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.