Perfion Windows Client - Version 4.5

Error occurred when creating a new User Group

An error would occur when creating a new User Group. This error has been fixed.

Publications can now be run without having 'EN' as an active

Fixed a bug where it was not possible to run Publications, if 'EN' wasn't an active language in database.

Users without security access can no longer load binaries in the gridview

Fixed an issue in the gridview, where users with read-only access to explicit binary features could load files into the feature value. The option 'Load file...' is now unavailable for read-only users.

Updated ImageGlue

Updated ImageGlue dlls from 7.5.0.0 to 7.5.0.1.

Translations: Fixed German translations

Fixed some German translations in Options which had been switched around

Image/file server could not handle very large files

Image/file server could not handle very large files. Client would throw an "Overflow or underflow in the arithmetic operation." exception at client. Server would not fail.

'Can Edit Non-localizables' options no longer overrules Group Security

The user option 'Can Edit Non-localizables' will no longer overrule Group Security in the Item Editor for Localizable Selectable features.

Report server cannot generate report

The report server (Perfion API) had an issue. When generating a report that includes a table designer feature, the service crashes.

ECommerce API gave error when "bad characters" were stored in Perfion

Calling a method on the ECommerce API would break, if "bad characters" were stored in Perfion. In this, case a bad character is one that cannot be represented in Unicode. Usually it is non-printable characters. Newer Perfion-versions filter such characters away when importing/editing data, but they can still be in a Perfion database upgraded. The error message you would get from the ECommerce API is "System.Xml.XmlException: '?', hexadecimal value 0xFFFF, is an invalid character. Line xxx, position yyy." This issue affected all components depending on the ECommerce API like the Perfion Connector for Sana, Ucommerce Connector etc.

Various minor issues regarding counting languages

A few minor issues regarding licensing for languages have been resolved:

• IND-language (Indonesian) has sometimes been used for keys for selectable feature imports. Therefore, this language should not be counted up against the licensed languages (which it was in previous versions).

• Specifying a language using lower-case (i.e. "de" instead of "DE") would give a "de is not an active language"-error. This is no longer the case.

• The check having licensed languages slowed the API slightly and has been optimized.

Security: CTRL+F2 for Binaries in grid now respects security

Pressing the shortcut CTRL+F2 on a binary feature in the grid now respects the user’s security rights. Previously a user could load binary files into read-only features by pressing the CTRL+F2 shortcut.

License Management: Loading old license would insert empty language in database

When starting Perfion and providing the License Management window with an old license file, an empty language entry would be inserted into the database. This has now been fixed.

Updated translations

Translations of various UI elements have been updated.

Reports: Generating reports with a multi-parameter would throw an exception

When generating a report with a parameter which contained the attribute 'multi', Perfion would throw an error. This has now been fixed

Translations: Dutch

Added additional translations for Dutch in the GUI, which were missing.

License: Fix error in License Management window

In rare occurrences, when starting Perfion and loading a new license, Perfion wouldn't start, if the database didn't meet the loaded license's terms and the user clicked 'Cancel' in the License Management window. This is fixed.

Action Mapping v2: Action Mapping has been enhanced

Action Mapping v2 adds output for all formats Excel, Delimited and Fixed-Width Text formats, as well as writing output to an Xml-structure by using Xslt. Xml generation has been enhanced so it is now possible to generate any Xml-structure by use of Xslt. It is possible to include multiple data-sources in Action Mapping in your output. This means that any data from Perfion, or linked via other data-sources in Action Mapping can be included into an Xmlstructure, which makes virtually any Xml-output possible. An Xslt-code debugger has also been added that makes it possible to open the editor directly from a Command step, and edit the code and immediately test what the code generates without actually completing the Command, but only testing what it would generate in case it was executed. This makes it possible to test your code and changes multiple times on the current step without having to re-start the Action every time the script is changed.

Windows Client: Default Sana Configuration contained an invalid language name

When installing the Sana Configuration you got an invalid language name as part of the default configured languages (part of Settings). You got an "NL" instead of an "NLD". This has been fixed

Logging: Restore Item from recycle bin or log could fail with an "overflow"-error

Restoring an item from the recycle bin or log could fail with a message saying something like 'The datediff function resulted in an overflow'. This happened when there were delete-entries for values that were older than about 24 days for the item you tried to restore. In addition, if there were more than 3 seconds between the time the item was logged as deleted and the values deleted as part of the deletion were logged as deleted, the values would not be restored to the item. In order to get the values, somebody, with access to the log, had to restore these values manually onto the empty item. Both the above-mentioned issues have been fixed.

Windows Client: Magento has been added as one of the known ECommmerce Systems

This simply means that installing the ECommerceApi will also create an ECommerceSystem-item for "Magento"

InBetween: Exported images would always be of lowest quality

Previously when exporting images as separate files with InBetween selected, the Image Resolution would always be exported in the lowest quality. This has now been fixed, so the exported image resolution is matching the selected image resolution in the export window.

Remotes: Remotes do not return all values if there is a gap in values

Database remotes had an issue, when it could not retrieve all chunks of data from database if there was at least one chunk with no data. It returned only chunks of data until the first empty chunk was found. This issue was fixed and now all chunks are processed correctly until all data from database is read.

DB Installer: Now works in non YMD timezones

DB-Installer now correctly uses an explicit timezone - before it would use the system's timezone and crash if it was non YMD.

Column chooser: Added shortcut

The Enter key will now be accepted in the search box. This will add the currently selected item from the list.

Grid / Compare: Copy all and Copy all values mixed up

The left click menu of the compare window shows "Copy all" and "Copy all values" But the functionality has been mixed up between the two. This has now been fixed.

GUI / Sections: Changing sections sets focus incorrectly

When changing sections in Perfion, the focus is not set correctly. This means that the user cannot use shortcuts properly. The first "Selector" on the right side of Perfion will now be focused.

Grid: Focus issues when using shortcuts

When using shortcuts in grid, Perfion sometimes crashed when the currently focused item was filtered away. Also, focus will now more reliably be set to the first item in the grid, instead of nothing begin selected.

Grid / Item Creator: Shortcut change

Toggling between images in grid and opening the item creator has switched shortcuts. This means that:

• CTRL + SHIFT + I: Toggles image show option in grid

• CTRL + SHIFT + L: Opens the item creator

Also added shortcut to item creator:

• ESC: Closes the open item creator

Grid: Simple feature validation

Simple feature validation implemented in grid, item editor, copy-paste, replace, comparison tool, import, copy item. Copy-paste functionality updated to show warnings and errors in case the data one tries to paste is invalid. For example, if one copies text and tries to paste to number type feature. Similar validation is done for string and link type features where string length is checked. Finally, user will be notified if he/she will try to paste data into multivalue or selectable features in those cases where such operation is not supported by Perfion.

Item Editor: Features without View Group is now positioned before those with

From Perfion 4.5.21 (dev 4565), features with a View Group was shown topmost in the Item Editor, that is, before features having a View Group were shown. Now this has change has been reverted, so features without a View Group are shown first. If you do not use View Groups, or you have all features put in View Groups, this change has no effect

Import: Import empty values to Perfion with stage when Perfion has duplicate keys

There was an error when importing to Perfion when stage is used and in Perfion there are items with duplicate keys. The import fails, which is by design, but the side effect was that it also imported empty values. The fix was to reject any intermediate changes in case import fails

Configuration: Feature configuration import does not support space for item name

Feature configuration import was fixed to support preceding or trailing spaces in item names. The configuration path structure rules have been changed to not allow empty spaces anywhere around path nodes. Import manual was updated to reflect changes.

Item editor: Deadlock handling

Better database deadlock type exception handling implemented, which will be intercepted by Perfion and will show some more user friendly explanations what is happening. Item editor save action updated to keep the data modified in item editor intact in case some error happens while trying to save data to database. This allows to repeat the save operation again.

Grid: New item creation failure after unsuccessful delete of other item

The grid item handling procedures were fixed when unsuccessful item deletion procedure affects the following operations. Before the fix the grid will keep the selection of items from previous operation in memory and when new operation is requested by user, then it have tried to perform the previous operation again, and also the new operation

Import: Performance improvement

A seemingly normal import file containing ~50.000 items turned out to take considerably longer to import (several hours). A small optimization was made that reduced this to a couple of minutes. This optimization may likely have a positive impact on several other larger types of import files

Import: Configuration import doesn't stop import if features doesn’t exist

Reporting of invalid features was fixed.

Perfion GUI / Item Editor: Mouse wait cursor when opening Item editor

The mouse cursor should now more reliably show a waiting animation when the Item editor is opening.

Grid: Change to dragging an item with the mouse

Dragging an item in grid with the mouse, will no longer initiate when the left mouse button is first clicked. But rather wait until the mouse is clicked and moved a little.

Grid: When two users update the same items, old values could overwrite new data (revisited)

The issue could still happen under special circumstances (features without a value in at least one item in the changed rows would be reverted to their old values). This has been fixed.

License: License terms will now be enforced

A lot of new properties have been added to the Perfion License. These properties are now enforced in Perfion, which will restrict users from access different areas and only running with the number of users (readers & editors) and languages specified in the loaded license file. When loading a new license, Perfion will restart.

To run the new version of Perfion, a new license is required. Databases with a new license will still be able to run on older versions of Perfion.

Modules: Access to the following Perfion modules are now enforced:

• Action Mapping

  • It will no longer be possible to install this module, if the module is not available through the license.

  • It will not be possible to execute existing actions, if the module is not available through the license.

• Feature Data Security

  • It will no longer be possible to enable this module, if the module is not available through the license.

  • It will not be possible to add new users or groups to existing Feature Data Security. It will be possible to remove existing users or groups from existing Feature Data Security.

• Logging

  • If Logging has been enabled, but is not available through the license, it will be disabled on startup.

  • It will not be possible to enable Logging, if it is not available through the license.

• The Perfion API

  • It will not be possible to execute API queries, if the module is not available in the license.

  • It will no longer be possible to execute queries containing a language, which is not present in the UserLanguages-table.

• Print Publishing

  • It will no longer be possible to run the Print Publishing module, if the module is not available through the license.

• The Table Designer

  • It will no longer be possible to install the Table Designer, if the module is not available in the license.

  • It will no longer be possible to open the Table Designer, if the module is not available in the license.

  • It will not be possible to render Table features in the Report Designer, if the module is not available in the license.

Users: Users are now divided into two different types: Readers & Editors. It is only possible to have as many active Readers, or Editors, as the license file specifies. A user is specified as an Editor, if just one of the user’s languages have 'CanEdit' checked in the User Properties.

A new column has been added in the User and Groups Management window, where each user's type is displayed.

Languages: It is now only possible to have as many active languages (Languages on active users) as it is specified in the license file.

A new Language Selector has been added in the User Properties to ease the adding of active languages to users. Furthermore, it is now possible to remove languages from specific users or all users at once, in the new 'Current Active Languages'-tab in Users and Groups Management.

Grid: When two users update the same items, old values could overwrite new data

When two users edit the same items in grid, feature values updated by User 1 could be overwritten by User 2, despite that User 2 never touched those features. In other words: Old data "cached" in User 2's grid could overwrite newly written data from User 1. This has been fixed.

Perfion GUI: Shortcuts to change window in sections

New shortcuts added to section view:

• Ctrl+W: Toggle focus from selector side to result view side

• Ctrl+Shift+W: Toggle focus between selectors

• Ctrl+Tab: Switch active tab in a selector

Perfion GUI / Grid: Shortcuts for grid toolbar

New shortcuts for the grid toolbar:

• Ctrl+Shift+X: Expand all items

• Ctrl+Shift+Z: Collapse all items

• Ctrl+Shift+S: Simple view

• Ctrl+Shift+D: All view

• Ctrl+Shift+G: Clear current filter

• Ctrl+Shift+R: Select filter dropdown

• Ctrl+Shift+O: Output

• Ctrl+Shift+E: Show item family

• Ctrl+Shift+L: Toggle image view

The shortcuts will be shown in the toolbar button hint when moused over for all options.

Reports: The last report menu-item would be hard to activate

Fixed a bug, where the last report menu-item in the Gridview's right-click menu would be hard to activate. This was caused by the tooltip, which was pushed up under the mouse-cursor, if the menuitem was too close to the Windows Taskbar.

Grid: Copy/pasting a value from selectables with the same basefeature would fail

Fixed an issue where copying a value from one feature to another (both with the same basefeature), would paste the value into the wrong feature.

Grid: Actions no longer collapses the grid with late-load enabled

With late-loading enabled, the grid will no longer collapse all nodes when performing the following actions:

• Adding or removing a column to/from the grid.

• Creating a copy of an item in the grid.

• Pasting data into other cells.

Perfion GUI / Grid: Shortcuts for views dropdown

New shortcuts for item views dropdown has been implemented:

From grid:

• Ctrl+Shift+V: Opens the views dropdown In dropdown:

• Ctrl+W: Toggles between system views / groups / customized views

• Left/Right arrows: In the groups list, will collaps/exspand the current node

Grid: Clicking on a row-icon now selects the basefeature cell in the row

When clicking on a row-icon to focus the entire row, or double-clicking on the row-icon to open the Item Editor, the last cell in that row would get selected. If the user then pressed the 'ESC' key in the Item Editor, the grid would automatically scroll to the selected row in the grid. This was very annoying when the grid contained a lot of features. With this change, the basefeature of the grid is always selected when focusing an entire row. This fixes the 'ESC' key problem from Item Editor.

Section Designer: Removed Dynamic Search option

Removed the 'Dynamic Search'-option in the Control Type column in the Section Designer, as it has no purpose right now.

GUI: Explicit multi editor turned gray

In some cases, when an empty item was added to the explicit multi editor in the grid, the editor would turn gray and be useless until Perfion restarted. This has now been fixed.

ECommerce API: Now you can use expressions to customize output of multi values

In the ECommerce API the multiple values possible in a multi value feature is output like this:

<field name="MultiValue"> <value>Value A</value> <value>Value B</value> <value>Value
C</value> </field>

Now this can be customized using expressions and known from the Perfion API. This is done by modifying the outputkind "Field" by adding in parenthesis the wanted expression.

This OutputKind "Field(@FormatMultiValues([{Value}]|-))" (wo. quotes) will for example dash-separate the multiple values, i.e. produce the following output:

<field name="MultiValue">[Value A]-[Value B]-[Value C]</field>

See more in the ECommerce API-documentation on how to use expressions.

Splashscreen: Changed the size to prevent labels from overlapping

Changed the size of the splash screen, which appears on startup, to prevent the labels from overlapping.

Perfion query / API: Empty items are created incorrectly

When running an insert query via the Perfion API or Perfion client, and the query has invalid specs, the query returns with error a message that the item could not be created. But an empty item is still created.

Perfion GUI: Added shortcut to load binary

The following shortcut has been added in the grid:

• Ctrl+F2 - Loads a new image for a single value explicit image or file

Item Editor: Shortcut improvement

New or improved shortcuts:

• Ctrl+Tab - Moves tab page to next page, also when the tab page is not focused

• Ctrl+S - Saves the current data in the item editor, but keeps the editor open.

• Ctrl+Enter - Saves and closed the item editor

Perfion GUI: Not possible to use CTRL+Enter to mass update cells

When doing a mass update in grid on several cells on a selectable feature, using search (Ctrl+F) to find an item, prevented the use of (Ctrl+Enter) shortcut. This has now been fixed.

ECommerce API: Made it possible to output all features in a standard view as Fields

It is now possible to map all features in the view specified on the Context-node as Fields.

This is simply done by creating a mapping from a * (star) to OutputKind Field.

Such a mapping is called a "Wild Card"-mapping and is the opposite of all other mappings called "Explicit mappings".

Please note the following:

• Only features not mapped explicitly (in another mapping) will be output.

• The base value will never be output using this (since it is not in a view)

• Everything will be mapped with OutputKind "Field", regardless of its type in Perfion. This means that file- and image-features will need an explicit mapping.

In previous versions of Perfion you would need to do explicit mappings for all features you wanted to retrieve using the ECommerce API.

Perfion GUI: Added hotkeys and shortcut key to Column Chooser

The following short-cuts and hotkeys have been added to the Column Chooser:

• Ctrl+Q - Opens the Column Chooser while in an active grid.

• Ctrl+W - Switches between the feature filter and the feature list in the Column Chooser.

• Ctrl+Enter - Closes the Column Chooser.

Also fixed a minor issue, where the Column Chooser would throw a null-reference exception.

Perfion GUI: Explicit multivalue editor shotcut focus problem

Adding a new entry on an explicit multivalue feature, via the shortcut "Ctrl+N", will now properly focus the new item and enter edit mode

Perfion GUI: Explicit multivalue editor shotcut error

Adding a new entry on an explicit multivalue feature, via the shortcut "Ctrl+N", Perfion crashed. This has now been fixed

Perfion: Performance issues

Performance has been improved in specific scenarios when running Perfion queries.

Perfion: Performance issue when running a has query

Performance has been improved in specific scenarios when running Perfion queries.

Perfion API: Inserting item with empty base value failed

When inserting a new value with empty base value via the Perfion API, the API crashed. This has been fixed.

ECommerce API: Added OutputKind-attribute to ECommerce API

The OutputKind-attribute allows you to create a custom attribute on the following other Output Kinds: Field, Image, Attachment, URL, RelatedProduct and RelatedCategory.

It will for example allow you to create a "unit"-attribute on a Field like this:

<field name="Volume" unit="Liter">0.445</field>

See more on the Attribute-Output Kind in the ECommerce API-documentation

ECommerce API: Mappings were not always output in correct order

This happened very rarely and has now been fixed.

GUI: Updated icons in Administration and Tools

Updated the icons in the Administration-tab and the Tools-tab.

ECommerce API: Related Products could output same product multiple times

The Related Products OutpitKind could output the same related product multiple times. That would happen if the "From"-feature containing the related products was localizable (and it had its base value set in the applicable languages). This has been fixed.

ECommerce API: Added InstanceID and InstanceSortOrder to variant instances returned

Before Variant Instances should be recognized by their values that were assumed to be different, which also really always should be the case.

Now an InstanceId has been added. The value of this ID is:

• For selectable features that would contain their ID (Example: '564').

• For non-selectables, localizables it will be the value in the primary language, which is first language one in the list of languages in Settings (Example: 'Red')

• For non-selectables, non-localizable it will be the value (Example: 'XXL')

In addition, a SortOrder has been added to each Instance: In case the Feature used to hold the Variant Dimension (below example uses a feature named Color) has "Custom Ordering" enabled (only applicable for selectables), the InstanceSortOrder will indeed get the order of the feature value which is relative to all other values. If "Custom Ordering" is not enabled, no InstanceSortOrder will be output.

They will be output on variants like this:

<variantinstances> <variantinstance> <dimensionname>Color</dimensionname>
<instanceid>583</instanceid> <instancesortorder>2</instancesortorder> <field name="Value"
culture="de-DE" modifieddate="2016-11-14T09:56:16.13">Kreide</field> <field name="Value"
culture="en-US" modifieddate="2016-11-14T09:56:16.13">Chalk</field> <field name="Value"
culture="da-DK" modifieddate="2016-11-14T09:56:16.13">Kridt</field> </variantinstance>
</variantinstances>

Note that in the above example, "Color" is a selectable, which must be assumed to be true in most if not all cases, so the instanceId would contain a number, here '583', which is the ID of the selectable Item "Chalk".

Using InstanceSortOrder allows you to order variant dimension values. A useful example of this is the Clothes Size-designations XS, S, M, L, XL that indeed should be ordered like shown.

ECommerce API: GetConfiguration did not handle ECommerceSystem-parameter very well

When making a call to the "GetConfiguration"-method, specifying ECommerceSystem but not any channel-names, the EC API returned an error. This has now been fixed.

In addition, "Sana" has been added as one of the ECommerceSystem-choices auto-created when installing the ECommerce API

ECommerce API: Added URL Output Kind

Now it is possible to output string and text-features from Perfion as URLs. Before that could be done as well using Fields, but the Fields with URLs was in indistinguishable from those that were not containing URLs.

See documentation on how to use the URL-Output Kind.

DAL: Function modifies inputted SQL

The function fixed not to modify inputted SQL

Remotes: Sync-remote to D365-BC

Feature names 'Parent' and 'ID' were reserved as for internal use only, which means that user cannot create new features in Perfion using these names anymore. OData Sync type remotes were modified to allow incoming data column names 'Parent', 'ID' and 'Value' to be treated accordingly as '_Parent', '_ID' and '_Value'