About this Guide
This guide is designed to help Crelate System Administrators understand the potential user impact of an upcoming release of Crelate. The guide is a shortened version of our “What’s New” documentation and provides additional insights that Crelate System Administrators should be aware of. Crelate provides this guide ahead of scheduled releases to allow Crelate System Administrators time to prepare for and take advantage of new or changing system capabilities.
Each improvement includes a description of the impact and when available, administrative options available to minimize the impact on your users.
❗❗IMPORTANT: This release includes the announcement of the sunsetting (phasing out) of several legacy features. Crelate makes extra effort to maintain legacy features to minimize business impact, however, at times the cost of maintaining two code bases becomes greater than the benefit. Please read the important legacy capabilities being phased out and please note to take steps to ensure your business migrates to these newer capabilities that replace them.
About Crelate Upgrades
All upgrades to Crelate are automatic, benefit all users, and typically require no user action. However, not all system upgrades are on by default. System Administrators may need to opt-in or opt-out of some new functionality. We know change can be disruptive and we work hard to ensure System Administrators have the flexibility to control when new features are available to their users. To minimize potential business impact, new features of Crelate are often off by default for existing customers and other features may be turned off if a customer chooses to do so. Occasionally, we make changes the behavior or look and feel of a feature. System administrators should review this guide to understand their options, any potential impacts to their users and any actions they may have to take to either take advantage of new functionality; or hide new functionality depending on their organization’s needs.
Legend
NEW – This is a new feature or functionality. It may need to be enabled and configured.
IMPROVED – This is a change to an existing feature.
CHANGED – This is an existing feature or behavior that has changed, and users need to be aware.
SUNSETTING - This is an existing feature that is in the sunset mode/phase-out process and is scheduled to be removed in the coming months. Only critical security and performance items will be addressed going forward.
Feature Changes
Data Export Improvements (Full Database Exports)
Impact | We have made multiple improvements to our Data Export tool. |
Severity | Medium |
Applies To | All Admins utilizing the administrative Data Export tool |
Action Required | Any calls to the Export endpoints in Public API v1 must transition to the new Backup endpoints in Public API v3 ASAP. The structure is substantially different between the two as API 3 fully supports the new chunking approach. |
SKU | All |
We have significantly improved our administrative Data Export tool to better support larger amounts of data. As a part of this overhaul, the following changes have been made:
Currently, the backup tool puts all data into a single large ZIP file. The ZIP file format has limitations that make this approach untenable for large backups. Going forward we are chunking the data into multiple smaller ZIP files. Each file will need to be individually downloaded for backup. Smaller files allow for overall larger backups, easier management and prevent timeouts when generating or being downloaded.
NEW: We are now allowing you to perform incremental backups in addition to the existing full data export.
Incremental: Only export data updated since my last data export
Full: Export my entire Crelate database
NEW: The data export tool will now default to “No” on “Include attachments?”. Exporting attachments is very time and resource-intensive. Most customer scenarios for data warehousing do not require attachments.
NEW: “Include Restricted attachments?” is a conditional option that will only appear when “Include Attachments” is selected.
Job Portal v1 Sunset
Impact | In the fall of 2020 Crelate launched our improved Job Portal. This updated portal offers easier installation, with better performance and greater flexibility. The legacy portal relies on an IFRAME, while the new portal is a JavaScript embeddable widget. For the past 4 years, we have maintained both portals to allow customers time to transition to the new portal.
Today, we announce that the v1 Job Portal is now in Sunset Mode, meaning only critical security-related issues will be fixed going forward. No other improvements or updates will be made and the legacy portal is now scheduled to be removed.
Effective October 31st, 2024, the Crelate Job Portal v1 will be deprecated entirely and disabled. We encourage all users to update their job portal integrations to use the new web portal widget as soon as practical.
While the new v2 portal supports many great new features over the v1 portal, we are aware that the new job portal does look visually different and may require some users to update their custom styles to have the portal look the same as their previous version. Clients adding the portal to their company page via iframe will need to reconfigure the page to use the Job Portal v2 widget. The widget script snippet can be found in Settings > (Portal) Widget. Customers are strongly encouraged to migrate as soon as practical.
We understand this can be disruptive to your business, which is why we have supported both portals for 4 years and are now giving an additional full 9 months of notice of this requirement; on top of the years of running the two versions in parallel.
Moving to the new job portal is very easy, you can read about its migration HERE.
|
Severity | High |
Applies To | All users utilizing Job Portal v1 |
Action Required | Transition to Job Portal v2 |
SKU | All |
Public v1 and v2 API Sunset
Impact | With the launch of Public API v3 in October 2023, we are announcing that Public API v1 and v2 have entered sunset mode, meaning only critical security and performance items will be addressed going forward. All Clients and Partners are strongly encouraged to use Public API v3 for all new projects and to move existing projects to the new API when possible.
The new API has many advantages and capabilities over the old APIs but does not yet support Application Management, however, we will be adding these capabilities soon. Customers who need these features may continue to use the legacy endpoints while they migrate the rest of their code to the new endpoints. |
Severity | High |
Applies To | All users utilizing our old API (v1 and v2) |
Action Required | Transition to API v3 |
SKU | Business and higher |
Public API v3 Changes
Impact | To coincide with the overall changes made to Custom Fields, we are transitioning away from the current way we expose Custom Fields in API v3.
Currently, developers interact with Custom Fields as CustomFieldX like API v1.
Going forward, we are making interacting with Custom Fields easier and have introduced a “CustomFields” property bag. This can be found on various endpoints for Entities that support Custom Fields. This property bag is keyed off the newly introduced Logical Name concept, which can be configured in the new Custom Fields areas of Core Records.
We will remove the static CustomFieldX attributes in the future and will announce a timeline later this year. We recommend that code is updated now to make this transition smoother.
See the API documentation for details.
|
Severity | Medium |
Applies To | All users utilizing API v3 |
Action Required | All logic that is currently targeting the existing CustomFieldX attributes should leverage the new “CustomFields” property bag instead. |
SKU | Business and higher |
Contact Default Address Changed to Personal
Impact | When creating a Contact record, the default Address type has changed from Business to Personal |
Severity | Medium |
Applies To | All users |
Action Required | None |
SKU | All |
Custom Field Updates
Impact | The management of Custom Fields has moved for all Core Records from the various “Customize Fields” or “Customize Form” dialogs to a new Custom Fields area within each Core Record in Settings.
NEW: The concept of Logical Names has been introduced to make interfacing with these Custom Fields easier. This gives you the ability to specify API keyed names which you can use instead of the previous CustomFieldX approach.
Logical Names have been assigned to all existing Custom Fields within Crelate using the current Display Name as a guide. These new Logical Names can be viewed by navigating to the desired Core Record settings page and locating the desired field in the Custom Fields grid. |
Severity | Medium |
Applies To | Admins and Developers |
Action Required | If you want to create/update/delete Custom Fields, you must now utilize the new Custom Fields areas found on Core Records in the Settings UI. |
SKU | All |
Timecard Export Filter Updates
Impact | When exporting Timecards (on the export time card dialog) we changed the label for the date filter to "Created On" instead of "From" to make it clearer what is being filtered and added a "Pay Period" filter so you can select a specific pay period to export. |
Severity | Low |
Applies To | Deliver Users |
Action Required | None |
SKU | Deliver |
Internal Timekeeping Management
Impact | The management of Internal Timekeeping has moved from the Global Timekeeping Settings page to the newly introduced HR Center. Additionally, a Primary Worksite is now required when adding Employees to this page. |
Severity | Medium |
Applies To | Admins and Back Office Admins |
Action Required | If you want to manage who has access to log internal time you now must navigate to the HR Center page under ‘All Areas’ |
SKU | Deliver Users |
Purchase Order Page Level Metrics
Impact | Purchase Orders will now only display monetary or hourly metrics depending on the metric selected on the Purchase Orders tab. The default page metric can be set for this on the Purchase Orders settings page. Additionally, you can now specify the columns that should get displayed in the purchase orders grid per metric type. |
Severity | Low |
Applies To | Admins and Back Office Admins |
Action Required | If you want to manage who has access to log internal time you now must navigate to the HR Center page under ‘All Areas’ |
SKU | Deliver Users |
Overtime Eligibility Using Pay Rules
Impact | Pay Rules will now only consider time that is logged using Time Types that are flagged as eligible for Billable/Payable overtime.
IMPORTANT: All existing Time Types will have their OT eligibility set to 'Yes’. If you want an existing Time Type to be ineligible for OT, you must go update that Time Type. |
Severity | Medium |
Applies To | Admins and Back Office Admins in Organizations with Pay Rules enabled. |
Action Required | If you are using Pay Rules, review the Time Types in your org and set the Eligibility for OT toggles on all Time Types. |
SKU | Deliver Users |
iPad App Sunset
Impact | In 2019, Apple introduced “Desktop Browsing” on iPads. This change brought significant improvements to the iPad’s ability to access web apps directly. Since 2019, we have maintained two code bases to support the legacy Crelate iPad App and a responsive, touch-enabled web application.
In Q3-2024, we will be removing the iPad app and ending all support for it going forward. At this time, customers wishing to access Crelate may do so from their iPad by going to the standard app.crelate.com login page.
Existing iPad customers can start using this technique today. Over the next few months, we will be making small enhancements to the normal web app to behave even better on the iPad.
IMPORTANT: This announcement does NOT affect Crelate Connector for mobile phones. |
Severity | Low |
Applies To | All iPad App Users |
Action Required | Prepare for a move from the iPad App to |
SKU | All |
Coming Soon:
New Login Password Requirements
To improve the security of Clients accounts. During Q4 2024, we will be implementing stricter password requirements across all accounts. This means that strong passwords will be mandatory, and basic or weak passwords will no longer be accepted. Additionally, to bolster account security even further, two-factor authentication (2FA) will be required for all organizations.
To ensure a smooth transition and prepare for these changes, administrators can take the following steps:
Navigate to Settings |Security |Advanced Security
Mark the “Two Factor Authentication” and “Force Strong Password” options as “Required.
We understand the importance of safeguarding your data, and these measures are designed to provide an added layer of protection. Please reach out to our support team if you have any questions.
What's Next?
Learn more about these updates and new features being released via our What's New and Release Webinars