Vanilla Release Notes

Release 2023.009

Schedule

Release 2023.009 will be deployed

To staging sites, Monday May 1st
To production sites, the week of, May 8th
To Enterprise client sites, the week of, May 15th

Automate Role Assignment

Role & Permission settings have been updated to clarify how and when to use certain settings. With this release we've packaged what was previously known as the Default Type setting, and our Auto-Role by Email Add-on into the Automate Role Assignment setting. With this you can

define which role and permissions are assigned to users
- when they first register
- while their email is pending confirmation
- while their membership is pending approval
- if they have not yet logged in
automate the assignment of roles based on the user's email domain

Configuration UI for Automating Role Assignment

You can learn more about this feature here:

https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/90

Sort Posts in custom Discussions Layout

Post sorting & filtering is in the works and with this release Post Sorting has been made available for custom Discussion Layouts, streamlining the browsing experience for community's discussion posts. With these updates you can

Set the default sort order for your custom Discussions page Layout
Allow users to update the sorting as they browse, so sort posts by:
- Top
- Trending
- Newest
- Oldest
- Most recently active

This not only makes it easier for users to find the content that may interest them most, it also helps community managers and admins more easily manage content.

You can learn more about setting up a custom Discussion Layout and the available sorting options in our documentation -

https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/1455-sort-discussion-content

Search users by username, email & IP via the API

The /users API endpoint has been updated to allow you to more easily search and filter your member list. With these updates you can filter your /user calls by

Name to find all users with matching usernames
Email to find all users with matching emails
IP to find users by IP
Query to find all users with matching emails or usernames

Managing Followed Categories via API

The /categories endpoint has been updated to make it easier to manage followed categories.

The GET /categories/{ID}/preferences/{userID} endpoint has been removed.
The ability to get a list of a user's followed categories is now available on the GET /categories endpoint, with the FollowedUserID parameter.
You can now user the sort parameter to sort categories by:
- name
- categoryID
- dateFollowed
An expand parameter has also been added, allowing you to see:
- the lastPast per category
- the followed user's preferences for each category followed. This will include
  - postNotifications:
    - discussions - if the user is being notified about new discussions in the category
    - all - if the user is being notified about new discussions and comments)
    - follow if the user is following the category but not subscribed to notifications for the category
  - useEmailNotifications
    - true if the user is receiving email notifications
    - false if the user has not subscribed to email notifications

Please note, the ability to track the date when a categories was followed was not available prior to this release. All categories followed prior to update will have 2023-04-18 23:59:59 set as the date-followed until the user updates their preferences for the category

Bug Fixes & Improvements

Roles & Permissions

VNLA-2858 Improve Role & Permissions Settings for Automating Role Assignment

Managing Categories

VNLA-2330 Updated Category Deletion workflow to handle deleting or moving events when the associated category is deleted.
VNLA-3849 Fixed errors when moving or merging discussions

Analytics

VNLA-3362 Fixed Subcommunity Filter causing charts to show 0 results
VNLA-3911 Updated Post Data to include
- Date Added when a new discussion or comment is posted so we can know when a post was published
- Post Start Date when a new comment is added so we can know when the original discussion was started. This parameter will appear as null or "Other" when new discussions are added.
VNLA-3999 Improved Analytics Pie Graphs & Legends by fixing visual issues with chart previews & limiting legends to showing only the top 25 results

Localization

VNLA-3134 Fixed missing translations for Badges

API

VNLA-1744 Optimized API endpoints to create and delete polls
- The PATCH /api/v2/pollsendpoints have been removed
- You can now configure Poll options when creating a new poll using the POST /api/v2/polls endpoint
VNLA-3517 Added ability to filter user by IP via the /users endpoint
VNLA-3739 Added ability to search users by name and/or email via the /users endpoint
VNLA-4002 Updated the /categories endpoints to manage followed categories
VNLA-4093 Updated the /discussions endpoint to support filtering by one or more discussion-type

Notifications

VNLA-3839 Fixed Notifications for new discussions in Groups appearing disabled when enabled by default in the backend.
VNLA-4073 Fixed formatting errors in notification emails

Ideation

VNLA-3915 Fixed Filters in Idea-type Categories
VNLA-4043 Fixed errors when creating new Idea Statuses

Discussions Lists

VNLA-3954: Fixed sorting issue on Discussions/tagged pages
VNLA-3955 Fixed sorting issue on Unresolved Page

Posting

VNLA-3946 Fixed Rich2 editor stops receiving text input after clicking indent button

Widgets & Customization Tools

VNLA-2259 Added ability to sort posts in custom Discussions Layouts by dates and scores
VNLA-3956 Fixed sorting issues in Discussion Pockets & Widgets
VNLA-3958 Fixed Announcements not pinned in custom Discussion page Layout

SEO & Sitemaps

VNLA-4083 Fixed kb category sitemaps rendered as urlsets
VNLA-4030 HTML Views for No Script States & Crawlers

User Profiles & Member Directory

VNLA-4109 Fixed errors in member directory when searching for users with private profiles
VNLA-4017 Fixed Custom Profile Fields not saving when set to hidden and passed via SSO

SAML SSO

VNLA-3874 Added Support for Single Sign-Out on SAML SSO