Laserfiche 12 Changelog

November 7, 2024

Updated the Laserfiche 12 download package with an important fix for Laserfiche Forms 12. If you have previously installed Forms version 12.0.2410.343, uninstall before installing Forms version 12.0.2410.345.

This change resolves a potential issue where a user may be unable to submit a form if the form was previously processed, for example, through JavaScript customizations or through a workflow acting on the form. Trying to submit the form returns the following error message: "An unexpected error has occurred. [LFF502-UnexpectedError]."

November 6, 2024

This major release offers more intuitive metadata management, improved identity management, more consistent configuration and better usability throughout the Laserfiche product suite, and includes new features for: Repository Web Client, Forms, Repository Server, Directory Server, Workflow, and the all-new Administration Hub, as well as minor updates for the Repository Server and Desktop Administration Console.

General User Interface Updates

  • Application picker for switching easily between Forms and the Repository Web Client, as well as support for custom links and Forms and Web Client configuration pages.
  • Updated, cleaner UI and icons across the sign-in page, Repository, Forms, and all other version 12 web applications.
  • German Language Support: Laserfiche 12 applications adds support for German language user interface.

Administration Hub

The new Laserfiche Administration Hub brings:

  • List of servers with Laserfiche products, including all installed or licensed Laserfiche applications, automatically detected using connections to Directory Server.
  • Application-level information for Laserfiche 12 products, including: status, which can be running, stopped, not installed, or unknown; link to configuration page; application version information; and database connection information.
  • Server-level information for all machines with Laserfiche applications. Information includes: status (running vs. unknown), OS version, Processor information, total RAM, and storage usage.
  • Centralized log viewing for Laserfiche applications across different servers.
  • Lightweight local agents to securely collect and transmit application details and logs.
  • Configurable support contact details and helpful links for administrators.

Known issues and limitations:

  • Status for Directory Server STS and for Laserfiche SCIM service are not yet available under Directory Server application details (548326)
  • Licensing site name for Directory Server will not display when multiple licensing sites are present (548357)
  • Application details for Workflow does not yet support connected databases
  • Unclear state when Directory Server credentials are incorrectly configured or specified user has insufficient rights (shows incomplete machine list with no error) (530773, 541423)
  • If multiple licensing sites are used in Directory Server, all sites must have the domain for the configured Directory Server connection user present as an Identity Provider (551515)

Forms

Test mode for any Forms process

  • Initiate a test run of a process, marking the instance as "Test" in listings and excluding the test data from reports.
  • Specify an alternate save-to-repository location when running as a test instance.
  • Reassign tasks and emails to one or more specific users when running as a test instance.
  • Default rules allow for quick testing of any existing process, while powerful options support complex scenarios such as multi-department user acceptance testing.

Push-based user synchronization from Directory Server to Forms

Designed to better support SAML users, Laserfiche user changes, and propagation of group membership synced via SCIM. This new sync option augments the existing scheduled full sync, and adds support for:

  • Assign SAML users to be tasks before their first sign-in
  • Assigning tasks to SAML groups directly
  • Important: support for Active Directory users is limited in this initial release to manual changes to Active Directory users. To push a user's new information to Forms, administrators can remove and re-add the Active Directory user, or wait for the synchronization schedule.

Holiday calendar for business day calculations

  • Specify holidays for use in existing business day calculations, including rules for observing holidays that fall on weekends
  • Used alongside existing “exclude weekends” option

Accessibility updates for rendered forms

  • Fixes for alt-text for images, screen reader support for form elements, and increased contrast.

Scripting and customization support

Updates to scripting via the LFForms object, including:

  • Support for submission-related actions, such as asynchronous events after submission, e.g., setting field values after onFormSubmission.
  • Support for image and link html components
  • Support for process properties such as stage and step information

Designer updates

  • Allow marking a signature as read-only for future steps so that signatures from previous users can be displayed on the form to other users.
  • Dynamic date restriction and styling: built in options for today/tomorrow, custom scripted function, and CSS styling for datetime fields.
  • Process step rule option for service tasks (email, save to repository) for more control over show/hide behaviors when a form is used throughout a process.
  • Added support in custom HTML fields for using row variables to retrieve specific rows from a table/collection.
  • Lookups can be used to populate checkbox, radio button, and drop-down choices.

Monitoring, reporting, and troubleshooting

  • Manually complete boundary timers as an alternative to skipping a timer, allowing for immediate routing through alternate paths (e.g., simulate a reminder email that only goes out after 7 days, and would not be sent if that step was skipped).
  • Expand relative date range support (last 30 days, this week, today, etc.) to custom reporting and system filters.
  • Restart user tasks in sub instances to resume a process flow rather than restarting entire process.
  • Improved error handling for step execution failure, including support for retry.
  • Change the default error handling from termination to suspend, allowing for administrators to resume the process when they have identified and addressed the root cause (rather than restarting).
  • Support retrying a suspended converging inclusive gateway step (496862).
  • Subprocesses now suspend instead of terminating when there are no outflows, allowing for retry (428033)

Other Forms feature updates

  • Team member synchronization now supports Active Directory groups containing users from different domains (522174)
  • Added Advanced Option for default instance filter date to override "last 30 days" with "All" (412923)

Fixes

  • Reduce chances of infinite redirect errors on login page by first attempting to clear problematic cookies, then cancelling the login if it cannot succeed, throwing an improved error (475003, 150897, 496391)
  • LDAP participant migration now uses the configured LDAP connection profile rather than the routing service user (527754)
  • O365 STMP/IMAP connections that require admin authorization now successfully save approved status (521483)
  • In-progress form submission recovery for expired sessions now recovers attachments (505933)
  • Mobile app can now successfully capture barcode input when submitting a modern form (494734)
  • Fixed save-to-repository handling to ensure long tables continue through page breaks (508351)
  • Cursor no longer jumps around in multi-line text field when typing quickly (505560)
  • When two lookup rules target the same fields, the fields will be correctly filled by whichever rule was triggered last (rather than only evaluating on the second rule once it has been triggered) (507136)
  • Field rule evaluation is no longer case sensitive in modern forms (369326)
  • Instances are no longer terminated when same timer was fired on two routing engine services (479901)
  • Instance list when a selected column includes a variable now loads properly (534248)

Performance enhancements

  • Tasks with large forms (600+ fields and 400 table rows) load more quickly (520587)
  • Tasks with forms with lookup rules load more quickly (537489)
  • Instance list when a selected column includes a variable now loads faster (534248)
  • Leverage cache for overall improved form load and submit performance (545332)
  • Improved performance when saving form layout when form has over 500 fields (300040)
  • Updating a step name on process diagram is no longer slow when step has large number of in-progress tasks (404627)
  • Searching by instances ID when set to All Processes (404641)
  • Reduced time for saving layout for large forms (350+ fields and 45 lookup rules) (420167)

Locale fixes

  • Date picker is now localized on forms and in forms designer (324926)
  • Fixed form loading error for Spanish (Latin America) locale (512537)
  • DateTime fields filled by lookup rule now correctly display in Safari on iPads (496905)
  • Number fields now show/hide correctly when using Spanish (Spain) locale (498952)
  • Designer toolbox is now properly respecting French (France) as a browser language, in addition to French (Canada) (494264)

Other fixes

  • Updated Chromium and Puppeteer for better Chrome and Edge support (540769)
  • Updated moment.js version from 2.291 to 2.29.4 (518422)
  • Removed unused library json2.js (532404)
  • Fixed intermittent issue submitting paginated forms with file uploads (513954)
  • Added logging for data maintenance processing and errors (539279)
  • Fixed variable filtering for monitor instance list search to only match relevant variables (534919)
  • Printing a form now checks the Chromium version and notifies the user if it is on an unsupported version (533042)
  • Variables in task names are now correctly evaluated in workflows (523790)
  • Resolved intermittent crash of w3wp.exe occurring when Forms auditing is enabled (524028)
  • Front end field rules on classic forms now properly evaluate hidden fields updated by custom JavaScript (528819)
  • Time calculation for custom report filtering now correctly adjusts for time zone differences (522185)
  • Can now successfully add a report filter for the status "in progress with suspended tasks" to existing filter (542478)
  • Code formatting no longer appears in instance name when a blank, hidden value is used as the instance variable (now correctly displays as blank) (508513)
  • Forms workload report now resolves variables in user task name (508640)
  • Fixed intermittent issue with custom reporting not displaying "multiple values" in reports (508643)
  • Conditional expression now correctly evaluates %(DB.NULL) from workflows as empty (510207)
  • Fixed issue with scrollbar of autosuggest list when selecting from a long list field (511319)
  • Custom reports now properly display columns with no values when searching within the report (497670)
  • Classic forms no longer encounters error "LFF800-UserTaskRuntimeError" on submission when an invalid character is included in task comment (507466)
  • Formulas for read-only rows in tables properly handle deletion of data used in calculation (187687)
  • No longer receive "[LFF4112-PdfNetworkError]" when attempting to save a large form to the repository (updated Puppeteer library) (482877)
  • Browser autosuggest no longer covers up lookup results (483562)
  • Front-end validation for email addresses now requires at least one domain, matching backend validation (495670)
  • No longer get "InvalidNumberOfDecimalPlaces" when saving the un-rounded value of number field with formatting that causes rounding (323085)
  • Editing Custom HTML fields now uses a dedicated scrollbar when the value is long (507775)
  • Improved handling of embedded sections when using a field rule on both main section and a contained section (507998)
  • Browser console no longer logs a "403 forbidden" error when uploading a file (no functional change) (504597)
  • Required fields now wait to evaluate until fields have been touched by user, providing a better user experience, including new table rows with required values added by LFForms.addRow (512307, 517077, 523278)
  • Importing lists from CSV now preserves leading zeros (e.g., 001) (521560)
  • Date fields no longer result in multiple onFieldChange events for one change (520624)
  • When changing selected stored procedure for unconfigured lookup rules, irrelevant inputs are removed (519605)
  • New line characters (\n) added to rich text fields using copy + paste are now preserved (517270)
  • File uploads in narrow fields now properly display the preview link (528172)
  • Can now set a field rule that acts on an appended list choice when using custom labels (535022)
  • Can now save forms with validation errors in modern forms (like classic forms already allows) (472296)

Functionality changes and Known Issues

  • Security enhancements now require authenticated scripting calls to also include the CSRF token, which can be accessed by designers from the hidden field “__RequestVerificationToken” for use in scripts (506073). The following form fill APIs do not currently support this:
    • form/retainsubmission, called when retain submission, Classic form only
    • form/submit, called on submit form
    • form/removefile, called when delete file on form submission
    • form/removeRepeatItem, called when delete collection/table row on form submission
    • form/autopopulate, called by lookup without condition
    • form/lookup, called by lookup with condition
  • Removed support for searching instance list for All Processes on "Current State" "Current Step" and "End Step" (404641)
  • Email fields with confirmation and text both above and below are oddly aligned when using side-by-side layout (489740)
  • Topaz Signature Pad not supported out of the box for modern forms (494971)
    • Workaround: implement using customHTML
  • Cannot map the same field to multiple inputs/outputs in lookup rule (520758)
  • Workflow service task may get stuck as in-progress if the workflow callback is returned before the status is successfully changed to “in progress” when routing engine is running slowly (522377)
  • Cannot directly update a 32-bit (x86) installation to 64-bit (537844)
    • Workaround: uninstall the x86 installation before installing x64 version
  • When Task Comment Box is hidden with the option to ignore the data, fields hidden via scripting (LFForm.hideFields) ignore data as well (545510, 545488)
  • Long string of text with no spaces does not wrap properly in a multiline or rich text fields on submitted form (547691)
    • Workaround: add custom CSS class "word-break" with the keyword "break-word" or "break-all"

Repository Web Client

Metadata enhancements for template usage and design

  • Checkboxes and radio button display option for list fields for improved usability: single-value can be displayed as radio buttons, and multi-value can be displayed as checkboxes
  • Template field rules to conditionally show/hide fields or sections
  • Table option for building and display multi-value field groups
  • Optional free-text entry for list/radio/checkbox fields by adding an "Other" selection
  • Collapsible sections to better handle long templates and group fields within a template
  • Template-specific labels for fields to improve usability without adding new fields
  • Side-by-side field support for more compact design
  • Static text to provide contextual instructions and information
  • Drag-and-drop designer for more intuitive template creation and template preview
  • Preview templates from the template management list
  • Updated template rendering with better layouts, such as reduction of whitespace and better label alignment

Usability enhancements

  • Options to Clear when searching, including clearing all values while retaining current search filters and quick-clear option for list fields
  • Ultra-compact mode to quickly switch the current display to display more data in the entry listing. Stacks with the existing user-level “compress folder view” option to match the data-density of the Desktop Client, providing three total display options.
  • Folder sidebar navigation when collapsed, showing clickable icons to change quickly between locations such as recent documents and starred documents without expanding the entire folder pane
  • MFA option for Direct Share, offering a convenient new way to protect shared files when using the hybrid feature Direct Share
  • View serial in the About dialog in Web Client, making it easier to sign up for Aspire training
  • Improved text display in the doc viewer, retaining spacing/formatting for imported text files

Fixes

  • Fixed rendering issues of Office documents that contained Thai in certain fonts (when using LDPS) (539319)
  • Password policy defaults updated for modern standards (545602)
  • Stamps containing tokens no longer have distorted aspect ratios (491361)

Known issues and limitations

  • Template designer limitations
    • Users must have the privilege "Manage Templates and Fields" to use the new template designer. Users without this privilege can still view, add, modify, and delete fields from the Properties tab. See the help files for more details
    • The following field types cannot be directly added in the designer, but can still be added under the Properties tab
      • Data
      • Integer
    • Existing fields assigned to a document or present on more than one template cannot be directly edited from the template designer
      • Workaround: edit from the Fields list or from the template’s properties tab
    • Template Designer is not available from the Desktop Administration Console
  • Template use limitations
    • New template options are only available in the Web Client at this time. Existing desktop applications will see the same data without any of the new display options
    • Bulk-selecting documents will not use new display options (e.g., radio buttons, tables field rules) as these can differ between templates
    • Searches currently only display the field name, not field labels. Field names can be viewed by hovering over a field label in the metadata pane
  • Other known issues
    • Checkboxes with multiple values set by workflow causes the repository metadata pane to act like there are unsaved changes when viewing the template (553228)
      • Workaround: avoid the checkbox display option for multi-value list fields that workflows will interact with

Workflow

User management enhancements and new activities

  • New activities to create, manage, and delete Laserfiche and SAML users and groups managed in Laserfiche Directory Server. This includes licenses, user properties, and membership within Laserfiche groups.
  • Support working with Directory Server users and groups in existing workflow activities: Assign Rights, Business Process Step, Update Participants, For Each User, Set Entry Owner, Find User, Find Manager, Find Group, Email, Route Entry to User, Route Entry to Group, Workflow initiator variable and Business Process Rule
  • Remove registration of Windows and LDAP users from Directory Server with new Delete User activity

Other features

  • Additional Forms variables in retrieve Business Process Variables: the Forms variables from Save-to-Repository activities, including: folder path; attachment entry IDs; document name; folder name. This allows Workflows to be invoked on recently saved forms and their attachments in the repository, such as filing, setting security, and adding metadata.
  • Deleting a workflow now also deletes completed or terminated instances and starting rules. Workflows with running instances still cannot be deleted.
  • Change language directly in Workflow Designer, Workflow Administration Console, and Workflow Configuration Manager
  • Automatically accept pending changes for a Word Document before converting a Word Document with revisions to PDF (415555)

Fixes

  • Update internal shared libraries such as Repository Access and License Manager Objects
  • Updated code samples and templates for the Workflow SDK and Activity Proxy generator and add Visual Studio 2022 Templates
  • Updated Aspose to 24.5.0.0, improving handling of Mail Merge activities such as updating a Word document with table data (522970)
  • Fixed issue with workflow subscriber repeatedly stopping after upgrade from before version 11.0.3 (545882)
  • "Fill Out PDF Form" activity now preserves values for shared fields when the PDF is updated (334522)
  • Fixed issue where rename operations that failed due to entry locking were not retrying (previously gave error "Multistatus response. [9039]" in addition to "Entry Locked [9014]") (476161)
  • Workflow Administration Console no longer crash if a server in its list is unavailable, and unavailable servers can be removed (390565)
  • The record property name "Is Frozen" has been updated to "Has Hold" in the "Additional Properties" dialog for Find Entries, Find Entry and Search Repository activity (531564)
  • Performance improvement for Workflow Designer on servers with many workflows (800+) ensuring that loading the workflow list does not impede other UI operations (519607)
  • Linked Workflows no longer shows a stray comma when first workflow is set to Do Not Publish in Workflow Import Wizard (533918)
  • Template name token is now properly resolved when used in the Find Entry activity (520311)
  • Workflows using the default email server no longer erroneously prompt about unsaved changes when no changes have been made (522667)
  • Made location of Activity Name in properties pane consistent (always at the top) (522866)
  • Attempting to Apply Text Annotation on a folder now returns a warning rather than terminating (546376)
  • Token dialog now has a scrollbar when needed on small displays (494328)
  • Improved handling for unhandled exceptions in several activities to reduce crashes and ensure an error to is passed the activity that calls it if there is a crash (477527)
  • Fixed value display issue for viewing "Fill out pdf form" activity when reopening a published workflow (443161)
  • Tokens used in regular expression patterns and in condition editor now update when the activity referenced by the token is renamed (170467, 171498)
  • Fixed "New Attachment" dialog for the "Email" activity to support larger file lists (18+ items) (301120)
  • The activity setting "Create Identity Token" for "Insert Data" is no longer erroneously carried over from previous Insert Data activities (203738)
  • Forms Web Service activity no longer unnecessarily prompts for updated configuration when a non-breaking change is made (209670)
  • Corrected the error message for an "Access Denied" error when assigning field data: previous error stated that the data was invalid (235407)
  • Workflows using the default email server no longer erroneously prompt about unsaved changes when no changes have been made (272964)
  • Workflow Configuration Manager can now correctly generate the connection string when the SQL user password contains a semi-colon (284527)
  • Fixed "equals" option in "Read JSON Activity" to use == instead of = (377510)
  • No longer receive "Invalid XPath expression" when testing a Read XML activity more than once with unaltered input (388901)
  • For Each Value loops can now properly iterate through HTTP Web Request (507064)
  • Subscriber trace logs are now correctly deleted according to the schedule (499782)
  • Now properly applies PLAINTEXT format for all rows in a For Each Row loop (501127)
  • Attempting to Apply Text Annotation on a document with no pages now returns a warning rather than terminating (497970)
  • The "Duration" column under File Versions now sorts numerically rather than alphabetically (517119)
  • Fixes PDF viewing memory leak by updating PDFReader and PDView4Net to version 11.x (518567)
  • "Assign Field Values" now correctly discards null values when assigning token values to a metadata field, fixing display issues for single-value fields (519464)
  • No longer receive "Object reference" error when clearing the entry owner in Set Entry Owner activity (509548)

Functionality changes:

  • Removed x86 support for Workflow installation
  • Removed of x86 and other outdated ODBC and OLE drivers
    • ODBC drivers: Microsoft Access 2003, Microsoft Excel 2003, CSV
    • Note: CSV (2013) is still supported
    • OLE: Microsoft FoxPro for OLE
  • Removed outdated workflow migration utility
  • Removed non-functioning option include audit data from the UI for Replicate Entries: importing a briefcase cannot import audit data, so this option only added bloat to the export (520821)
  • Input Parameters can no longer be set to the same name as a Global Token, such as "Version", because this results in an invalid workflow (519556)
  • Removed deprecated "Browse instance" option from the context menu for search results (519471)

Directory Server

  • Password policy defaults updated for modern standards. When upgrading from an earlier version where Moderate or High was selected, the existing settings will stay the same with the type changing to Custom. To switch to one of the new defaults, you must select it. (516093)
    • Moderate: Minimum 10 characters, at least 3 character sets.
    • High: Minimum 16 characters, at least 4 character sets.
  • Performance fix: No longer experience slow user sign-in through SSO when Forms is synchronizing a large number of users or administrators are searching in user accounts in Directory Server (519983)
  • No longer receive error during first sign-in of the day as a SAML user (484396)
  • Improved email validation to support additional top-level domains including .law and .biz (545352)
  • Reduced chance of service instability after receiving an unhandled exception in LMHttpserv.Start() (536050)

Desktop Administration Console

  • Added support for TLS 1.3
  • Added checkbox to easily configure TLS between the Repository Server and the Laserfiche Full-text Search Service when installed separately (527167)

Repository Server

  • Folders containing individually cutoff records now properly block deletion (547087)
  • Updated SQL ODBC driver to version 18 (530872)
  • Automatically update SQL ODBC driver for all existing repository connections to version 18
  • Improved folder listing performance when displaying fields that have been merged (505490)
  • Improved search performance for some "Within Folder" searches on metadata, such as excluding entries with a specific tag and filtering on a field value (519573)
  • Fields belonging to a multivalue field group will now automatically be removed from the group if they are made single value (186917)
  • Single value fields will now properly ignore multivalue field group information, preventing display issues (549676)
  • No longer encounter frozen repository when attempting simultaneous actions on an individual record and the containing record folder (418456)
  • The full-text search service being offline no longer significantly impacts non-search performance when interacting with the repository (495866)
  • Added backend enforcement for the records management option to allow records to be in regular folders, ensuring workflows cannot bypass this setting (505490)
  • Fixed SQL database upgrade script issue for databases from prior to version 11 (502513)
  • Can now successfully delete a document from search results (28361)