v3.0 iChannel November 2020

Date: Nov 16, 2020

Version: 3.0 Full

About iChannel v3.0 :

iChannel v3.0 comprises several new features and enhancements along with fixes for the encountered issues in the current version. From now on you will experience faster, smoother, feature-rich workflow throughout the system functionalities, with an upgraded UI/UX designed for a better look and feel and enhanced user experience.

Most of the features are now on the latest tech stack (.Net) and outdated features (such as Pipeline) are eliminated for optimized system functionality. More details regarding the ‘New features’, ‘Enhancements’, and ‘bug fixes’ are included in the below sections for your reference.

Prerequisite for v3.0: SQL Server 2016 or newer

Module	What’s New

Module	What’s New
New Module CRM Security	CRM Security is a new feature that adds additional security settings for Projects, Activities, and other modules within iChannel. This is an additional service we provide. Please contact Lacy Magby (VP-Sales) if interested.
Archived Feature	The Re-catalog function has been removed with v3.0 as this required functionality is facilitated via the new Auto Sweep feature.
New Module Report Query	The Report Query has been relaunched with new functionality. Report query module allows customize reporting for clients and contacts.
iChannel Portal	User’s can now create a request to show on the portal for clients to return files back to their firm representative. User’s select the Create Portal Request feature from the gear icon in the site file area. Once the request is made, the request will show on the Files Uploaded tab in in the Portal.
iChannel Portal	With v3.0 the iChannel Portal User Interface (UI) on the landing pages and sections in the Portal were enhanced to provides clients will a more modern and simplified experience. The ‘Submit files page’ has been enhanced to match with the new visual style of the portal.
New Module Retention Module	With v3.0 users can now take advantage of a new module. The new iChannel Retention Module provides clients with the ability to identify the parameters when archiving and setting retention policies on documents.. For more information on the Retention Module, please click the following links: https://support.conarc.com/Retention Module Job Aid or iChannel Retention Module iLearning video.
Browser Support	iChannel v3.0 has added new browser support with Microsoft Edge Chromium browser. Now the iChannel and Portal platforms are fully compatible with the Microsoft Edge Chromium.
New iChannel Naming Standardization	To better streamline terminology throughout iChannel, we have introduce a New Naming Convention. The terms used in the portal are now standardized for easy reference. The summary would be as follows,
New Module Routing	The entire module of Routing (New Routing) is optimized for an enhanced user experience.
Change Subscriber Password	A new message now appears when a reset password request is performed on the Change Subscriber Password page. This new message is designed to let the user know that an email notification will be sent informing the respective password is reset.
Files (Documents)	Search results in the File Area and Document search area are sorted alphabetically and the case is ignored while searching, enhancing the user-friendliness of the system.
iChannel Portal	New message to support when a client’s password has expired for access to the iChannel Portal.
License Management	License management is easier with v3.0 iChannel in which the licensing process has been re-designed to smoothly manage multiple Root sites and easily set license per root site.
Customized Email Templates	‘Customized Email Templates’ folder is enhanced to avoid overwriting client customizations during the system updates. Client customized templates will remain unaffected.
Email Feature	Email Feature is enhanced on the "List Email" Page for the ease of use of the clients.
Workflow Time Format	New time (hh:mm) format has been added to the Start/End time fields for the task. This new enhancement will resolve any confusion and errors caused when tasks with the same start and end date are entered.
Workflow Template	To assist in the time it takes to create a Workflow template. The workflow template request list is propagated, when creating workflows using templates.
DeleteTempFolders	The ‘DeleteTempFolders’ service is attached to the new consolidated background services, which will be executed as a sub process in the main background service. It cleans up any Temp Folders that were lingering.
iChannel Desk	The process when Uninstalling iChannelDesk has been simplified and now is easier to uninstall than with pervious versions.
Contact	Respective subscriber profile is removed when deleting a contact, that avoids duplicate subscribers and maintains the exact subscriber count in the system.
Emails Templates	With v3.0 organizations can now customize Email Templates. Administrators can reference the ‘Custom Email Templates’ guide to learn more : JOB AID iChannel Guide Email Template Customization

Module	What’s Upgraded

Module	What’s Upgraded
User Interface (UI)	UI Enhancements: The following pages and sections are enhanced with new UI updates matching with the new visual style of the system interface, which improves the user experience in a convenient way. One theme is maintained through-out the system UI and the advanced setting for ‘iChannel Themes’ feature is removed from the ‘Site Detail’ page and the ‘Site Advanced Settings Maintenance’ page The system section UI is enhanced by adding a Navigation Header A progress bar is added to the Document Upload section, which visualizes the uploading progress for the users. The Report area in the system section is enhanced by updating new icons matching with the new visual style of the system interface. Re-Categorize Documents page is enhanced with access from the drop-down lists once a document has been selected, for a better user experience. The document area icons and tooltip texts are enhanced with matching to the new visual style when documents are published to the portal or linked. Globe icons (active, inactive, plus). Link and published icons. Tooltip text on linked and published icons. The Document upload bar is expanded, which allows using the entire available area at the top of the page. 'Error', 'Warning' and 'Success' message banners in the system and portal are improved with prominent colors in order to provide a better user experience. The Contacts page is updated with the new color theme, matching to the new visual style of the system interface. Selection boxes are converted to multi-select dropdown boxes. The selected entities box is bigger, thus the long list of entities is visible. The title section of Hyperlink Summaries is replaced with the new icon ‘File Cabinet’ and when the icon hovers ‘Uncategorized’ text is displayed.
Site ID field	The label ‘FEIN’ is renamed as ‘Site ID’ in the "Create a New Site" section, Add Contact page, in order to improve user-friendliness and to maintain the consistency.
Email	A new option is provided to Send emails on behalf of each Root site, for clients who share iChannel instance.
MAX Files Upload	A warning message and a confirmation box will be displayed to continue when uploading larger files. Max files size is limited to Windows which is 2GB.
Release Notes	The respective Release Notes are easily accessible via the Footer section, 'Version 2.20.8' portion on the internal iChannel site is clickable with the hover text mentioning 'Release Notes'. Users will be re-directed to the this page.
Getting Started with iChannel Portal	A new video for Getting Started with iChannel Portal is available now via “YouTube” and will be the default help/portal training for version 3.0.
Ichannel Desk	Enhanced the iChanelDesk ‘Emails as Links’ features, where documents can be emailed through the iCD.
General	The new system version minimizes the use of VFP tables by shrinking those.

Module	What’s Fixed

Module	What’s Fixed
General	The email feature is enhanced to provide faster and smooth flow when sending emails to outside users.
Dashboard	Report icon functionality in the ‘My Tasks’ widget is improved to retrieve and display the list of tasks filtered as per the selected statuses in the dropdown box.
iChannel Portal	Improved to support firm users can now Publish and Link files in the portal without an expiration date.
iChannel Portal	iChannel Portal User ID and Password is now Case Sensitive providing higher security for client accounts.
Quick Search	Quick search results for entity names in the file search area are displayed in alphabetical order.
General	When adding files in the ‘Add documents’ section, the file name must be less than 260 characters, and the directory name must be less than 248 characters. Respective validations and warning messages are incorporated with the functionality.
Subscribers Details	When updating email and user ID for Contacts and Subscribers in the ‘Subscriber Details’ section, below mentioned validations are applied. Contacts are validated for uniqueness by email address per root site. Subscribers are validated for uniqueness by user ID per root site.
Security Groups	Add, update, cancel, and search functions in Security Group UI are enhanced to provide an easy and better user experience.
Reports - Excel Export	All the column names of the exported excel sheet are renamed into meaningful and convenient names for easy reference when exporting data from the ‘Projects’ tab to an excel sheet
Security Two Factor Authentication (2FA)	Two-factor authentication is enabled when switching root-sites via the drop-down menu, in order to ensure the security standards of the system. Additionally, error messages are updated to provide meaningful information when the license for the site is missing or invalid.
Reports	The mismatches between the ‘titles of the search results’ and the ‘titles of the exported excel sheet’ in the Sites page of the Systems section are now resolved by mapping the same titles between the front-end search results and the exported results, maintaining the consistency of data.
File - Versioning	When a file is versioned, an Email notification is sent only for selected emails. Sending notifications to every contact of an entity in the previous system version, caused confusion for clients.
iChannelDesk	Users previously encountered an error generated when dragging and dropping emails from outlook to ICD is resolved for all the clients, regardless of the windows OS version and office version, which is been used.
General	Contacts auto-populating feature in the email screen is enabled for users to easily and quickly add email addresses of all contacts.
Workflow	Fixed issues in the ‘Send emails to selected contacts’ function in the Workflows section, which can be conveniently used in this version.
iChannel Portal	Fixed the preview option on the portal, which now renders the respective jpg correctly and displays in a new tab.
General	Security group admin users are now allowed to edit/make changes for users from the subscriber screen.
File Area	Validations for the respective topic and expiry date are now properly enforced on the Document Publish function, ensuring smooth process flow.
Workflow	Start and End Date on Activity Page are autoformatted into the system expected format for the types of activities. Placeholders and respective validations are enforced into the date fields.
Workflow	Resolved the issue in setting past dates as due date, when adding requests in the Activity section. Now past dates are not allowed as the due date.
File Area	Resolved the issue, that displayed invalid data when searching file area with ‘Excluding’ tags. Now clients will be able to view all the files except selected tagged documents when performing a file search in the file area.
Workflow	Fixed the issue in displaying other contacts under workflows sites. Now respective primary contact is displayed.
General	Document search criteria in Files Tab is allowed to export to text files without any issues.
Dashboard	Solved the issue of duplicating widgets when the save button is clicked more than once. Now widgets are not duplicated in initial dashboard creation.
Ichannel Desk	Fixed the issue, that iCD prompting to install, when trying to sign-in. Now users are not prompted to install the program at signing.
General	Site search count shows the exact correct number of record counts.
Dashboard	Users are able to download or open files from the dashboard (when the direct mode is set) without any issue.
Portal	Email notifications will be sent to clients when email notification setting is enabled for portal.
General	Fixed the issue displaying incorrect Site Codes when there are characters in the Site code. Now any Site code is properly displayed on the Entity Detail page.
System	The ‘Save’ button and ‘Reset’ buttons in the Subscriber password reset page are renamed as follows for better user experience. Save -> Reset Password Reset -> Cancel
File Area	Corrected the issue when files get checked-in on clicking the ‘Cancel’ button in Dashboard ‘My Checked Out documents' widget. Now the file submission is canceled on clicking the 'Cancel’ button as expected.
System	The correct count of ‘Active Subscribers’ is displayed on the Systems, Subscribers page.
File Area	The files list in File Area can be sorted by ‘Type’ in both ascending and descending order.
iChannel Portal	Fixed the issue appearing Site name dropdown in Portal when login with reset credentials. The main site will be selected for the first-time login and the last shown site will be selected, when there are multiple sites.
File Area	‘Generate & View Thumbnails of any Image’ feature in file upload is fixed to work as expected.
General	System password format is maintained as ‘Password must be at least 6 characters and should contain 1 lowercase character(s), 1 uppercase character(s), 1 numeric character(s), and 1 special character(s)’ and spaces are not allowed in the password.
Reports	Index Document Text Search’ in the internal systems reports section is deprecated.
Workflow	Actual hours are automatically updated in ‘All day events’ in the File area, Activity page
General	Email fields are validated and verified across the iChannel internal system and Portal.
iChannel Portal	Fixed the issue user gets automatically logged out from the portal when trying to ‘Preview uploaded documents’ in ‘Uploaded Documents table’. The function displays a preview of the selected file in another tab.
iChannel Portal	Fixed the issue of selecting too many sites in Portal, by allowing to limit the maximum number of sites to be selected through a configuration. Respective warning messages are displayed when trying to exceed the limit of selected sites.
General	Password policies are properly implied when creating and re-setting passwords in both iChannel internal and Portal. Defined password format requirements are displayed on respective screens.
File Area	When files are uploaded in File Area, the default category is automatically selected and that is a mandatory field for all files.
File Area	Files uploaded via Autosweep .Net Service, are applied to the respective categorization as defined in the system.

Last Updated on 12/14/2020