Over the past two weeks a number of significant new features and enhancements have been released, some of which we've highlighted in this post:
Custom Field Validation
Many of you have been looking forward to more control over field validation and it is finally here. Now, as with formulas and workflow event conditions, you can use the full power of JavaScript to define validation rules that are as simple or as sophisticated as your business needs demand.
While many fields already allowed you to specify some validation rules such as a text field mask or
bounds for a numeric field, until now you could not write your own. Next to each field you will now see a new link called "Validation" which allows you to define a custom JavaScript-based formula.
The syntax of validation formulas is the same as that used to define Formula fields and Workflow Event conditions. See the Rollbase Formula Guide for more information.
Returning any non-null String indicates an error and that String will be displayed to the user as a field-level error as shown here:
Field-level Permissions
Until now Rollbase did not allow you to define permissions for individual object fields. Now you will find a new "Permissions" link next to each field providing a way to specify whether any given role can see that field, and if they can see it, whether or not it should always be read-only for users with that role. This provides much more fine-grained access control over your data structures.
3-Column Layout
Previously in Rollbase you could organize page sections into one or two-column layouts, but three-column layouts were not possible. We've now expanded the page editor and backend page rendering mechanism to support 1, 2, and 3-column layouts as shown here:
Workflow Processes
Rollbase Workflow Statuses, Actions and most significantly Events provide a broad palette of options for designing both user-driven as well as automated business processes. However, previous to this weekend's update there was no way to allow more than a single user-driven workflow process per object definition. This might be limiting for companies with different processes for say new employees depending on the department they've been hired into, or asset requests depending on asset type.
Now all Objects have a new component called Workflow Processes. Each Workflow Process represents a sequence of Statuses and Actions that records can be moved through. Every object with the "Workflow" attribute now has a new field corresponding to this called "Workflow Process" allowing you to select or pre-populate new records with the appropriate Workflow Process definition. When a particular process is selected, the "Workflow Status" field will only allow selection of statuses associated with the selected process. In this way, you can support any number of workflow processes for any object definition.
Hierarchical Application Navigation
In the spirit of Web 2.0 we've been focusing on ways to reduce the number of clicks it takes to get where you need to go in any Rollbase application. Many of you may have already noticed the newly expanded "Applications" sidebar component allowing you to drill down to any major function within an application from here rather than by navigating from page to page. This was a user-requested feature that is already saving us time internally.
Along with this we've also introduced the notion of page children, allowing you to create new pages and attach them to parent pages, providing a way to create an application hierarchy deeper than the default three levels (any depth is now possible).
Custom OnLoad JavaScript for Pages
Now you can define any JavaScript to run on a page's OnLoad event (i.e. when the page has been fully rendered by the browser). This applies to both back-end application and portal pages. You will find a new "OnLoad" action next to each Page in an Object's details page. This is one of the first steps we've taken toward providing Rollbase app developers with more dynamic JavaScript-based control over forms. Stay tuned for field-level event control capabilities in a future release.
Portal Cloning
Entire Portals can now be cloned, allowing you to make a copy of an existing portal that may need small modifications for a unique but similar purpose. Rather than re-building much of the same functionality from scratch, you can use the "Clone" action next to each Portal to make a full copy.
Portal Page Synchronization
The recent page synchronization feature has been popular for users managing pages with large numbers of fields. However, this only applied to back-end application pages. Users managing multiple Portal pages had no way of synchronizing page changes until now. The "Save & Synchronize" button is now available when editing object-specific Portal pages.
Setup Filters for Easier Application Management
Now Rollbase Administrators can filter the Objects, Tabs, Portals and Permissions pages by Application, providing a way to narrow in on the appropriate application components and related permissions much faster by selecting an application. This is another user-suggested feature that is already saving us time internally. As shown here, a new picklist appears at the top of the Objects page allowing you to narrow your view to only Objects associated with the selected Application:
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