The Latest Version of the Elcom Digital Experience Platform is Here!

As part of our commitment to delivering a platform that evolves with your organisation’s needs, V11.5 is packed with new and improved functionality for administrators, publishers and end users.

We built V11.5 to be dynamic and highly configurable. The team has invested significantly in enhancing the design and usability of the platform to work smarter and faster.

Administrators and publishers can look forward to more choice and control around the management, delivery and access of content-related experiences, while audiences will have greater flexibility in how they interact with these sites

See V11.5 in action

Watch our webinar recording, as we highlight and demonstrate the new key - and highly requested - features and enhancements ready for you in the latest version.

Click here to watch the recording

Publishing

Simplify the publishing and authoring experience

With every release, enhancing the publishing experience remains a priority, and V11.5 is no different. With a series of new capabilities, the publishing experience is now more intuitive and efficient for non-technical publishers to manage content and author tasks.

Automatic article publishing

With the Structured Authoring module, staff can automatically publish articles from a template by filling in a form. Now more article attributes and metadata options will be available for articles including the ability to add in start and expiry dates, as well as a short article description.

Flexible content layouts

Non-technical users can quickly change a layout with our new Defined Content Article feature, by dropping a commonly used template of code on a page, such as an accordion, list of links or tiles with static data; all without having to work with a content editor.

Share drafts with stakeholders

Need to get feedback or approval on a draft article before it’s published for your audience? Now you can email a link to the draft to any stakeholder, and they can view a copy of the article without having to log into your site.

New Content Owner functionality

In some cases, the content publisher, such as a web publishing team member, doesn’t own the content they publish. V11.5 introduces the concept of ‘content owners’. Nominate an owner and their name and profile image is displayed on an article, enabling end users to easily contact them directly.

Improved Favourites display

It is now easier for end users to see what items they've added to their Favorites list using a clear visual indicator. When the Favourites icon is clicked on a page, the system will colour in the icon for that page. This way the user knows they have "favourited" the page.

Granular folder search functionality

Elcom has always provided publishers and administrators with the ability to search for folders within the backend administration interface. Search results can now be refined via the folder tree to display more relevant results such as hidden or private folders.

Add images to RSS Feeds

Many sites pull in RSS feeds from difference sources. While Elcom has enabled you to pull through feeds and show the date and description, with V11.5 you can now choose to display a feed on your site with a thumbnail. This helps your end users understand more context.

Dynamic Widgets

Improve the design and usability of dynamic content

We know that many small changes can make a big impact. Dynamic widgets make repurposing and reusing content across the site easy. In V11.5, you’ll find improvements to dynamic widgets, aimed at delivering an enhanced and seamless experience for your audience.

Enhanced layout options

New display options provide an enhanced UX (user experience) for audiences. Look out for the ability to:

add a load more results button.
toggle between grid and list views.
show and highlight feature articles first on a page.

Improved usability

Make it easier for end users to find what they need with the ability to:

add to their Favourites list directly from a widget.
increased search options for widgets such as custom metadata.
add additional tags for use in widget templates.
access new widget sort order capability.
refine widgets by event specific data e.g. event type and location.

EVENTS

Making event capture and promotion easy for all

With Elcom, you have a complete event management system for organising public and private events. In V11.5, we added two highly requested enhancements to the Events module!

Additional event fields

Using Dynamic Widgets to showcase upcoming events? Now you can display additional event fields based on:

Type
Category
Start and end date, and
event ICS file to allow end users to add the event to their personal calendars.

Easy event promotion

Want to allow your audience to submit events on your site? Simply set up the page with the Event Structured Authoring interface. External audiences then fill in a form that publishes their event using a standard template once approved by an administrator through a workflow.

FORMS

More flexibility for capturing online data

In V11.5, enhancements to one of our most popular features, the Elcom forms creator, has been made. You can expect both additional automation capabilities, as well as further granularity to features, making it a more powerful, time saving tool than ever.

Tap into external sources

Elcom forms now work seamlessly with external sources! With V11.5, you can populate a dropdown field on a form from an external date source via custom code. For example, a client has an online form which includes a drop-down list of sports venues from which to select.

Seamless mobile experiences

Deliver a better experience for mobile users by specifying input types in form fields so they render better on mobile devices. For example, numeric fields automatically bring up a numeric keyboard on mobile devices, making it much more intuitive for users to select and input numbers.

Share forms without hassle

The process of sharing forms just got easier. When forms are submitted, users now have the option to email multiple people including article owners and users selected on the form. In addition, workflow baskets can be setup so that approvers can only see and approve certain form fields.

More form flexibility

Additional form field options make forms more valuable. Now you can add:

a help placeholder and help text next to a field.
a single user selector drop down field to a form.
a multiple user selector drop down field to a form.
additional styling options at the field and panel level (as opposed to only the form level).

Copy form submissions

Do your end users often need to re-submit the same information over and over, such as corporate catering requests? V11.5 introduces the ability to copy the submissions a user previously submitted, modify it and resubmit as a brand-new submission.

Improved form validation rules

To ensure you capture the right information from real users, V11.5 introduces the ability to:

add in a confirm email address field so the user needs to retype their email address which would then be validated against the original email address field.
now use Google reCAPTCHA on the membership and form creator modules.
set up extended validation rules without requiring custom code. For example, when selecting the dates from a drop-down calendar, the end date of the calendar cannot be before the start date.

See V11.5 in action!

Watch the webinar

Workflows

More ways to streamline and automate processes

At the heart of the Elcom platform is our focus on automation and streamlining processes. Create more seamless automation efficiencies with new capabilities added to the powerful Elcom workflow routing engine used for several aspects of content management, such as forms and content review processes.

Enhanced comments functionality

V11.5 introduces multiple enhancements to the workflow comments functionality, enabling administrators to capture and expose more comments when required including:

providing comments to the originator via email without approving or rejecting the workflow item.
the ability for the originator to add comments to an item going into a workflow.
the ability to add comments when removing or reassigning the approver for a workflow item.

Simplify form approvals

In some scenarios an approver only needs to approve certain form fields. Now you can avoid overwhelming them with unnecessary fields that aren’t relevant to them. Workflow baskets can be setup so that approvers can see and approve ad-hoc groups of fields, helping to speed up the approval process.

Configure email subject lines

Sometimes you might want to change an email subject line for workflow items. Now you can configure the subject line for emails sent as part of a workflow. You can do this both at the workflow level or the basket level – the choice is yours!

Flexible workflow routing rules

V11.5 extends the target basket routing rules by:

specifying which basket to redirect the workflow item to. This is valuable in several scenarios e.g. when a user submits a performance review. The approver’s questions and comments can now be sent via an email back to the originator for feedback without having to reject or approve it.
catering 'for is not' scenarios. In many workflow scenarios it is often quicker to setup a rule to skip a basket if the logical operator ‘IS NOT’’ such as ‘is not equal to’ instead of having to add in several ‘is equal to’ options. For example, having a long list of departments on the form where only a few of them would trigger skipping the workflow basket.

Security and Access

Updates to continue keeping data safe and secure

At Elcom, we take security and access seriously. Your site is home to your organisation’s documents, communication, business processes, staff details and more. In V11.5, we’ve made further updates to enhance the security of your platform, as well as ensure it can be accessed by your end users.

Enhanced password security

To guard against password theft, we’ve enhanced security to cater for compliance with ISM/PSPF password rules by configuring the platform to:

process additional rules for password changes such as preventing users from using their first name or last name, common password phrases and reusing old passwords.
enable passwords to expire, with an email notification sent to the user to change their password.
enable a user’s account to be automatically disabled (ie. make inactive) if their password expires, with an email sent to the user containing a link enabling them to reactivate their account.

Impersonating a user

As an administrator, impersonating a user can be helpful in understanding what they are able to see and access. In V11.5, we’ve introduced new capabilities to improve the usability when impersonating a user. This includes:

introducing a session value (expiry time) as an additional layer of security to avoid administrators logging into the system later and forgetting they impersonated someone else.
changing the administration toolbar colour to make it very clear administrators are now logged in as another user.
adding a new button to stop impersonation and return to the original user.

New maintenance mode

If your site is under construction or it is being upgraded or changed behind the scenes, you can now put it into maintenance mode via a setting, while still allowing certain users, such as testers, who have the security permission to access the site to continue working on it.

Reporting

Simplify the process of monitoring and reporting on your site, and let your platform do the heavy lifting for you. With Elcom’s powerful reporting, we have:

added most reports in dashboards.
added last edited to articles reports.
improved the payment transaction report.
added a new custom metadata report.
added a scheduler which lets you enter an ad hoc email address.

Site search

Helping your users find information is easier than ever. More user fields such as user profile, department and job title are now available in searches. You can also enable users to search your store locator.

Active Azure Support

In V11.5, we now support running in Active/Active for sites hosted in Azure. This means if you’re hosted on Azure you can scale up or down the number of servers used by your site.

Integrations

Bringing productivity, collaboration and authoring tools into one interface

What makes Elcom so powerful is the ability to extend on the existing capabilities of the platform with pre-built integrations to third party systems and applications. In V11.5, you can access the latest updates for third party systems with native integration to the Elcom platform.

Elcom V11.5 is here!

You, our customers, drive our product releases and we’re excited to share the latest version of the Elcom Digital Experience Platform!