This month’s update brings several quality-of-life improvements to make using Alloy easier. The update took place during the evening of the 27th June. For a full list of changes in v2.60, please visit the Alloy Changelog.

Improved Routing Editor 📍

We’ve made several behind-the-scenes improvements to the Routing Editor, which lets you plan routes between the tasks of a project and any added waypoints.

The Routing Editor now behaves more robustly when switching between the fastest route (quickest time to visit all waypoints in the current order) and the shortest route (reorder waypoints for shortest travel distance). The current route type is now indicated by a new attribute on the route’s General tab. The route’s Geometry tab is also updated accordingly.

System DoDIs are now hidden 🙈

Alloy includes many core designs and interfaces that underpin its system features. These get listed alongside all the other designs/interfaces in your customer project, in places such as the Search panel, Data Explorer and Permissions Manager.

To help simplify things a bit, we’ve gone through these system designs/interfaces and hidden the ones that no one realistically needs to access. This includes:

• All workflow action designs, e.g. Add Links, Message
• The Applicable To and Applicable Filter designs
• The Counters design
• Many designs/interfaces related to reports:
  • Reports
  • Report Types
  • Report Documents
  • File Report Documents
  • Custom Report
  • Item Level Report
  • Summary Level Report
  • The designs of all your custom reports

This should make it easier to find what you want going forward!

In the unlikely event that you need to view items of hidden designs/interfaces, you can still use the Search panel to search within them. Start typing its name and choose the design/interface when it appears. To view the resulting items in the Data Explorer, select the highlighted button.

Reconfigure validated imports 🗂️

Using Gateway, you can create and configure data imports. After an import’s configuration has been successfully validated, you can choose to Reconfigure it as needed.

While this was always possible, you originally had to redefine the configuration from scratch. Now, the existing configuration is loaded, making it far easier to tweak a property or attribute!

Multi-instance Message and Output actions 📧

When building a workflow, you can add various actions to its branches. The Message action can send an email/SMS and the Output action can fetch specific items for the workflow to act on.

Previously, both actions operated only in single instance mode. This means that the action is always performed one time only, regardless of the number of input items.

Now, both actions have a new Single Instance property, which is disabled by default. This means the action will be performed for each input item. If there are no input items, the action isn’t performed.

For example, imagine a Message action that receives three input items. If its Single Instance property is enabled, one message will be sent containing 3 items. If not, three messages will be sent containing one item each.