The development team has been working hard to improve the current offering in Hub and moving towards an interim strategy. This means that they have not only been working on stabilizing and incrementing Hub’s functionalities but also making the user interface more seamless and more convenient. This is a positive development that aims to provide a better experience and more benefits to users of the intranet.
The latest updates include a more seamless Reach post integration, a configurable place for Everywhere Panel, translation on Reach News, and more.
Read below for more exciting details.
Seamless Integration Now Possible
The new update allows seamless integration of Reach Posts & Reach Events in SharePoint with the help of new dedicated web parts. You only need to install the latest version of LiveTiles Reach Posts app package.
Click the links provided for Reach Posts and Events web parts for instructions on how to install the packages.
The Everywhere Panel’s Position Can Now Be Configured
The new SharePoint App Bar – which is soon to be released, is causing some issues with the layout of the page, as the App Bar and the Everywhere Panel are both being rendered on the left side of the page, making it crowded and “too busy.”
To address this, an admin can now configure a default position for the Everywhere Panel to be rendered globally. This will allow clients to better adjust their user experience once the SharePoint App Bar is released.
Just a caveat though: Users will still have the option to override the global configuration and render the Everywhere Panel on the opposite side if they choose to.
Group Heading Navigation Is Now Possible
Previously, only the items inside a Group Heading Section would have URLs associated, but now it is possible to assign URLs to the Group Headings themselves within the Matrix Navigation. This makes the headings clickable, allowing better navigation and organization of content within the site.
Translations on Reach News Widget Now Available
Previously, the ability to translate news content was only available on the Reach News SPFX Web Part. To improve the consistency of the user experience, this functionality has now been implemented on the Reach News Widget as well. This means users will be able to translate news content in both the web part and the widget, making the experience more coherent across the platform.
New Hero Widget Endpoints Targeting Rolled Out
Before, the Hero Widget would only permit customers to configure the URLs for the News Detail Page and All News Page at a global level.
However, it is possible now to configure each Hero Widget to target different News Detail/All News pages through a Widget-level configuration. This means that different widgets on the site can link to different news details or all news pages, allowing more flexibility and control over the navigation of the site.
New MegaMenu Audience Targeting Feature
We have improved the audience targeting on MegaMenu by extending the levels at which you can define the audience. This allows for more granular and precise targeting of different sections or items within MegaMenu, making the user experience more personalized and relevant for diverse groups of users.
What’s Improved?
Hub Disaster Recovery Capabilities
The developers are aware that there have been some stability issues with Hub recently, likely due to a significant increase in the number of active users. To minimize the impact of such issues in the future, a DRP that is as automated as possible has been put in place.
Auto Heal – This functionality in Azure automatically monitors app services and can trigger a “heal” process if certain monitoring parameters are met. This means that if the service encounters any issues, it will automatically attempt to fix them, reducing the need for manual intervention and minimizing downtime. This feature provides a high level of availability and reliability for the service and can help prevent disruptions to the users.
Health check – This process periodically checks the status of a running instance and its dependencies to ensure they are in a healthy state. If the health check returns an error, it can trigger a “healing” protocol, such as recycling the instance, to restore it to a healthy state.
Matrix Navigation
Matrix Navigation is getting increasingly stable as we address a few shortcomings/issues presented there:
- Previously it was only possible to paste URLs on it, as the textbox would lose focus – this is now fixed!
- Before, when you deleted a group heading, all that Dimension content would break – this is now fixed!
- There were a few inconsistencies between Matrix Navigation and the information shown on Breadcrumb – this is now fixed!
- Reach News Web Part Performance
- A small adjustment was made on Reach News Web Part to enhance its loading time by making the web part loading async
