6.0 Release Notes

Owned by Robert Alexander Marshall
Last updated: Sept 25, 2024

Comala Workflows 6.0

 

Comala Workflows 6.0 is a feature update release.

Feature Tour | Installation | Update / Change | Support




What's New

Confirm Reading Approved Content

You can now use the final state in your workflow to start a Read Confirmation process. Use it to assign users to read the approved page, and get an acknowledgement from users that have read it. 


Built on the same dependable, familiar functionality of Comala Workflows, Read Confirmation helps teams keep track of who has been assigned to read documents, and who has acknowledged that they have read them. The confirmation can be assigned to multiple individual users or an entire group of users. It is integrated with the approved page workflow functionality, so people can confirm reading the existing approved version of a page while new edits are taking place. Once a new approved version is created, the Read Confirmation process will be restarted. 


New Space Workflow Report

The space level workflow report received a makeover in this release. We have completely rebuilt the front end to allow selectable columns, and the backend to improve performance and to allow for future integration extensibility.

(At this time only the space workflow report has been changed. Other macro and user profile reports keep their existing functionality for now.)

This new report performs quicker than our old report because it now uses the native Confluence search API. The tradeoff of this speed improvement is that the property data used in the report needs to be setup the first time. This should happen automatically, but please see the Upgrade Instructions section for more information.

It is recommended to rebuild the indexes to get accurate results in the new space workflow report.


Other fixes and updates

  • Assigning users to tasks will once again search for users in connected LDAP directories
  • Minor fixes to the workflow builder; one that was preventing a state being deleted, and some issues when transitioning between the markup and graphical view.
  • Minor UI updates to the workflow global configuration to make error messages more visible.
  • Usage data will now be sent to a new Comalatech hosted server as well as Google Analytics (from which we are transitioning away). We thank the clients that provide this data to help us improve the product. Usage data gathering can be disabled at any time in the global app configuration screen.


Upgrade Instructions

InstalledUpgrade to versions
5.0.0 to <6.006.00 - 6.8.0

JSON Content Properties Population Upgrade Task

The new workflows space report uses Confluence JSON page properties to supply the data to display.  These values will normally be updated after each change in the workflow, but on intial upgrade will need to populated.

This will be done as part of a background upgrade task after the 6.0x version of the plugin is installed. These notes and the link only refer to versions up to and including 6.8.0. If you are upgrading to 6.8.1 or later then please refer to the appropriate upgrade page notes.

If for any reason this fails (such as an invalid license) the population long-running task can be re-run manually by going the following url as a global admin.

https://<HostName>/admin/workflowsPopulateJsonProperties.action

Active Objects Table for Read Confirmation Storage

Comala Workflows has started to use active objects tables in the Confluence host database. In this release it is just for read confirmation history data, with more likely in future updates.  This doesn't require any action from an upgrade point of view, table creation will be automatic.  However it should be noted that space exports will now no longer include all related workflow information as they did previously.


Upgrading directly to the latest version

If you are upgrading directly to the latest version you do not need to do any interim upgrades.

If you are currently using read-ack macro, you need to run the following script after the upgrade to the latest version.

<base-url>/admin/confirmReadConfirmationRecordsMigration.action

It will show if any records need to be migrated.




Developer Updates

The work that we've done to improve the space level report using JSON properties is also available to developers that want to pull in workflow information with any normal Confluence REST API content call.

See CQL REST API for more information.