Release Date: February 20, 2024
With this release, the functionality for creating articles and documents, the approval processes, and the Approval Center have been enhanced, and the UI has been optimized. In addition, the Admin Center now allows you to create your own stashes and view reports on search terms.
New Features and Web Parts
Approval Processes
Reviewer, Approver, and Approval Date are now available as columns in every library. In the version history, each action is recorded as a minor version, including any comments made (i.e., a review, an approval, a change request, etc.). If someone with admin rights reviews or approves on behalf of another user, they are asked whether they should be listed as the future reviewer or approver, or whether the original reviewer or approver should be retained. During validity checks, a new subversion is created that notes who performed the check and when.
Approval Processes – SmartStash Docs
Create Your Own Stashes
You can now create stashes via the Admin Center. The number of possible stashes is initially limited for technical reasons. Certain permissions are required to create a stash. The dialog explains the necessary steps; however, you must first configure a few settings during the SmartStash installation.
Create a New Stash Yourself – SmartStash Docs
Analysis of Search Terms
All SmartStash web parts support tracking of search terms entered. These search terms can now be analyzed in the Admin Center.
Search – SmartStash Docs
Usability improvements
New Approval Center
The Approval Center is now called the Editorial Center and features a new design that provides more information and better performance. There are new filters and groupings. In addition, editors can now cancel approval workflows themselves.
Editorial Center – SmartStash Docs
Forced Checkout
SmartStash now supports the visibility of checked-out documents in the Compliance Panel when they are locked for editing. All workflows have been enhanced to handle the "forced check-out" of items/files. Metadata in the Compliance Panel can be edited directly without having to check items in and out separately. SmartStash handles this automatically.
Compliance Panel – SmartStash Docs
New Create Dialog
The creation dialog has been optimized and now supports direct entry of all relevant metadata. Metadata from templates is pre-filled. Depending on the settings, items cannot be created if required fields are left blank (only when check-out is enforced).
Create Articles and Documents – SmartStash Docs
Root Nodes for Taxonomies
A subset of a term set can now be assigned to a stash and the global overview. This prevents editors from being overwhelmed by too many options when working with large topic areas, and allows users to view subsections of a tile view as an overview.
Settings in Website Settings – SmartStash Docs
Configuring the Web Part – SmartStash Docs
Miscellaneous
New Authentication Model
Microsoft will be phasing out the old authentication model for apps. For this reason, new features for SmartStash—such as creating a stash—will use the new authentication method. Existing stashes must be migrated at a later date. The new update includes a feature that enables this, but it does not need to be implemented immediately. Upon release, instructions will be provided explaining how to update the permissions. A global administrator must be involved in this process. The new stash creation feature will not work until these steps have been completed.
Publication of the Roadmap
The SmartStash roadmap is now available in the documentation. All features currently in development and planned features can be viewed here.
Roadmap
