Feltboard 1.9.0

December 4, 2024: Feltboard 1.9.0 Release Notes

Introducing Feltboard 1.9.0, a comprehensive release that combines two development cycles of features to bring the latest updates to our users faster. This version enhances scheduling flexibility with direct timeline editing of recurring stories and streamlines workflows by enabling media sharing across multiple sites. You can flag canvases with important messages for better context. Additionally, performance metrics, accessibility improvements, and UX refinements elevate the Feltboard experience. Explore these updates and more in Feltboard 1.9.0.

Edit schedule of recurring stories

With the new timeline in the Schedule view, you have the ability to edit the recurring start and/or stop time of scheduled stories (including one that is currently publishing). You have the flexibility to manage story recurrences without having to delete and create a new one.

See Edit schedule.

Stop all stories

There are times when you want to stop all stories that are publishing on a specific canvas.

How to stop publishing on a canvas from the Canvases & Agents view:

1. On the side navigation bar, click the Canvases & Agents  icon.The Canvases & Agents view displays all canvases.

   

2. Select the canvas that contains the stories you want to stop publishing.The information for the selected canvas displays.

   

3. Click the Stories tab.

   

4. Click Stop All Stories.

   

   A message displays asking you to confirm the stopping of stories.

   

5. Click Confirm.All stories that are currently publishing on the selected canvas are stopped.

Copy story

When editing a story, you can save it with a different name so you can quickly create different variations of stories. You can also do this by selecting a story from the story list, copying and then editing the story to create multiple story variations. By default, the story description and labels are included in the copy.

See Copy story

Media assets

Sharing media assets across multiple sites lets you streamline your workflow and ensure consistent asset management. This means you don’t have to repeatedly upload the same media asset to different sites. For example, logos are used frequently by many sites. If the logo needs to be updated or changed, it’s as simple as changing on the source site. The new logo will update on any site that is using it. You can also stop the sharing of shared media on any site.

The super admin must create a site specifically for sharing media assets and select the sites that can access the media. Once the site is created, media assets can be uploaded for sharing across the sites. All uploaded media on this site is shared.

• When a media asset is used in a story, the asset cannot be deleted.
• The labels of media asset files can be edited. However, the edit is local and doesn't affect the source media.
• Only the super admin can update and delete shared media.

When using shared assets in multiple stories and sites, you can replace frequently used assets such as the company logo, tagline, or other branding. When you replace an asset, it affects all the stories and sites in which the asset is used.

See Share media assets and Replace asset.

Flag canvas

Users can add a flag to a canvas that contains a message or notes or to provide context for other users.

If a canvas contains a message, its Flag icon is red. You can view a canvas’s message by hovering over the Flag icon in all the views where you can modify the content of a canvas, namely the Timeline and Schedule Story views.

To edit a message, click the red Flag icon to open the Flagged Canvas dialog where you can edit the message.

To ensure that important canvas information does not get lost, only the flag creator, site admin, or super admin can edit or delete a flag.

See Flag canvas.

Deploy device software

In addition to being a CMS, Feltboard is also a development platform. It can host device software in the cloud and make it available via the agent. Device software is software that is collocated with the agent on the computer at the site that’s powering the experience.

You can now deploy device software to agents and have them served without having to manually update the agent’s appsettings.json file. First, you need to enable this feature in Feltboard and provide the folder to which the software will sync. Then upload the device software to the same machine as your agent.

See Upload and deploy device software (v1.9.0).

Update device software settings

After uploading device software to Feltboard, you can easily edit its configuration and settings in the web application. The Software Info view in Feltboard is where you make changes to device software. After saving the changes, the agent(s) associated with the device software updates. You do not need to restart the agent.

See Update device software (v1.9.0).

UX improvements

Schema editing

Schemas and their names can be edited even if they are used in a published story. The operator is responsible for verifying the story content.

A character count and limitation appears in the story editor where there are text fields; the minimum number of characters is 5 and the maximum is 30.

Stories view When creating a new story or existing story, you can now add a description, which displays in the Edit Story view. Click the Pencil icon to edit the description.

Schedule view Partial word search using the search bar lets you quickly search for items, such as story type, story names, canvases, etc. For example, you can type in “pub” to view a list of published stories. The search result is displayed in both the list and timeline views.

Story view For consistency with other views, the date and time now appear in the header of this view.

Timeline view The timeline now displays scheduled stories according to their start time. The newest stories appear at the top of the timeline and older stories are at the bottom.

Timeline view In the Canvases column, a tooltip provides the full name of canvases with long names which get truncated.

Device software The size limit for device software is 2 GB, max files in the zip is 1 KB.

Metrics The Feltboard metrics dashboard now includes the execution time for Session Status.

UX changes

List of sessions menu The All Sessions option has been removed from this menu. These two options remain: This Session and This And Following Sessions.

Bugs

1. Fixed a bug when uploading a zip file that contains a virus file inside; the file uploads without an error.
2. Fixed a bug with the story publishing status not displaying on the Stories tab when viewing a selected media file in a story.
3. Fixed a bug when using the web browser’s Back button to navigate back to the Site Content Status view (Canvases tab) after viewing canvas information.
4. Fixed a bug when uploading files (assets or zip files in software); the entire file loaded in RAM (in data service) even if streaming to storage-manager.
5. Fixed a bug where the Edit Story view was not displayed after creating a story.
6. Fixed a bug where a message was not displayed when editing story data.
7. Fixed a bug where sorting a story list by story status was not working.
8. Fixed a bug where assets outside of the minimum and maximum file sizes were displayed in the Add Media dialog.
9. Fixed a bug where the scheduler could not reconnect to data if the connection is lost.
10. Fixed an error while fetching assets in the Media Library.
11. Fixed a bug where assets, other than images and video, could not be added to a story.
12. Fixed a bug where sorting the story list by name column was not working.
13. Fixed a bug where the yellow status bar and Save Changes button were missing from the Edit Story view when the story type is modified.
14. Fixed a bug where stories in the Schedule List view did not appear in the Timeline view.
15. Fixed a bug where duplicate sessions appeared for some stories on both the Schedule Timeline and List views.
16. Fixed a bug in the Edit Story view where a preview of the video would not play.
17. Fixed a bug where pausing occurred during video previewing.
18. Fixed a bug where an alert message was not displayed after editing schema and publishing the story.
19. Fixed a bug where the agent did not receive the initial payload after story mapping unless the Edit Story view is edited by the user.
20. Fixed a bug where received payloads were not logged.
21. Fixed a bug where the token was displayed in the agent log.
22. Fixed a bug while uploading large assets to the Media Library.
23. Fixed a bug where the Zoom Level controls moved below the last canvas when the canvas flag is updated.

End-to-end testing

Here is the full test report for this version of Feltboard: E2E Test Results (PDF).

(Beta) API

Feltboard has a programmatic API that is defined by the OpenAPI Initiative. The API is accessible through the agent which acts as a proxy to make authenticated calls to the API, as well as to authenticate your identity.

Once the API is enabled, the changes you make through the API are visible in the Feltboard webapp. You can create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) canvases and sessions.

API documentation is autogenerated via Swagger which allows you to test queries.

NOTE: Devs can start using the beta API for development, but should wait for v1 of the API before going to production. It is not advisable to go into production with the URL pointing to a beta version of the API.

See (Beta) API.