New Functionality

Search Results Booking Rule

This new Search Results Booking Rule allows the administrator to check for information on Biskit Types other than the Booking Biskit Type, to help decide whether a booking should be allowed and can be configured to fail depending on the number of search results found.. For example, you can create a Training biskit that captures information about when each person goes on training courses that are required for the facility. Then, create a Search Results Booking Rule that checks that the person making the booking has received training on the relevant resource in the last 6 or 12 months etc.

Booking Sub Types

If custom properties are added to bookings, different properties can now appear for different resources. Therefore asking for patient details when booking an MR scanner, but not when booking a conference room. See setting up Resources and Inheritance for more information. If an administrator wishes to move to Booking Sub Types for existing resources that are currently not using them, then they would be advised to talk to the Calpendo Support Team in order to help with the transition including moving across historical data.

Attachments

Files can now be uploaded and stored in the database. For example, documents can be attached to projects, such as ethics and other approvals.

Soft Locking

When a user begins editing anything, if it appears that anybody else is already editing it, then the user will be warned.

Version Control

Version Property meta-property used to store an automated integer property that stores the version number of each Biskit. Then, when you update a Biskit with a version, the server compares the given version with the old version.

Automatic Timestamps

As well as storing all activity in the audit log, Bookings have always directly stored the date and time when they were created and last changed. This has now been extended to other data types including Projects and can be added to custom types too.

Authentication

There's now support for single-sign-on and other authentication methods. This means that users don't need to have separate passwords for Calpendo and other systems.
 
This includes an updated login page and new user registration page. Is also easier to disable user self-registration for those sites that prefer to do this.

 

Changes in Functionality

New Banned Keywords

Added "create" and "update" to list of banned keywords for property names

Permissions

Some changes have been made to make permissions a little easier to understand.
 
There used to be a permission property called positive that was a boolean property with values true or false. This has now been renamed to authorisation and the options are Grant permission and Deny permission. It should now be clearer whether a permission that matches will actively allow an action (by granting permission) or stop an action (by denying permission).

 
Also, support for what we called "definitive permissions" had been dropped. They were a source of confusion. Also, they were not even necessary because every definitive permission could always be represented as two non-definitive permissions.
 
The Permissions page shows the permissions differently now. This is to reflect the fact that permissions for Booking will now also apply to subtypes of Booking.

Import

The Import page can now handle importing non-ASCII characters properly, such as accented characters like é, ä and ç etc.
 
Whenever anything fails to import for some reason, there is now an option of allowing all the items without errors to be imported; previously it was only an all-or-nothing.
 
Also, the import supports uploading multiple files at once when importing something that includes file attachments.

API Changes

Starting with this release, the API (Application Programmer Interface) for connecting other programs to Calpendo will be documented. New in this release is support for making complex search queries on the database, and getting back only the columns you need.
 
There are also some breaking changes to the API, so if you were already using it, please contact us.

Old Style Searches

Support for old-style searches has been removed. This should not affect any existing customer because it appears nobody is using the old-style searches any more. If you manage your own Calpendo server, then please make sure you keep the database backup you take before the upgrade to 6.3 for a while, just in case we find you need an old search.

New Booking Rule Validation Tests

When saving a Booking Rule, there are some new validation tests that are done that look for some misconfiguration's. In particular, if a status is selected under DoesNotApplyTo that is not selected in AppliesTo, then it will give a warning.

Changes To Licence Tab

The Licence tab of the Global Preferences page has changed a little

Time Template Transitions

When creating a Time Template,  a Time Template can be specified that applies far into the future, and also in the near term. For example, booking may not be allowed more than 6 weeks into the future. It used to be the case that a Time Template from 9am to 5pm would only use a rolling transition, which means that if it is now 3pm, then 6 weeks from now the user can book from 9am to 3pm, but not yet 3pm to 5pm.
 
There's now an option for an instant transition as well as rolling transition. With instant transition, at 9am, the whole of the Time Template from 9am to 5pm 6 weeks into the future would become available for booking.

Add Custom Properties To TemplateGroup

This can be used, together with an Advanced Booking Rule, to set up different people as administrators for a booking depending on which Time Template applied to it.

Boolean Properties

Boolean properties have always existed in Calpendo, and they allow the specification of a true or false value. However, sometimes, it is necessary to call them something different from "true" and "false", such as "Yes" and "No", or "On" and "Off". The Bakery has now been modified to a choice of text to be used to represent "true" and "false" so boolean drop-downs can be customised.

Template Project

There's one special "template" project that is used to initialise default values for all properties when creating new projects. If restrictions on project values are setg for example requiring particular properties to be set, then those restrictions are no longer applied to the special template project.

Custom User Properties

The New User Registration page used to ignore some types of properties. This has now been extended so it supports all the types that might be required.

Better Booking Rule Error Messages

When saving a Booking Rule with an error in one of the conditions, you are now told which tab the condition is in. So it differentiates between applies to, does not apply to, bookings to count etc.

New Ordering Of Booking Rules

Previously a Booking Rule had an Order property which determined which order the Booking Rules would run in, now the Booking Rules run in the order they are in the Rule Editor. Rules can be dragged and dropped in the Rule Editor to change their order.

Automatic Emails

The Automatic Emails page shows the automatic emails differently now. This is to reflect the fact that automatic emails for Booking will now also apply to subtypes of Booking.

Status Change Buttons On Search Page

When searching for users, projects or bookings, there are now extra buttons that are displayed as a short cut to changing the status.
 
For example, users can be easily approved from a regular User Search page. This means that the standard User Approval page can be replaced with one that only shows a subset of the new user requests. This is useful when assigning user administration for a group of users to a particular person.