it replaces any earlier ones.

When you reply to a comment on an item, the reply history attached to the notification email, as for discussion emails.

Private Messages

"Outbox" has been renamed "Sent" to be more consistent with email clients.

You can now send and receive private messages as HTML and have them displayed correctly.

Questionnaires & Surveys

We have renamed Questionnaires to "Surveys" as it's a more recognised and less formal name that better describes what and why our clients use them.

Multi-choice questions can now have up to 7 columns of options, to allow the "select many" type to represent days of the week.

When viewing the survey results, you can now filter on both option and value on the "full results" page. You can also search for known vote-id to find a specific survey response.

Structured Documents

When searching for comments on a structured document, you can now find ones that have attachments.

Tasks

The "My Tasks" top-bar menu item now shows a count of the number of outstanding tasks.

Tasks can now have a Start Date.

Dashboard

A new "My Activity" item is available for the User Dashboard to show your activity across all of your workspaces.

The "Tasks" dashboard item now lets you mark tasks as complete.

Web Pages

Adding images to web pages is now easier. You can paste images from the clipboard or drag and drop them from your desktop into our rich-text editor. The photos/images are automatically uploaded to the server (so they are available to be added to other pages) and are automatically scaled to fit your content.