Summary

Laserfiche 10.2 includes many new features, as well as stability and performance enhancements.

Laserfiche 10.2 includes many new features and enhancements across the Laserfiche suite that allow you to work with your repository and your information more easily and efficiently. This release also introduces Laserfiche Federated Search, a new search site for Laserfiche Rio that allows you to search across multiple repositories. In addition, Laserfiche 10.2 includes stability and performance enhancements.

New Features in the Laserfiche Server, Web Client, and Windows Client

Multi-Value Field Groups

In some cases, values across multiple fields on a single document may be related to one another. For example, on an invoice, you might have multiple items, each with its own name, product code, price, and amount purchased. On a report, you may have multiple authors, each of whom has an email address associated with them. While multi-value fields allow you to store multiple values, it can be difficult to tell at a glance which price corresponds to which item, or which author has which email address.

Multi-value field groups solve this problem by allowing you to specify that multiple multi-value fields are related. You could associate the "Product Name," "Product Code," "Price," and "Amount Purchased" multi-value fields as all belonging to the same group within the "Invoice" template. Then, when a user opens a document with that template, they will be able to see which name, code, price, and amount purchased values go together, and to add or modify more invoice items appropriately.

Configurable Search Thesaurus

In some cases, users may have difficulty finding documents because they are using search terms synonymous in the documents that they are looking for, but not terms actually in those documents. A user might search for a document using a common acronym when the document text spells out the word, or vice versa, or they might use a general term when the document uses more industry-specific jargon, or a nickname or set of initials when a full name was used in the document. While features like root word search and fuzzy search can help with this issue, they may be unable to solve it if the two terms are sufficiently different, or specific to a particular industry or company.

The new configurable search thesaurus allows administrators to define associations between words. When one word is searched, both it and its synonyms will be returned. This association can go both ways (so that, for example, searching for "LF" returns documents with the word "Laserfiche" and vice versa), or only one way (so that searching for "Laserfiche" returns documents with the word "Workflow," but not vice versa). In the Laserfiche Web Administration Console, administrators can set up custom thesaurus entries specific to their company or industry, and in addition, they can import and customize a predefined list of many common synonyms.

New Search Syntax Search Types

The Laserfiche Server now supports several new search types that can be performed using the search syntax.

• Attachment Annotation Text: The attachment annotation text search allows you to perform full-text searches of attachment annotations and return documents whose attachment annotations contain the specified search terms.
• Parent Template Name: The parent template name search allows you to locate documents based on the template assigned to their parent folder. All immediate children of folders with the specified template will be returned, although the folder itself and documents further down the folder tree will not (unless they also are in a folder with the specified template).
• Security: Laserfiche now supports searching for entries based on what trustees have entry access rights assigned to them for that entry, the specific entry access rights involved, whether the right is allowed or denied, and the scope of that right. For example, you could use this search to determine on which documents Mary has had the Delete entry access right granted. This search only applies to rights directly set on the document, and does not take inheritance into account.

Other New Features

• Streamlined Entry Access Rights: To allow you to modify your entry access rights more quickly and easily, the Laserfiche web and Windows clients now group related entry access rights together. This allows you to quickly grant or deny access to groups of related rights (such as Create Documents, Create Folders, and Append Data) without having to select each one individually. You can also expand these rights groups and modify each right within it individually if you want to apply them in a more granular fashion.
• Password Updates: Users who sign in using Laserfiche accounts managed through Laserfiche Directory Server can now change their passwords directly from within the Laserfiche web and Windows clients.
• License Polling: Changes to licenses in Laserfiche Directory Server are now polled more often, to allow you to keep your installation up to date more easily.
• Indexing Enhancements: Attachment annotations containing text will now be indexed by the search service, allowing you to perform full-text searches on the contents of your attachments. In addition, you can now choose to index number, date, and date/time fields.

New Features in the Laserfiche Web Client

Management Page

The Laserfiche 10.2 web client makes it even more convenient for both users and administrators to manage their repository from a single location. A new management page has been introduced in the web client, allowing administrators to work with repository settings, users and groups, repository activity, metadata definitions, and records management definitions without needing to leave the web client and sign in to the administration console. This allows Laserfiche administrators to perform most of the tasks they need to manage a repository from within a single application. In addition, the management page takes advantage of the same streamlined and responsive design as the rest of the web client.

As with all Laserfiche products, the management page respects repository security; in order to view and work with users, metadata, and so on, users must have the appropriate rights. In addition, if you want to prevent specific users or groups from accessing the management page at all, you can do so in the web client configuration page.

Security Reporting

Laserfiche 10.2 introduces three new security reporting tools that allow you to better manage and troubleshoot your entry access rights. All reports can be downloaded as a table, a list, a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, or a comma-separated text file.

• Entry Effective Access Rights Report: This report allows you to view the effective access rights for the currently-selected entry, either for all users, or for specified users or members of specified groups. You can specify exactly which rights to report on, or add all rights for a comprehensive report. This gives you a comprehensive look at which users can perform which actions on the specified entry; unlike the Effective Rights dialog box, it displays information about multiple users at once. This report returns information about the specified entry only, and not about any child entries.
• User Effective Access Rights Report: This report allows you to view the effective rights for the specified user or users on the selected entry and all its child folders and documents. (For example, if you run the report on a folder with no subfolders, the report would include that folder and all the documents within it; if you run the report on the root folder of the repository, the report would include all folders and documents in the repository.) If you specify multiple users or a group, a separate report will be generated for each user.
• User Security Properties Report: This report allows you to view the security configuration for the specified user or users. It includes the user's security tags, group membership, feature rights, privileges, audited events, and group watermarks. (If a user has not had any of a particular category configured—for instance, if they have been granted no security tags—that category will not be displayed in the report.) If you specify multiple users or a group, a separate report will be generated for each user. Entry access rights, volume rights, and template and field rights are not included in this report.

New Configuration Features

The Laserfiche 10.2 web client includes several new features that allow you to tailor the behavior of the web client to suit your organization's needs. All users can configure their own toolbars, although administrators can restrict that ability if they choose. Administrators can configure global toolbars, lock toolbar changes, add custom actions to the web client, and create custom details pane tabs.

• Configurable Toolbars: Users can now configure their toolbars in the web client, allowing them to show additional actions that they frequently use, or hide actions that they don't often use. The toolbars for the Folder Browser, Document Viewer, and Records Management quick access pane can all be configured. In addition, administrators can set default toolbars for all users, and can lock the toolbar so that users can't change their own toolbar settings.
• Custom Actions:The web client allows you to add custom actions to the context menus and toolbars to add integrations or custom functionality to your repository. In the Laserfiche 10.2 web client, administrators no longer need to manually modify the web client's XML files to add custom actions. Instead, there is now an interface for adding custom actions.
• Custom Details Pane Tabs:Administrators can now add custom tabs to the Details Pane. A custom tab allows you to display information from another website (whether another Laserfiche web application, a web application used at your site, or an external website) directly within the details pane. You can use tokens to customize what is displayed in this tab. For example, if you store tracking numbers for shipments in a "Tracking ID" field on your "Orders" template, you could create a custom tab for the carrier's website using that field value as a token. When users selected the custom tab in the Preview Pane for a particular document, the tab would automatically open the carrier's website and use the token to jump directly to tracking information for that order.

Reporting Improvements

When generating reports in Laserfiche, you now have the option to download them as an Excel spreadsheet. In addition, Laserfiche now allows you to perform certain functions on numerical information (such as the number of pages, or the values of number fields) when generating a Metadata Report. You can automatically generate the sum, average, minimum, and/or maximum of the values, and the results will display at the bottom of the relevant column in the report. For example, you might use this feature to calculate the average number of pages for documents in a particular folder, or to provide the sum of all of the values of the "Quantity Ordered" field in that folder.

Other Features

• Attachment Annotation Streaming: Video and audio files that are attached to Laserfiche documents as attachment annotations can now be streamed directly into the browser.
• Navigating Multiple Repositories: The web client now features a menu to allow you to move quickly between repositories, if your web client implementation includes multiple repositories. Administrators can hide specific repositories (for instance, testing repositories) from the list in the configuration page.
• New Search Results Display Mode: Users can choose to show only the top most relevant results and their context hits when performing quick searches, if they prefer a more web search-like results display. This setting does not affect advanced searches.
• Emailing Folders: Folders, including their contents, can now be emailed as ZIP files.
• Folder Refresh: The Folder Browser now features a refresh button, allowing you to refresh only the folder contents rather than the entire browser window. The refresh button will also display a small indicator when there are changes to the folder since the last refresh.
• Support for New Server Features: All new server features listed in the New Features in the Laserfiche Server, Web Client, and Windows Client section, above, are supported in the Laserfiche 10.2 web client.

Introducing Laserfiche Federated Search

Laserfiche Rio 10.2 introduces a new search site, Laserfiche Federated Search, that allows you to perform searches across multiple repositories at the same time. Administrators can configure Federated Search to search across any or all of the repositories at their site, including repositories that are not hosted on the same Laserfiche Server. This allows users who work in multiple repositories, or who are not sure which repository stores a particular piece of information, to quickly find documents in any repository.

Federated Search supports the common search types (document text, fields, entry names, and annotation text), and respects the user's search options. It also respects Laserfiche security settings, and will not return results that a user would not be able to see when searching within an individual repository.

Laserfiche Rio 10.2 includes Laserfiche Federated Search. It is not supported on other Laserfiche editions.

More Information

The following minor changes and fixes were also added to Laserfiche 10.2.

Note: Laserfiche 10.2 is a cumulative update and also includes all changes included in previous versions.

Laserfiche Server

• Resolved an issue that prevented some searches containing wildcard from returning documents. (146488)
• The "Linked Trustee" column in the Administration Console now correctly displays linked accounts. (143870)
• Resolved issues in which some searches took an unusually long time to complete. (146759, 146130, 145632, 150454)
• External tables containing a varchar(max) column no longer cause Laserfiche to crash. (152291)
• In some cases, users attempting to log in using a named device would receive a "Cannot connect to the Laserfiche Directory Server. [9528]" error. This issue has been resolved. (152768)
• A "User name or password incorrect. [9010]" error message was incorrectly being displayed for some users when logging in. This issue has been resolved. (143200)
• Resolved an issue that could result in searches running indefinitely without returning results. (152729)
• Resolved an issue that prevented users with the Manage Templates and Fields privilege from viewing field values if they were denied the Read template access right. (146420)
• Resolved an issue with Kerberos authentication. (152341)
• In some cases, applying a redaction to a low-resolution image page made the page unreadable to users without the See Through Redactions entry access right. This issue has been resolved. (150598)
• Improved error logging for misconfigued LDAP users. (145055)
• Common and quick searches using the "All fields" search type and wildcards did not return documents containing field values longer than 100 characters. This issue has been resolved. (147679)
• Dynamic field values now sort correctly based on the specified sort column. (150690)
• Laserfiche users managed through Laserfiche Directory Server can now change their password via the Windows or web client. (142209)
• Attachment annotations are now full-text searchable. (35688)
• Various issues encountered when generating pages and text from PDFs have been resolved. (144501, 143616, 143693, 144275, 144396, 147165, 143762, 146728, 144367, 147278)
• Downloading a Laserfiche document with a large number of pages as a PDF no longer results in a "Error reading HTTP response body" error message. (146788)
• Importing a PDF to Laserfiche using WebDAV now correctly sets the MIME type. (145618)
• Resolved an issue in which some product features were missing when users logged in using Kerberos. (145416)
• Exporting a text-only document with watermarks no longer requires the arialuni.ttf font to be installed. (151738)

Windows Client

• Resolved an issue in which the "Remembered for each folder" column setting was not functioning correctly when used with column profiles. (147214, 146150)
• The Windows client no longer crashes when importing JPGs using list files. (151929)
• Importing a MSG file as a new version of a document now functions correctly. (150621)
• In some cases, opening a document using a shortcut resulted in custom text stamp tokens not resolving correctly. This issue has been resolved. (147379)
• Resolved an issue involving the LoadLaserfiche call in Client Automation Tools. (148274)
• Resolved an issue in which the Windows client could not be opened using Client Automation Tools in some situations. (151280)
• Users without the Write Metadata entry access right were not able to generate pages for electronic files. This issue has been resolved. (144905)
• Searching for values within a particular range now functions correctly for multi-value fields. (140358)
• In some cases, searching within a document could cause the Windows client to crash. This issue has been resolved. (153069)
• Resolved an issue in which very large PDFs are generated from color images. (138906)
• In some cases, the sender email address was not correctly retrieved when importing MSG files. This issue has been resolved. (145057)

Web Client

• Saved searches now correctly retain dynamic field values. (145490)
• When a user for whom "Export" events are audited downloaded a folder as a ZIP file, some documents were not exported. This issue has been resolved. (144596)
• Improved the handling of custom field formats for dates. (148306)
• Using Windows authentication to log in to Laserfiche from the Office Integration no longer results in a "The token XML does not appear to be valid." error message when the web client is configured to use Laserfiche Directory Server for authentication. (146227)
• The %(PageCount) token now resolves correctly when used in a custom text stamp. (151557)
• Scanning a document with a page containing no text into the web client sometimes resulted in a "'' is not a valid token" error message and one or more missing pages. This issue has been resolved. (152488)
• A security issue has been resolved. (152268, 152269)
• Resolved an issue in which tags could not be applied to documents when importing. (148955)
• The values displayed for list fields in the advanced search pane are no longer truncated at 100 values. (149050)
• Resolved an issue in which briefcase imports failed if there was no DEFAULT volume in the repository and the parent folder had no default volume set. (144593)
• The calendar date picker no longer incorrectly handles the default short date format of the browser. (152590, 152252, 153040)
• The page number parameter now works correctly in Document Viewer URLs. (143725)
• Embedding the web client in an iFrame now works correctly when the Laserfiche web server is on a different machine than the web server hosting the iFrame. (150481)
• Resolved an issue in which a "Could not connect to the Laserfiche Server" error message was displayed when resetting a user password in some cases. (151127)
• Scanning into the web client now respects the default volume set in Laserfiche Scanning. (147437)
• Documents with a period in their names no longer display the electronic document icon unless they also have an electronic file. (145385)
• Users could not scan into a folder if they lacked rights to the folder's default volume. This issue has been resolved. (145615)
• Restored the ProcessLogin.aspx page for custom login page support. (148331, 149310)
• Business processes with page count and parent name conditions now function correctly. (144216)
• Group watermarks without headers or footers no longer cause members of the group to receive a "The parameter value must be greater than zero. Parameter name: pixelWidth" error message when opening documents. (150127)
• Searches using the common search type now correctly handle single quotes in the search terms. (150245, 150312)
• When documents are configured to open automatically if a search returns only one result, PDFs did not correctly follow the user's PDF display settings. This issue has been resolved. (153155)
• In some cases, when scanning into a folder in the web client, the lock on the last document was not correctly released. This issue has been resolved. (143650)
• Default values now work correctly with dynamic fields. (151268)
• Outlook email messages sent from the web client can now be converted to HTML format without encoding issues. (144578)
• The last search blocks opened in advanced search will now be correctly remembered for future sessions. (149234)

Audit Trail

• An issue in which Audit Trail filters did not display when the filter excluded certain trustee types has been resolved. (145824)
• The "E-file ID" and "Alternate e-file name" columns now display correctly. (143670)
• Trusted domains now display correctly when configuring Audit Trail permissions. (147100)
• A "The start date must be earlier than the end date." error message was incorrectly displaying when the start date and end date were the same. This issue has been resolved. (143564)
• A security issue has been resolved. (152125)
• An issue in which the "Start Business Process" event was not correctly logged has been resolved. (150255)
• Pages ranges for the "Print" event are now correctly logged and displayed. (149882)

Scanning

• Selecting a dynamic field no longer results in an "Unhandled Exception" error message. (151136)
• In some cases, scanning with Epson TWAIN drivers caused Laserfiche Scanning to hang. This issue has been resolved. (118880)
• Scanning into an existing document that contains both dynamic fields and a date field with a value no longer results in a "Bad field value [9017]" error. (148542)
• Template required fields now function correctly when creating a document with Laserfiche Scanning. (149009)
• In some cases, scanning into an existing document caused dynamic field values to be lost. This issue has been resolved. (138804)
• Resolved an issue in which closing scanning did not immediately close the session. (152188)

Office Integration

• Resolved issues with dynamic field behavior when viewing metadata in Microsoft Office. (147318, 150933, 152335)
• Page generation now works correctly when saving a Microsoft Word document to the repository as a PDF. (150155)
• Text is now correctly generated when saving a PDF attachment in an Outlook message as a separate document. (152117)
• The %(ID) token was not resolving to the correct document ID when used in a document name. This issue has been resolved. (148138)
• Resolved an issue in which images in a Microsoft Excel file were saved at a low resolution when saving the Excel file as a PDF. (143338)
• Template required fields now display correctly when viewing metadata in Microsot Office. (148233)
• Linked documents can now be opened directly from the Links section of the metadata dialog box in Microsoft Office. (147988)

PhotoDocs

• Crop, rotate, and OCR failed to function properly on some images. This issue has been resolved. (152170)
• An issue that caused PhotoDocs to crash when processing some images has been resolved. (152211)

Laserfiche 5 Volume Converter

• Resolved an issue that caused the volume converter to crash when handling documents with large stamps. (144464)

Related Links

1013819 Release Notes for Laserfiche 10.2