blog.atwork.at

news and know-how about microsoft, technology, cloud and more.

Delegate365 changelog version 5-Core Updates, Improvements, features and design

Delegate365 version 5 is about to come in the next two weeks. In this version we concentrated on core optimizations of D365 and not in features. Since many core functions of the prodct have been improved, we claimed a major release for this D365 version and think version number 5 is well deserved. Anyway, see the details of the new D365 version here:

  • Optimization: This version brings optimized features and better performance in a bunch of functions. The SyncOp has been strongly optimized and D365 now uses more caching for showing and updating lists which results in better performance. Users of D365 will see most significant performance in the SyncOp and in lists with a larger number of items, for example in the users list or in the distribution lists, but all lists have been updated.
  • Behind the scenes: These short sentences about optimization above have been more than two months of work where our lead developers looked into almost all functions and tried to optimize the code and and deliver an even better user experience. Almost all functions now implemented run asynchronously, similar code has been combined, database operations have been accelerated, internal logging has been improved and much more tasks have been accomplished in that optimization phase. Many thanks to our lead architect Christoph and our product lead developer Andi and the whole team.
    We do not want to post any numbers how much faster a specific function is since the individual performance depends on many factors (in the cloud). Basically, the more objects your Office 365 tenant has, the more speed difference should be noticeable compared to the D365 versions before. So, small Office 365 tenants with only some hundred objects will have slighter performance improvements, larger tenants should benefit from even better performance. This will be visible definitely in the SyncOp and when opening a list page or paging through lists. To make it short: We believe, the effort was worth it and we hope you will feel the performance difference in your own D365 tenant as well.

So, here we go with new features and changes coming with D365 version 5.

  • New Default Design: With version 5 we also wanted to refresh the default D365 design to have a new look similar to the new Microsoft Portals. We think the new default design provides a clear and good readable user interface. All customers who have been using the default theme "atwork" will automatically get this new design.
    image
    The theme can be switched anytime by the Portal Administrators.
  • Switch the design: If you want to use any other (or the old default) design, as Portal Admin, open the Your Company menu below the logged in user information and change the theme in that page. If you prefer the previous, blue theme: The old default design is named "blue", the new is named "atwork".
    image
    Save the changes at the page end. The theme will be valid from now on for all users in the D365 portal.
  • Task Panes now show a small close button in the top right corner to prevent to scroll down to click the Cancel button for closing the panel. The meaning is the same, the x icon closes the panel as Cancel does.
    Update: Close by clicking left of the opened panel. Users can close the Task Pane now by clicking somewhere in the (grey) overlay area left of the panel as well! This is much quicker than searching for the Close icon or the Cancel button... Smile
     image
  • Self User Management: In the manage administrator and edit admin function there exists a new switch "Can manage himself".The Portal Admin now can define that Scope Administrators can manage their own user object in the users list. The default is set to No. If the switch is set to Yes, the Scope Admin sees his own user (if he is in one of his OU's and his domains) and can manage himself, for example, changing licenses or modifying his own user. If organizations want this self management, this now can be controlled by this admin switch "Can manage himself".
    image
  • New license plans have been added to the D365 database (for example: Sway license and some more)
  • Distribution Lists: Instead of "Edit members" there exists now full management of all Exchange features with "Edit group". This includes a new membership picker list, permissions,  ownership, approvals, group delegation, Send As, Send on behalf (some features are also manageable for synched DG's, D365 checks this and deactivates specific options in that case).
    image
    When opening Edit group, the Administrator now can control a bunch of Exchange features.
    image
    Members now can be controlled with the plus and minus icons and can be picked in the task pane with AutoSuggest.
    SNAGHTML2245ae8
    The General section includes Display Name, Alias, Email address and if this distribution list shall be hidden from the address list or not.
    image
    The Ownership allows to define the owners of that distribution group with a member picker.
    image
    Membership approvals show serveral options to choose how the distribution group is controlled.
    image
    Group delegation send as is an own section since some options can be set for synced distribution groups and all options for cloud distribution groups.
    image
    Group delegation send on behalf can be controlled in this section where the Admin can add members with that permission.
    image
    If options are not available because the distribution group is synced, specific fields or sections appear inactive, otherwise they are active.
    Remember to click the Save button in each section you modify.
  • Distribution Lists can now include contacts (Before, contacts have not been showed and could not be added as members of distribution lists). Contacts can be added to a distribution list in the same way as users.
    image
  • Update: Forwarding a user mailbox or a shared mailbox to Contacts: Contacts now can be used for forwarding a user's mailbox and a shared mailbox as well. This can be done with the member picker.
    SNAGHTML31f8742
    This feature reduces manual errors when using forwarding.
    image
  • Minor fixes: For example: In edit user, if the the user nickname was set, this could overwrite the UPN in some cases. When using Auto License Assigning an error could occur if no license was selected in the OU. Resetting user password could result in an error in some cases. When opening Password Policies for the first time settings could not be loaded because theses settings are not existing, fixed with corresponding message and so on. These issues have been fixed or workarounded.

We hope you like the new version of Delegate365.
This version will be rolled out for all D365 instances in the next two weeks (until mid of February).

Planned features of future Delegate365 editions are available in the roadmap article.

Loading