We've got more good stuff for you this month, including several quality-of-life improvements that are simple yet effective. The update took place during the evening of the 23rd February. For a full list of changes in v2.44, please visit the Alloy Changelog.

Read all about it

Sometimes, you want to store lots of text within a Text attribute, e.g. a description of a job, notes about an asset's condition.

By default, Text attributes are displayed as a single line. However, you can change this by editing a design's stencil and enabling the Multiline property of the attribute's control. This lets you see up to 12 lines of the attribute's text.

Previously, any text longer than 300 characters would appear truncated. While you can display the full text in a tooltip by hovering your mouse over it, this is tricky for touchscreen users.

Therefore, we've added a discreet Show More button below the last line.

Select it to display the full text in its own window.

See where attributes come from

When viewing the results of a Join query in the Data Explorer, the columns display attributes from the queried design/interface, along with attributes from one or more linked designs/interfaces.

Previously, it wasn't clear which attributes came from which design/interface, especially when viewing attributes with identical names (e.g. Title, Subtitle).

Therefore, the column header of a linked attribute now displays the design/interface it comes from, providing a clearer picture of the data in front of you.

Isolate work to specific contractors

If you employ multiple contractors, you don't want them seeing every job work item in your system, as these often contain sensitive information, e.g. how much you pay another contractor!

No problem, you can now create custom job work item types, and make each one apply to a specific contractor only.

It's simple – just create a new design that implements the Job Work Items interface, so it inherits all the necessary attributes.

You can then configure the permissions of your new design accordingly, so that only the appropriate contractor has read/write access to it.

When configuring a job in the Job Work Unit Editor, your new design will now be selectable.

However, when the job is viewed, each contractor will only see the job work items of the design that applies to them.

Customise search settings in the Job Work Unit Editor

When choosing work items in the Job Work Unit Editor, you can now customise the search settings in the same way as standard item pickers.

Remember, search settings apply per design/interface, so customising them here will affect how items of the Work Items interface are listed throughout Alloy.

Edit job work items as you add them on iOS

When creating a job in Alloy Mobile iOS, you can specify one or more job work items to represent the work to be done.

Previously, you could add the job work items, but couldn't edit their values until you'd finished creating the job and then gone back to edit it.

Now, selecting the Job Work Items field will open the new Job Work Item Editor, where you can select from a list of available work items and then edit their values before proceeding to create the job.

This feature will arrive on Android next month.

Attach multiple photos at once on iOS

When viewing an item's details in Alloy Mobile iOS, you can upload one or more file attachments directly to it.

If you choose to Add from photos, you can now select up to five photos simultaneously and attach them all in one go. Nice!

Admins can disable users

Admins can now disable user accounts in Alloy Web. This prevents a user from logging into Alloy on any platform without deleting their account, in case it needs to be re-enabled in future.

We're starting the year off with a modest update. Nothing too crazy, just a few useful improvements to make your experience better 😊 (especially on Android). The update took place during the evening of the 26th January. For a full list of changes in v2.43, please visit the Alloy Changelog.

Extend Blueprinted Designs/Interfaces with Custom Interfaces

In September, we announced the introduction of custom interfaces. For the first time, it was possible to create a new interface that one or more designs could implement, providing a way to share a single set of generic attributes across multiple custom designs.

For technical reasons, it wasn't originally possible for a blueprinted design/interface to implement a custom interface. But not anymore!

Now, a custom interface can be implemented by any design/interface, regardless of whether its Context is Core, Module or Customer.

This fully unlocks the possibilities of custom interfaces, as they can now be used to extend the hundreds of ready-made designs/interfaces available in Alloy.

Bulk Invoice Workflows

For customers with the Financial Accounts module installed, this will be a welcome announcement!

A new module is available containing two manual workflows, which can automatically generate invoices for a list of Customer Accounts or Supplier Accounts.

For each account, the workflow will find all the related job work units that have their Invoicing status set to Ready and process them all into a single Account Invoice item for that account.

The resulting Account Invoices will be left with their Status set to Draft, giving you the opportunity to double-check everything and make any changes before progressing them to Issued.

We know that some of you need to process hundreds of invoices at a time, so these new workflows will save you a lot of time and effort! If you'd like the new module to be enabled for your Alloy customer project, please contact Support.

See Nearby Items when Editing Geometry on Alloy Mobile

Previously, when creating geometry for a new item (or editing the geometry of an existing item), the map area would appear empty.

Even with the Satellite basemap enabled, being unable to see the position and shape of nearby objects could sometimes make plotting the new geometry a bit tricky.

The items on your map now remain visible when editing geometry, making it easier to draw points or polygons accurately in relation to nearby items.

The items shown respect the layer configuration of the main map and the Search Here button can be used to refresh the current view.

Multiple Improvements on Android

Alloy Mobile has received special attention on Android this month, incorporating several changes that were recently implemented for iOS.

Item Forms on Android

If a custom item form exists for a design/interface, it will now be displayed to Android users when they create or edit a corresponding item. Users will only see the attributes that the item form has controls for, listed in the order defined by the item form.

Otherwise, the standard item form will be displayed. Users will see all the design/interface's attributes, listed in chronological order.

Prevent Locked Items Being Edited on Android

In Alloy Web, items can be locked to prevent them being edited. This can be done manually via the action bar or automatically via a workflow.

When locked items get synced to Alloy Mobile Android, they now display a visual indication of their locked status if you try to edit them. Users can no longer edit the locked item’s attributes or add/remove any items associated with it (e.g. attachments, job work items, related tasks).

Read-only View of Link Attributes on Android

When an item has a Link attribute that references multiple items (e.g. a job with multiple job work items), it shows as “X selected” when viewing the item's details in Alloy Mobile Android.

Tapping this now always displays the list of referenced items, even if the attribute is set to Read-only, or your user account has Read-only permission to the attribute.

As we reach the end of the year, it's time to look back at what we've all accomplished together in 2022. Liz and Kwarti, you can sit this one out... 😬

You loved it last year, so here it is again! We've put together a fancy webpage that you can log into to see all kinds of stats about your year in Alloy, delicately interwoven with the eccentric humour you've come to expect from us 😅

So go on, visit review2022.alloyapp.io and marvel at how busy your organisation has been this year. Feel free to share the URL of your personalised report with someone you want to impress, such as your boss or a prospective dating partner. Here's what Matthew McConaughey had to say about ours:

On behalf of the Alloy team, thanks for being with us in 2022, and we look forward to making 2023 even better 🎉

This month’s update provides a number of useful improvements across the board. The update took place during the evening of the 8th December. For a full list of changes in v2.42, please visit the Alloy Changelog.

Design/Interface Search Settings 🔍

When using the top-right Search panel to find items of a particular design or interface, there are several settings you can change to customise how searching works and how the results are displayed.

Before, these search settings were applied across all designs/interfaces. Now, they are saved per design/interface. This lets you be selective with your search customisation, so you can apply different optimisations to the designs/interfaces that are important to you.

For example, if you prefer to see Tasks sorted by their Created Time, this can now be set without affecting other designs/interfaces.

Additionally, these search settings now apply to item pickers as well, providing you with a consistent experience whenever Alloy presents you with a list of items for that design/interface.

For more details, please see this previous announcement and the Alloy User Guide.

Note: the search settings currently don't affect how Work Items or Bill Items are displayed in the Job Work Unit Editor. We're working to address this in an upcoming release.

Item Forms - New File Picker Control 📎

If you want to attach a file to an item, you no longer need to upload the file to Alloy first!

When creating/editing an item, it's now possible to upload a new file as you're configuring its Attachments attribute.

This is made possible by the availability of a new File picker control in item forms. When editing an item form for a particular design/interface, you can choose to add a File picker control for the Attachments attribute (or any Link attribute that references Files items).

When the item form is presented to a user (i.e. they create or edit an item of the relevant design/interface), selecting the File picker control will display a browsable folder structure where they can select one or more files stored within Alloy.

However, the user can also use the highlighted button to upload a new file and select it for inclusion.

Bulk Download Attachments 🖇️⬇️

When viewing an item's details, if you switch to the Attachments tab, you can now select Download all from the action bar to download all the attached files in a single zip file.

A simple but useful improvement!

Disable Module Workflows

Another simple improvement is the ability to disable any of the system workflows that appeared in your Alloy customer project after a particular module was enabled.

For example, you want to disable the Invoice Calculation workflow included with the Financial Accounts and Invoicing module because your organisation uses a custom-designed workflow instead.

When viewing the details of a workflow included with a module, you can now select Edit in the action bar and change Enabled to false, so it no longer appears in the list of runnable workflows.

Manual Workflow Output Mode

When creating a manual workflow, there's now an optional Output mode field that determines how items will be processed when the workflow is run.

The possible values are:

• Many items - all items are processed by a single workflow (used by default).
  
  
• One item - each item is processed separately by its own workflow. Slower but makes certain operations possible, e.g. if a workflow creates an invoice when supplied with an account’s Item ID, it will run once for each account, thereby generating an invoice for each one.

Alloy Mobile - iOS 16 Support 📱

In line with our policy to support the latest three versions of iOS, Alloy Mobile is now supported on iOS 16!

This means that we've performed a series of exhaustive tests on all aspects of the app running on iOS 16 and completed any work required to ensure stable operation. On this occasion, we only had to correct a couple of minor issues encountered when adding attachments to an item (such as a "Cancel" button appearing white on a white background).

As we take on iOS 16, we therefore say goodbye to iOS 13 👋. While Alloy Mobile can still be used on devices running iOS 13, the app will only be tested on iOS 14-16 from this point onwards. Therefore, if you were to encounter an issue on iOS 13, only basic troubleshooting support would be available.

Fortunately, all iOS 13 devices can be upgraded to iOS 15, therefore we strongly recommend doing so to receive the best experience going forward.

Overview

Alloy’s robust Permissions system gives you fine control over who has read/write access to most of the objects in your Alloy database (e.g. designs, layers, workflows).

To take this a step further, we introduced Access Policies. These are simple rules defined per design/interface, which ensure that users can only access items that can be traced back to them. For example, making job items only accessible to users who are members of the job’s allocated team.

While Access Policies work well in principle, the current implementation unfortunately comes with too much of a performance cost.

Therefore, Access Policies will be removed in the next Alloy release, to be replaced with a better implementation at a later date.

Who will be affected?

No active customers are currently using this feature, so we expect its removal to have zero impact.

Details

The /api/access-policy/ endpoints will be removed from the API. Any remaining access policies will be deleted.

Expected Release Date

23rd February 2023 as part of the Alloy v2.44 release.

Overview

Back in December 2021, we announced that the mechanism for API keys would be changing.

In summary, API keys would no longer be generated automatically for every user, so new API keys must be generated on demand. Additionally, these new API keys must be passed using the OAuth 2.0 Bearer token format. For full details, please see the previous New API Key Management announcement.

These changes were implemented on 13th January 2022, with the old API keys remaining valid for a year.

Therefore, this is to remind everyone that the old API key mechanism will be removed in January 2023!

Who will be affected?

Any user or integration that still uses an old API key to communicate with the Alloy APIs.

Details

As of the release date below, old API keys that were created before 13th January 2022 will no longer be valid.

Additionally, the /api/user/me endpoint (Swagger/ReDoc) will no longer include the old apiKey property in its responses.

To learn about the new endpoints for managing API keys, please see the previous New API Key Management announcement.

How can I check my API key?

The simplest way to check if your API key is "old" or "new" is to consult your code. Does it pass the API key in the OAuth 2.0 Bearer token format (RFC 6750)? If so, your API key is new!

Alternatively, you can use the GET /api/user/me endpoint (Swagger/ReDoc) before the release date to return information about the currently logged in user. If your API key matches the value of the depreciated apiKey property in the returned user, your API key is old.

If in doubt, we recommend using the POST /api/api-key endpoint (Swagger/ReDoc) to create a new API key.

Mesh Users

If you have any workflows that use a Call Mesh action, your Alloy customer project will need updating with a new API key. We've been reaching out to customers we believe to be affected by this, but if in doubt, please contact Support to request this.

Expected Release Date

26th January 2023 as part of the Alloy v2.43 release.

Overview

This is to inform all users that we've recently implemented three safety limits to Alloy’s engine.

These have been put in place to help ensure that the performance, reliability and security of Alloy remains high. Rest assured, these limits have been calculated carefully, so most users will never reach them!

In rare cases where a limit is reached, users will receive a detailed error message to inform them what has happened, so the situation can be avoided in future.

Who will be affected?

These limits affect all users of Alloy but will be unnoticeable by most.

Details

The following limits have been added.

Maximum Background Tasks

The number of background tasks that can be queued per customer project. This has been limited to 100,000 tasks, which is far higher than has ever been reached before.

If the limit is reached, attempting to create a task will fail with this error:

Error Category: ResourceLimited,  Error Code: 1657552956

Maximum Item Size

The size of any item being operated on. This has been limited to 2MB (roughly 420,000 words of text) for optimal resource management.

If the limit is reached, the operation will fail with this error:

Error Category: ItemSizeExceedLimit, Error Code: 1657279454

Maximum Items to Query in Bulk

The total number of items involved with any write operations. While a query may only affect a moderate number of items directly, each item may have child/parent items that need querying too. Therefore, this has been limited to 200,000 items on the Task Executor (75,000 items on the API services).

If the limit is reached, the query will fail with this error:

Error Category: BulkQueryLimitExceeded

Overview

When using the top-right Search panel to find items of a particular design or interface, you can customise how item attributes are searched, the collection(s) to be searched, and how the results are ordered.

However, these search settings currently apply to all designs/interfaces. This isn’t ideal, as what may be optimal for some designs/interfaces may not be optimal for others!

Therefore, as part of our continual efforts to add flexibility and improve consistency within Alloy, we’re making two important changes in this area:

• Search settings will be saved per design/interface.
  
  
• Search settings will affect item pickers as well as the Search panel.

Who will be affected?

These are broad changes that will affect most Alloy users.

Details

As before, when using the Search panel, you can customise your search settings like so:

• Select the search box, enter the name of a design/interface and press Enter.
  
  
• In the bottom action bar, select the More icon and choose Search settings.

However, when saving these settings, they will no longer be applied to all designs/interfaces. Instead, they will only be applied to the design/interface that you’re searching in.

This means you can save different search settings for different designs/interfaces, leading to a more efficient searching experience overall.

Item pickers

Search settings will be shared between the Search panel and item pickers, so saving custom settings for a design/interface in one will affect the other.

For example, imagine you’re creating a defect. In Step 2 of the procedure, you’re prompted to select the asset(s) you want to create a defect against. An item picker appears showing items of the Defects Assignable interface.

The items listed by the picker are subject to the same search settings as the Search panel. To access those settings, you can select the new cog icon (outlined in red above).

The orange dot over the icon indicates that custom settings have already been set for the design/interface being searched, which will affect the appearance and order of items shown in the picker.

Expected Release Date

8th December 2022 as part of the Alloy v2.42 release.

This month’s update provides item form improvements, the ability to attach files directly to permit applications, and a brand new map tool! The update took place during the evening of the 27th October. For a full list of changes in v2.41, please visit the Alloy Changelog.

New Measure Tool 📐

You asked for it, you’ve got it!

Alloy has a new Measure tool that can accurately measure the length between two points, the total length between multiple points, and the area of a closed shape.

It’s simple to use – just select the tool and then select two points on the map to draw a line between them. Continue selecting points to draw more lines. The length of each line is calculated and displayed in real-time, as is the total Length displayed in the bottom-left corner.

Double-select the last point to finish your initial drawing. If you do this over the first point, the Area of your closed shape will also be displayed.

You can then adjust your drawing by dragging any of its points, or adding new points along any of its lines.

This new tool will no doubt prove useful across many different service areas and reduces the need to visit sites, saving considerable time, costs and emissions.

Item Form Improvements

We’re continuing to improve the new item forms feature, which makes it possible to customise the form that users fill in when creating or editing items of a particular design/interface (introduced in the Alloy September 2022 Update).

New label property

All item form controls now have a Label property, which lets you set a display name for the control. If left blank, the attribute's name will be used.

New Multiline control

When adding a Text attribute to an item form, you can now choose a Multiline text input control. Unlike the standard Text input control, this new control can display multiple lines of text at once.

When a user selects the field on the form, a large text box will appear for them to write into.

New Super Globals

First, some background information!

We’re gradually improving support for expressions in item forms. An expression takes zero or more inputs, performs one or more logical operations, and produces one output. By utilising expressions, item forms can be context-sensitive and react to user input.

When configuring a control on an item form, you can target any of its properties to the output of a saved expression. This lets a property react to the status of other controls within the item form, e.g. make a read-only control writable if a Checkbox control is checked

Super globals are effectively system-wide variables that can be referenced in expressions. They make it possible for a property to react to the status of many other things in Alloy. For example:

• details of the current user (e.g. name, username, email address, item ID)
• details of the current item form (e.g. name, code, whether it’s operating in Create or Edit mode)
• details of the item being created/edited (e.g. item ID, design name and code, collection, parent item ID)

For a full list, see the Alloy User Guide.

This opens up all sorts of possibilities!

For example, imagine your item form has an Item picker control that displays the lookup list for a Link attribute. Using the power of expressions and super globals, it could now be configured to only list items with the same parent as the item being created/edited by the form. We know this is something many of you have wanted for a while!

While expressions remain developer-focused for now, this is an important part of ongoing efforts to develop the feature. We plan to make expressions available to a wider audience when we release a user-friendly expression builder in the not-too-distant future.

Indicate Required Attributes *️

Previously, when creating/editing an item, Alloy displayed all of the required attributes and hid the others behind a Show Options button. With the introduction of item forms, this behaviour has had to change.

Therefore, Alloy now marks any required attribute with an orange asterisk. This happens automatically, regardless of whether an item form is created for a design/interface or not.

Attachments for Permit Applications📎

For Street Works users, applying for permits is a regular procedure. Permits often require supporting documents and photos. While permits can have file attachments, you could only add them after the permit was created. This was a bit of a hassle!

Therefore, we’ve now added an optional Attachments step to the permit application itself, so you no longer have to spend extra time attaching files afterwards.

New Rounds setting on Alloy Mobile Android

In response to customer feedback, we’ve added a new Go to rounds on login setting to Alloy Mobile on Android.

If enabled, the app will automatically show the Rounds panel after logging in. This happens immediately, so you don't need to wait for the automatic sync to finish (your Rounds will refresh afterwards).

This will be especially useful for vehicle-based users who seek to minimise time spent between tasks.

Overview

We recently added several Applicable Type endpoints to the Web API: https://announcements.alloyapp.io/applicable-types-now-enforced-by-web-api-3jpgbe

Applicable Types define how items of various activity-related designs can link to each other, e.g.

• Which Asset types can each Job/Inspection/Defect type be linked to?
• Which Job types can each Job Work Unit type be linked to?

When using the api/applicable-type/applicable-from endpoint, you may receive some unexpected results. Put simply, this is because the current logic is finding links that can be applicable but haven’t explicitly been made applicable.

To improve this, we’re changing how the endpoint behaves. Rather than accepting a list of designs, it will instead accept a list of items. The new logic will be able to use the parent or child items to determine which DoDIs or items are applicable from that item.

This should produce results that are more in line with expectations! However, it will require some breaking changes. 😐

Who will be affected?

These breaking changes will affect anyone who uses the ApplicableTypes endpoints on the Web API.

Details

New Endpoint Addresses

The addresses of the following endpoints will be changing.

List Applicable From Types endpoint

The request for this endpoint (ApplicableTypeFromWebRequestModel) will be changing:

• The toAll property will be removed.
• The from property will no longer accept a ApplicableFromItemWebModel (item IDs) and therefore will no longer require a discriminator. It will only accept ApplicableFromDodiWebModel (DoDi codes).
• The toAllItems required property will be added (to replace toAll). This is an array of item IDs that you wish to check.
• The filterAttributeCode required property will be added. This specifies the link attribute to find applicable types on. The attribute must be present on all the items provided in toAllItems.

For example, to query which job types can be raised against specific assets, you would provide these values for the aforementioned parameters:

• ToAllItems = an array of asset item IDs
• FilterAttributeCode = attributes_tasksAssignableTasks
• From = designInterfaces_jobs
  (to exclude inspections and other task types)

Additionally, the response model for this endpoint (ApplicableTypeFromWebResponseModel) will also be changing:

• The NoRestrictions property will be added.  If no results are returned, this boolean explains why. If true, there are no restrictions, which means everything applies. If false, it means that nothing applies.
• The results can be of type ApplicableFromDodiWebResponseModel or ApplicableFromItemResultWebModel, so these are the new discriminators to use (no more ApplicableItemWebModel).

Importantly, this revised endpoint won’t support finding applicable job types for supplied work unit items. This will be handled by a new endpoint coming in future.

List Applicable To Types endpoint

The response for this endpoint will be changing:

• The results can only be of type ApplicableToDodiWebResponseModel. Therefore, it will no longer be necessary to supply a discriminator.

Expected Release

8th December 2022 as part of the Alloy v2.42 release.

The documentation available on Swagger and ReDoc will be updated accordingly.