Overview

To improve security, we will be making changes to restrict the types of files that can be uploaded and downloaded via the API based on the extension.

Who will this affect?

This will affect anyone uploading files to or downloading files from Alloy that have extensions that could be deemed to be executables. 

Details

The Alloy API for file upload and download will restrict certain file extensions for security reasons. The list includes ".exe", ".bat", ".com" among others.

The list mirrors the extensions forbidden by Microsoft Outlook, see here for the full list of forbidden extensions.

Expected Release Date

February 25th 2021

Overview

As part of the work for the new Financial Accounts module, we are making changes to Extended Web API endpoints and logic to support Job Bill Items and Supplier/Customer Accounts.

Who is affected?

Users of Extended Web API who are using Work Item and Job Work Item endpoints.

This change is planned to roll out in two phases. This phase introduces new Extended Web API endpoints and marks old as obsolete, while the second phase will remove them.

Details

All Work Item and Job Work Item endpoints are now marked as obsolete i.e. routes starting with api/work-item or api/job-work-item. 

Job Work Units

For create, read, update and delete (CRUD) operations on Job Work Units (Job Work Items or Job Bill Items) callers should start using new Job Work Unit endpoints, starting with the api/job-work-unit route.

Work Items

The old Work Item endpoints are split into two routes: Work Unit api/work-unit and Change Component Work Item api/change-component-work-item. The first endpoint deals with applicable Design and Design Interfaces (DoDIs) for all Work Units (Work Items and Bill Items), while the second one handles applicable component DoDIs specifically for Change Component Work Items (i.e. items belonging to designs_changeComponentWorkItems).

Job Edit

As part of this change, the job edit endpoint now also handles Job Bill Items cost re-calculation when the parent asset item is set, changed, unset or the job status is changed to Completed. Please note that it is important to use the Extended Web API job edit endpoint api/job/{id} to alter the relationship between job and it's parent asset item, otherwise the cost calculation for Job Work Units will not be applied.

Budget Summary

The Budget summary endpoint api/budget/{id}/summary now returns extra results for each of BudgetPeriodJobCostsWebModel with information about the BillsPerJobStatuses in addition to existing CostsPerJobStatuses. Costs are calculated as before using costs of all Job Work Items for jobs that fall into specific budget period, while Bills now used the same logic but are using costs of Job Bill Items on jobs in budget periods.

Team Pricing to Account Pricing

As part of Finance Module, Team Pricing will become Account Pricing with all teams linked to an account sharing the pricing structure. Users should move any pricing data linked to a Team via attributes_teamsPricingTeamPricing to a supplier account (designs_supplierAccounts) using the attributes_financialAccountsPricing link instead as we plan on removing the link from Teams to Team pricing in due course.

The Extended API will first check for rates using Account Pricing  attributes_financialAccountsPricing but will continue to support cost calculation via attributes_teamsPricingTeamPricing when no account pricing is available for the time being. 

Additionally, all work items will now temporarily have two pricing attributes, the previous attributes_workItemsTeamPricing and a new link via work units pricing interface attributes_workUnitPricingPricing. Again, the Extended API code will first check for rates using the Work Unit pricing before falling back to the previous Work Item link. The Work Item link will also be removed once users have had opportunity to migrate their data. 

Expected Release Date

October 29th 2020

Overview

In an earlier announcement titled Removal of Item Title, Subtitle and Geometry properties (Phase 2), users were advised to update export AQS query to return the above attributes if they need them for their exported items. As part of these changes, we are making the ExportGeometry option obsolete as this can now be specified through the inclusion/omission of the geometry attribute in the query. 

Who will this affect?

Users querying the data with geometry via the API will be affected by the change.

Details

We are now making ExportGeometry optional and obsolete on the ExportWebRequestModel and it will be removed in due course in favour of requesting attributes_itemsGeometry as part of the export AQS attributes.

Expected Release Date

October 29th 2020

Overview

In order to better manage the levels of inbound requests to the API, we will be enabling Rate Limiting on all endpoints. This change is aimed at preventing all system users from being impacted by excessively high activity levels of a single user and Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks.  

Who will be affected?

The defined rate limit will only affect API users making a considerably high number of calls for a sustained period. The rate has been set at a level that will not impact users using the API at reasonable activity levels or short bursts of high activity.

Details  

Sustained calls (monitored daily) of over 100 requests per minute on any endpoint will result in the corresponding API key being disabled. Where possible, we will notify API key owners before disabling, however we reserve the right to act without notice in order to maintain accessibility of the service for other users. 

We advise API users to review their usage prior to this change to avoid any service disruption.  

Any disabled key may be re-enabled via contacting the Support team and only once the cause of the high number of requests has been rectified. 

Expected Release Date

27th August 2020