Happy New Year everyone! 2016 will be a very exciting year for Socialcast and we can’t wait to share all the new things currently in the works. But first, let’s take a look back at all the feature enhancements and mobile apps that were released in December to round out 2015.
1. Improved Search Results
We made a few enhancements to our Search tool so that it will yield better search results and improve overall back-end performance. The following improvements were made:
- In the past, typing in a phrase would lead to inconsistent search results; therefore, we’ve enhanced keyword stem searches so that more relevant content will be matched.
- We improved exact-word matching so that when you put quotes around a single word (e.g. “downtime”), the search results will only show results with that specific word.
- We added a Sort by Relevance filter option in addition to the default, sort by Most Recent.
- We also added a “did-you-mean” suggestion for incorrectly typed words/phrases.
2. Integration Store Updates
Since our launch of the Integration Store, we’ve received tons of great feedback on how we can add more relevant and impactful information to our integrations. We will continue to make improvements and share any updates every month on our blog.
Updates to Airbrake
- The most asked for enhancement for our Airbrake alerts was to link back to the specific alert page within Airbrake. We now include a “View full details” link which does just that
- We also added the missing ‘Critical’ field to the alerts
- We reformatted how the information is displayed in the Socialcast stream and removed the tabular layout to a more condensed, streamlined sentence. We now display the following information for each Airbrake alert: Hostname, Error type, Error message, Project name, Error occurrence (including file name, line number), and a link back to the Airbrake incident page
- Alerts are also now aggregated in the stream, keying off the original alert message with similar Environment + ErrorClass + ErrorMessage. This is a significant improvement for Admins whose goal is to stay on top of who has responded to which open alert, or for triaging alerts during a postmortem
Updates to vSphere Alarms
- We have reformatted how the alarm information is displayed in the Socialcast stream and removed the tabular layout to a more condensed, streamlined sentence. We display the Host and the Target of the alarm with a hashtag.
- Because the repository has an appended hashtag, it will start a topics page in Socialcast where you can see all the affected objects.
3. Introducing JIRA Plugin (Two-way Integration)
We are excited to announce our latest integration: JIRA Plugin. This integration allows admins to enable 2-way communication between your Socialcast community and JIRA instance. This is accomplished through a plugin that will appear on your JIRA tickets as a commenting box. Comments posted will flow seamlessly between JIRA and Socialcast so everyone stays up-to-date on the latest status without ever losing context. Combine this with the previously released JIRA webhook for a truly comprehensive solution to managing your JIRA projects and issues.
To use this plugin, a JIRA admin will first need to add the Socialcast Plugin in JIRA. This will be available in the Atlassian marketplace in the next few weeks. Once that is enabled in JIRA, Socialcast admins can go to Admin Settings > Integrations > External Applications > Enable JIRA Plugin.
4. Tooltip Added to Integration Card
We now include tooltips on all our integration cards so teams will have a significantly easier time identifying which integration card they need to modify, especially those integrations titled with long names. To see this change, simply hover over the integration card in the group Configured Integrations tab.
*Please note that On-Premise clients will receive these features in a future release.
Mobile App Updates
5. Socialcast iOS 3.7 App – Now Available
The newest Socialcast iOS mobile app 3.7 release is all about simple improvements that make a whole lot of difference. And the best part? This is just the beginning of the major usability enhancements that are yet to come. Check out the list of updates below and don’t forget to download the app in the App Store today.
- Swipe to Chat – You can now quickly access your Chats by swiping left from the right-side of the screen or clicking on the new Chat icon at the top right corner of your Home page. We pulled Chat out of our navigation menu to make it more accessible and easier to start a conversation with a colleague!
- Improved Login flow – You can now log in to our app by first entering your community URL, then your username and password. By exposing the community URL field, it will reduce the likelihood of getting a sign-in error. This change is the first phase of our overall improvements for a more simplified login flow.
- App Configuration for the Enterprise (ACE) – If your company uses an Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solution to manage corporate devices and the Socialcast app, you can configure your EMM to pass down supported key value pairs to the Socialcast app. In addition to the Community URL, we have added support to enable/disable copy and paste. This data loss prevention features ensures that important corporate data never leaves the Socialcast app.
- The App Configuration keys currently supported for the Socialcast iOS app are below.
- For more information about ACE, visit the Socialcast app page on the ACE website and look forward to a larger announcement coming up on the blog!
- This app also includes various bug fixes and performance updates
6. Socialcast Android 3.4 App – Now Available
The newest Socialcast Android mobile app 3.4 release is all about simple improvements that make a whole lot of difference. And the best part? This is just the beginning of the major usability enhancements that are yet to come. In addition, we’ve addressed some major performance issues. Check out the list of updates below and don’t forget to download the app in the Google Play Store today!
- Swipe to Chat – You can now quickly access your Chats by swiping left from the right-side of the screen or clicking on the new Chat icon at the top right corner of your Home page. We pulled Chat out of our navigation menu to make it more accessible and easier to start a conversation with a colleague!
- Improved Login flow – You can now log in to our app by first entering your community URL, then your username and password. By exposing the community URL field, it will reduce the likelihood of getting a sign-in error. This change is the first phase of our overall improvements for a more simplified login flow.
- App Configuration for the Enterprise (ACE) – If your company uses an Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solution to manage corporate devices and the Socialcast app, you can configure your EMM to pass down supported key value pairs to the Socialcast app. The Socialcast Android app now supports Community URL so that users will not have to enter it after downloading Socialcast from the App catalog.
- The App Configuration keys currently supported for the Socialcast Android app are below
- For more information about ACE, visit the Socialcast app page on the ACE website and look forward to a larger announcement coming up on the blog!
- Collated Notifications – Similar Socialcast notifications will not be collated in the Android Notification Center
- Markdown Support Removed from Chat – To improve the overall performance of the app, we’ve temporarily removed markdown support from Chats. We are working on a better implementation of the feature and will reintroduce it at a later time.
- This app also includes various bug fixes and performance updates