Release Date: August 31, 2023
With this release, SmartStash has been enhanced with many new design features, allowing you to further customize your SmartStash environment and create a personalized user experience. There are also new features and usability improvements.
New Features and Web Parts
Replace Contacts
SmartStash has been enhanced with a feature that allows you to replace a person in the “Contact” field with a new person across multiple SmartStash items simultaneously. This feature can be applied to all stashes or to a specific stash. Contact-related tasks (notifications and validity checks) are assigned to the new contact. Before performing the replacement, you can preview the changes.
Replace Contacts – SmartStash Docs
Related Files Web Part
With the new "Related Files" web part, you can display files that were uploaded to a SmartStash article under "Related Files" directly on the article page. This makes it faster to access and download the files. Links to related files download directly and do not open in a new tab.
Related Files - SmartStash Docs
Status Updates
Starting immediately, status messages—if any—will be displayed on the welcome page of the SmartStash Admin Center. These messages may pertain to current issues with Microsoft services, open issues in SmartStash that are currently being addressed, or release information.
Global Settings in the Admin Center – SmartStash Docs
Global Overview in the Teams App
A new tab is being added to the Teams app to complement MyStash. This tab provides a global overview. The page behind it can be customized in the Admin Center.
Microsoft Teams App – SmartStash Docs
Usability improvements
"Scroll to the top" button
With the new release, you can show or hide a "Scroll Up" button. This button lets you return to the top of the page with a single click. The button can be used in Stashes and on sites with the SmartStash bar enabled.
Global Settings in the Admin Center – SmartStash Docs
Customize Search Field Text
The placeholder text for the search field can now be customized. This option is available in the Stash overview, the global overview web part, and the SmartStash search.
Stash Overviews and Filters – SmartStash Docs
Design Extensions
Customize Filters
In the Admin Center, you can customize the sorting order of a stash’s filters. With the new release, the following sorting options are available: alphabetically, by count (as before), and as in the termset (manual sorting via the terminology repository). Additionally, individual filter sections can be highlighted in color (the theme’s primary color). The filters have been redesigned to improve readability across all color schemes (borders, contrast, font-to-background color ratio, and shadows).
Stash Overviews and Filters – SmartStash Docs
New Tile Layouts
The new release allows you to customize the design of the hierarchical tile view even further. The view now supports large images and icons. Depending on the style, the image height and positioning can be adjusted for horizontal, vertical, or transparent image formats. The tiles feature a rounded style and a subtle shadow. The new options allow all tiles to be displayed at the same size. The number of tiles in a row in full-screen mode can be adjusted. The border width can also be controlled.
The new options also apply to the Organization and Topics web parts. Staff positions can now be displayed wider than or just as wide as all other positions. Large images can be used, for example, to visualize locations or teams.
Stash Overviews and Filters – SmartStash Docs
Using CSS Styles
In the Admin Center, you can now add custom CSS to implement specific design preferences or hide elements.
All CSS customizations refer to classes or IDs in the user interface, which may change at any time (Microsoft) or with updates (SmartStash). We recommend reviewing your customizations regularly. We would be happy to assist you in the future with reviewing or creating CSS rules that implement the desired design enhancements.
Global Settings in the Admin Center – SmartStash Docs
Redesign of the Tiles in MyStash
The display of tiles in MyStash has been optimized to align with Microsoft's newer design principles.
MyStash – SmartStash Docs
Bug fixes/stability improvements
Caching Posts
Occasionally, Microsoft's search service may be unavailable or experience temporary issues—this results in empty SmartStash overviews. Often, these issues are resolved simply by reloading the page or within a few minutes (in rare cases, outages may last longer).
To prevent users from seeing blank overviews, we are introducing caching for the first time, which loads posts from the cache in the event of brief outages. If there is no cache, a message will appear indicating that the page needs to be reloaded.
For this reason, there should no longer be any completely empty overviews or “endless loading circles.”
Additional fixes
- Tags marked as "deprecated" are no longer available for selection in the Compliance Panel
- Similar posts are displayed correctly even for multilingual terms
- Warnings about the missing Compliance Panel should no longer appear on system pages (such as Microsoft Search)
Miscellaneous
Introduction to Service Accounts
If you have support contracts or ongoing projects with COSMO CONSULT, the accounts provided in your system can be configured so that SmartStash licenses are no longer deducted for these accounts, while still allowing for full support and access.
COSMO CONSULT's internal processes have been enhanced with new digital tools, enabling SmartStash license requests to be processed and implemented more directly and quickly.
Direct link to the Evaluation Center
The evaluation section in the Admin Center can now be accessed directly via a link. To do this, simply append “#EvaluationCenter” to the Admin Center URL.
Reports – SmartStash Docs
