Can you smell that? That’s right—a piping hot plate of new features for Ted! After cooking with our GoEarly testers, we're ready to serve up Ted customization features. But that's not the only thing we're whipping up at Centercode: an absolute smorgasbord of enhancements are headed your way next month.  Here's a taste of what is in store! 🦃

 new features

✨ New Features ✨ 

Getting dressed up for the holidays!

This month’s main course is one you’ve all been craving: enhanced customization options for everyone’s favorite tester engagement bot, Ted! We’ve added the ability to give Ted a new look, as well as customize his name, email address, and email signature.

And the new options for Ted don’t stop there! We’ve also added some useful new customization options for the frequency of Ted’s smart engagement emails, giving you more freedom to decide when and how Ted reaches out to your testers. Read here for more detail on what each of these settings mean.

Now get Ted looking just the way you like, and get testing!

💡 Centercode GoEarly features 💡 

Next up in GoEarly: Media in Content and Feedback

We’ve got another exciting GoEarly project on the horizon, this one involving some awesome new media features and functionality! These features will let you record different types of media, including video (camera), audio, and screen. We're starting with a research phase to learn more about how you'd use features like this, and we’d love to hear your opinions. Sign up and see firsthand as your feedback shapes the future of Centercode!

announcements 

We've got something very special coming soon…

Finally, if November is all about thanks, December is all about giving! We're excited to announce we have something very special planned for next month. No spoilers yet - just know this huge batch of updates is designed to let our customers know just how much we appreciate them. You're going to love what we've got in store, so stay tuned.

fixes  

🐞  Bug Fixes 🐞 

User Authentication & SSO

• Single Sign-on was adjusted to allow use of its associated Recruitment even under closed community local login configurations

Miscellaneous

• Resolved a timing issue involving scheduled user and feedback macros, which could lead to disorganized emails and included dynamic tags

‼ Scheduled Release Date: October 22, 2023 ‼

Darkness falls across the land, the midnight hour is close at hand… and so is the October release from Centercode, and believe me folks, this one is a Thriller (enjoy having that song stuck in your head!). Bring your biggest plastic pumpkin bucket—you’ll need it for all the treats we’ve got for you this month. Get a look at a whole host of new features and improvements that will give you a whole new login experience, as well as the full release of our Infographic dashboards!

✨ New Login and Recruitment Experience ✨  

Our major focus this month is a series of new features and improvements all related to our login and recruitment experience, all designed to reduce friction and streamline the login experience to get those users engaged and testing! 

Keep the porch light on with Central Sign-in!

First up, we’ve got a great new way to ensure your testers are sure to find their way to your door with Centercode’s new Central Sign-in page. This handy new tool helps both you AND your testers navigate between different communities leveraging the Centercode Platform! 

Navigating to https://signin.centercode.com (after Oct 22) will present your users with a list of every testing site that they have previously signed in to, with handy shortcut tiles to each one. 

And for those concerned about test security, your site will only appear if you’ve opted your implementation into this feature, and all of the information displayed here is stored entirely client-side.

Whether you’re a project manager working across multiple implementations, or a particularly enthusiastic and prolific tester (or maybe both!), the Central Sign-in page will make tracking all your tests a breeze. 

Decorate your Centercode porch!

While not particularly spooky, would it really be Halloween season without doing a little decorating on your porch? We thought not—that’s why this batch of improvements focuses on the literal front door of your testing site: a brand new login and recruitment landing page experience!

You'll see a brand new sign-in interface, now located on the left side of the screen. This refreshed panel preserves the same functionality as the previous landing pages, but with a more compact and modern design that cleanly presents your site's SSO options!

Give those Trick-or-Testers some options!

With all that new screen real estate to work with, we’ve also included some exciting additional community landing page functionality in our new testing opportunity cards! You can now add a link to your sign-in page that connects users with any community or project URL invitation you choose. It’s a fantastic way to get users into your open recruitment projects or to segment your users as they join the community via specific recruitments!

A terrifyingly efficient new way to configure SSO!

We’ve already mentioned quite a few new SSO features and improvements, but the fun doesn’t stop there.  We also put some work into creating a more elegant and consistent SSO login integration interface. We’ve streamlined, simplified, and cleaned up the pages and tools used to manage and create SSO sign-ins, as well as adding some new functionality to the existing pages.

We’ve reorganized the pages to improve navigation, and we've included new hover tips and clarifying the language to make setting up or managing this technical process more approachable to you and your IT department. We’ve also added functionality that gives you more control over user access with SSO, such the ability to add users who sign in through a given SSO to specific teams or lock users to signing in with one specific SSO configuration.

A ghoulish new Google Auth option!

There’s no better way to get those Trick-or-Testers knocking at your door than to give them an easy way to enter your testing site. We're proud to introduce Centercode’s brand-new first class Google Auth SSO option! It removes the hassle of remembering display names and passwords—meaning more user engagement for your community and projects. It's a familiar and frictionless way for users to sign up or sign in to your site without sacrificing security.

This ready-out-of-the-box SSO option is available on all Centercode editions, and makes setting up one of the most widely used and recognized single sign-on options as easy as clicking a button! This will be enabled by default for our Beta, Delta, and Pro editions. Users of our Team and Legacy editions can simply navigate to your custom SSO page, select the new CentercodeGoogle option, enable it with a few clicks, and you’re good to go!

A whole new way (not?) to invite the vampires in!

And finally, one last treat to top off your candy bucket: We’ve got a refresh of the Recruiting feature! All the functionality you're used to is still there, but you'll see we've simplified our vocabulary and made navigating the process more intuitive.

Centercode admins can invite users to project recruitments (formerly opportunities) with a variety of invitation types (formerly sources). For ease of use, these invitation types are categorized into open and targeted invitations, with descriptions that help you identify exactly how you're bringing participants into your community and projects!

Just be wary of inviting any particularly pale or pointy-toothed testers, unless you’ve got plenty of garlic on hand!

improvements

📈  Improvements 📈 

User Summary mad science!

We took your feedback on our new User Summary interface, and with a little late-night mad science we think we’ve got all parts sewn together just the way you want!

One of the primary concerns we heard about the new User Summary was losing an easy one-click way to view and access a user’s various community and project level key data (surveys, test platforms, distributed values, agreements, etc.) The new “User data snapshot” located at the top of both community and project level user summary pages keeps that data front and center with buttons to take you right to what you need to see!

Another popular request was the ability to easily see which roles a user was in across a variety of projects without having to navigate to each project individually. To solve this issue we’ve added a new information card when mousing over individual projects in the user scorecard, allowing you to see this information as well as navigate to that project directly from the card!

In addition, we’ve made numerous smaller tweaks to the language and information displayed by some of the user engagement cards, as well as organizing the user journey information via relative date (with the full date available on hover.)

💡 Centercode GoEarly features 💡 

Coming out of GoEarly: Test Infographic Dashboard

Our very first release tested with our new feature-flag customer testing model, the Test Infographic Dashboard, has been cooling on the windowsill after some extra bake time with our helpful and enthusiastic customer-testers—and now it is ready for everyone to enjoy! With both stakeholder and customer-friendly formats, these helpful new dashboards offer an easy way to share (or save for future presentation!) the results of all your testing efforts with the click of a button. Since it was our inaugural GoEarly feature flagged release, we provided a very thorough description in previous release notes. Get a full rundown here!

Now in GoEarly: Enhanced Ted Customization

This month, we’re continuing our work on Enhanced Ted Customization. Our customer-testers have already provided a lot of insightful and actionable feedback, but we want to get these enhancements to Ted (and any future projects he helps you with) just right! If you haven’t already joined in, sign up—you'll  get early access to the feature and see firsthand as your feedback shapes the future of Centercode!

This beta feature release allows you to choose how often Ted contacts your testers, as well as a new set of customizations, including his name, email signature, and custom avatars!

All paying customers interested in testing this new feature can sign up at any time—plus, you get to experience being a tester in a Centercode-managed test and a firsthand look at our best practices.

Sign up HERE if you’d like to participate!

It’s September, and that means sweater weather (participation may vary by location and climate), a non-stop flood of pumpkin spice products, and some brand-new updates and improvements from your friends here at Centercode. This month we’ve got some exciting new features, including a handy new dashboard UI feature AND a brand new (and much requested) beta feature we can’t wait for you to get your hands on!

✨ New Features ✨  

Leaf behind unneeded tools and free up some screen space!

Centercode’s dashboards are a powerful, customizable way to present your project data, and we give you a lot of tools and options to present that data just the way you want. However, once you’ve got the filters set just right, wouldn’t it be nice to get a bit of that screen real estate back so you can bask in the full glory of all that data? Well, we’ve got you covered!

We’ve added a simple but very handy new button to the dashboard header toolbar that allows you to do just that. The “Collapsed header mode” button will collapse the header bar and hide everything but a lower profile version of the dashboard select drop-down, providing you a much cleaner view of the data that you’re there to see!

💡 Centercode Beta Feature 💡 

Now entering beta: Enhanced Ted Customization

Hot on the heels of last month’s Test Infographic Dashboard beta feature, we’ve got the next beta feature release ready to go, and this is one a lot of you have been clamoring for: Enhanced Ted Customization! We’re keeping the description short and sweet (with maybe a hint of pumpkin spice) this month, but if you see anything you can’t wait to try, sign up and get early access to the feature, as well as the opportunity to provide your feedback and shape the future of Centercode!

Ted is a helpful guy, but we think he can be better! Faster! Stronger! Maybe a little less talkative! This month’s beta feature release allows you to choose how often Ted contacts your testers, as well as a new set of customizations, including his name, email signature, and custom avatars!

All paying customers interested in testing this new feature can sign up at any time—plus, you get the experience of being a tester in a Centercode-managed test and a first-hand view of our own best practices.

Sign up HERE if you’d like to participate!

announcements  

It’s time for our August release, and your ears don’t deceive you—that’s the Centercode Ice Cream (and Release) Truck rolling up the street with a cool new opportunity we can’t wait for you to try! We’re doing things a little differently this month in preparation for a whole new method of delivering Centercode content to you. 

We’ve heard from you many times that you’d like to be able to get your hands on some of our upcoming features and improvements while they’re still in development, and this month we’re bringing you the opportunity to do just that!

A hands-on sneak peek

As you might imagine, beta testing the beta testing platform has a very unique set of challenges. As such, we're always working to learn and improve, and with this month's Centercode release, we're taking a big step in evolving our own process by shifting to a feature-flag based testing model.

Moving forward, rather than features being introduced publicly solely through monthly updates, primarily to those with dedicated staging infrastructure, we'll be making key features available via a simple opt-in basis. This gives many more of our customers the opportunity to experience them and provide feedback than our prior early access program have done.

Note that we'll still be rolling out bug fixes and minor improvements both weekly and monthly, as well as new features that don't fit the feature-flag based approach - but whenever possible, we'll lean on this new model to ensure that we get the most feedback, resulting in the best release possible.

Given the transition to this new model, we won't be introducing major new production features in our August release. Rather, we're inviting customers to join our beta for our next major feature release. We intend to release this feature to production in September, resuming our monthly feature releases from that point.

Now entering beta: Centercode Test Infographic

For our first beta feature release, we're excited to present our upcoming Test Infographic dashboard! This infographic comes in two primary variants.

The first offers a beautiful overview of your test results, including your team, feedback collated and acted on, and much much more. This is intended to be shared with internal audiences within your company, spreading awareness for your program and test results.

The second infographic offers a similar but more limited view, intended explicitly for a public audience of testers, recognizing and celebrating their efforts (excluding PII, of course) throughout your test. 

Each infographic deeply showcases your branding and can cover an entire project or any fixed period you define. Given their motivational intent, our infographics focus exclusively on positive insights and outcomes, deliberately prioritizing inspiration over actionability, while also giving the ability to exclude any panel you wish.

All paying customers interested in testing this new feature can sign up at any time, which will also offer the experience of being a tester in a Centercode-managed test, providing a first-hand view of our own best practices.

Sign up HERE if you’d like to participate!

fixes  

🐞  Bug Fixes 🐞 

Data Engine & Custom Reports

• Some tuning was done on the display of geographic style reports

Performance & Tuning

• Performance was tuned on pages with extensive quick access lists

Miscellaneous

• The "&" character in Feedback Type names will no longer break certain watch functionality

It’s summer and that means BBQ season! July’s release contains a number of hot-off-the-grill updates to our User Summary interface, making it a one-stop shop for all your individual user management needs! In addition, we’ve also revamped and modernized many of the tools contained within the User Summary interface, adding to Centercode’s already formidable arsenal of intuitive and informative tester management options. So get those invites out to coworkers, stakeholders, and your targeted testing demographic (mostly them) and get cooking! And, as always, we’ve kept the (proverbial) bug-zapper at full power and eliminated a bevy of nasty bugs which we’ve listed below!

 new features  

✨ New Features ✨  

A User Summary summer(y)

The grilled-to-perfection meat (or your preferred veggie substitute) of this month’s release is a HUGE overhaul and modernization of our User Summary interface. We’ve refined both the form and functionality of our already powerful and convenient user summary pages into something really special, allowing you to view and manage nearly every aspect of a user’s profile from one convenient location. 

Manage everything, everywhere, all at once

The first (and one of the most convenient!) item on the menu of improvements is the standardization and streamlining of the User Summary interface between the community and project levels. You’ll be able to swap between a user’s community profile, as well as each of your projects that the user is a member of, from a single page via the convenient drop-down menu! The information and options available to you will swap on the fly based on the scope and project you’ve selected. This makes managing and tracking user activity across multiple projects a snap!

The summary pages on both scopes contain a list of user actions and data that, like a good potato salad, are both hearty and digestible. It's similar to the feedback ticket view you're familiar with: actions are on the left, while a summary is on the right. In the middle, you've got tons of detail about the user's activity that you can filter and manipulate with a few clicks.

One view to rule them all

The next major improvement to the User Summary interface comes in the form of the new User Journey tool. User journey tracks and displays a huge amount of data about events and activities performed by (or on) your users. Even better, the presentation of this information is now standardized across the community and project scopes. The same community/project selection drop-down menu that lets you switch between scopes also gives you access to the information presented by the User journey, swapping dynamically based on the scope you're viewing. Finally, a series of clickable cards above the User journey will allow you to filter for the exact data you’re looking for, also updating dynamically based on your scope and the time period filter selected.

What’s the score?

For dessert, we'd like to highlight the brand new User scorecard, which you'll see in the right-hand menu on both the community and project scopes. The User scorecard displays the Tester Impact™ score—a value automatically calculated by Centercode based on a tester’s level of engagement with impactful feedback (via submitting, voting, and replying to feedback within projects). It also shows user points, which you and other admins can grant via custom events (formerly known as rankings). Showcasing both a community score and the five most recently accessed projects (which can be expanded to show all), the User scorecard makes it easier than ever to identify and fully utilize your most dedicated testers!

All that and a bag of (BBQ-flavored) potato chips

These are just a few of the many features and improvements you’ll see in the new and improved User Summary update! We can’t wait for you to get in there and see all the ways this new tool will streamline YOUR tests. We’re pretty proud of this one, and we’d love to hear your feedback, so contact us at support@centercode.com to let us know what you think.

improvements 

📈  Improvements 📈 

E-merge victorious

Next up, we’ve got a visual refresh for our Merge User Accounts tool. The Merge User Accounts tool received a bit of visual polish to bring it in line with the more modern look of the platform, and we’ve tweaked the data displayed about the user accounts you're merging to more accurately reflect the data community managers are concerned about when merging accounts.

What’s in a (full)name? You choose!

And last, but definitely not least, we’ve added the ability to create a PII-safe version of the full name displayed within your projects. Complete instructions are available on our Knowledge Base, and feel free to reach out to our support team if we can help!

📝   Copy updates 📝  

The (user) event of the season

If you've been with Centercode for a while, you may have seen one (or a few) of the different ways we've referred to user scoring over the years. Its purpose has always been the same: helping you identify the superstar testers you want on future tests while calling out the ones you don't. But over time and dozens of releases, the names of these useful tools got muddied, making it hard to know what's what.

You spoke up about the confusion—and we listened. To complement our refresh of the User Summary interface, we've refreshed our user score language, cleaning out all the outdated vocabulary and inserting our new, more intuitive terminology that'll help our admins (that's you!) use these scores to their full benefit.

• Tester Impact™ (formerly known as impact score, participation score, and collaboration score) tallies the impact of a tester's participation within a single project. Like the Impact Score™ attached to each piece of feedback, Tester Impact™ is calculated automatically by Centercode. It's based on a tester's submissions, votes, replies, and other in-project interactions; a high score means a tester has submitted high-impact feedback, is actively participating, or both.
• Total Tester Impact™ is the combined total of a user's Tester Impact™ scores across all their previous and current projects.
• Custom user events(formerly known as rankings) are admin-created tags you can pin to a user's profile to record info about them for future reference. You can stick a custom user event to a profile at the community or project scopes, either as a note, positive or negative points, or a points/note combo.
  • To create a custom user event, click the Community drop-down menu > Community settings > Custom user events.
• Notes are comments about a user you can pin to a user's profile at either a community or project scope. You can write a note individually or use a custom user event.
• Project points are the points given or taken away from a project user via custom user events. They're completely separate from a user's Tester Impact™ score—for example, you might create a custom user event called "Detailed feedback" to identify and/or assign project points to testers who leave very detailed responses, regardless of its measurable impact on your test.
• Community points work just like project points but on (surprise!) the community scope. These are useful for tracking general community engagement—for example, you might create a custom event that gives a few community points to users every time they log in. You could then combine it with a macro to award those points automatically.

Finally, it's worth noting that all of these scores, points, and events are completely hidden from testers—although they could be shown via dynamic tags if you had a creative need for it! Hopefully, this inspires you to check out the User scorecard sidebar in the improved User Summary interface and to create your own custom user events!

fixes  

🐞  Bug Fixes 🐞 

Ted Communications

• Refinements were made to some behind-the-scenes Ted email processing functionality

User Authentication & SSO

• Mobile verification number generation was made to be more randomized than prior

It’s May, and that means it is time for another May-jorly exciting Centercode release (and a WHOLE lot of May puns, so buckle in)! We’ve got a couple big, new integrations features that May just blow your socks clean off, as well as some improvements to Ted’s admin-facing communications. And, as always, check out the list of bug fixes we've deployed throughout the month!

 new features

✨ New Features ✨  

Center yourself

First up, we’re proud to introduce the Centercode Integration Center, a brand new tool to help you May-nage all of your various Centercode integrations! Our first class and API-based integrations are powerful tools that help push your testing to the next level, and we want to make accessing, managing, and learning about those tools as easy as possible. 

This new menu (located in your Community configuration sub-menu) contains tiles that link to a variety of Centercode’s first-class integrations (like Jira and Slack), as well as step-by-step guides to some of our more popular API-based integrations (Figma, YouTube, etc). While this menu already contains an impressive list of options, there are more to come!  We want to hear from you about what you’d like to see, so don’t hesitate to use the “Suggest an integration!” link to let us know what YOU would like to see added to this list.

We haven’t been slacking (but now you can!)

May-ke way for a brand new first-class Centercode integration: Slack! What better way to celebrate the introduction of the Centercode Integration Center than with a useful new tool to access through it? This handy new integration allows you to easily stay on top of incoming feedback by having Centercode send a Slack message whenever a new piece of feedback is created. You'll get a brief description of the new feedback submission, as well as a direct link for one-click access.

Setting up is simple—once you connect your existing Slack implementation to the site, you can configure which feedback types to send, and to which Slack channel you’d like to receive these updates. Maybe you want feedback submission across all your projects to feed into a single channel. Or maybe you'd rather split your feedback types into their own designated channels. Either way, you have a new tool in your toolbox that lets you choose what works best for your team and makes tracking feedback submissions in real time easier than ever.

improvements

📈  Improvements 📈 

Ted talk

We’ve been doing a little May-aintenance (last one, I promise) on everyone’s favorite testing assistant, Ted! While Ted’s daily scrum emails are already packed with useful data, we added one very basic but important bit of info: how many pieces of feedback were submitted during the period the email pertains to (daily, phase, or project closure). Additionally, Ted’s emails to testers will now always include the project name in the subject line, to avoid confusion for testers who may be in multiple projects!

fixes  

🐞  Bug Fixes 🐞 

Ted Communications

• Activity order within the site will now dictate the order presented in Ted email participant feature updates

User Interface & Experience

• Title messaging adjusted for clarity on the blocking issue sub-dashboards

Spring has officially sprung, and Centercode’s garden is positively blooming with a fresh batch of new features and improvements. And boy, do we have some exciting ones for you this month, folks! We’ve got some powerful new tools and a few convenient enhancements to our existing interface, all designed to make triaging your feedback faster and easier than ever before. And, as always, check out the list of bug fixes we've deployed throughout the month!

new features 

✨ New Features ✨  

Converting your wishes into reality

Drumroll, please! We’re proud to introduce our brand new first-class Feedback Type Conversion tool! The ability to easily convert one feedback type to another is one of our longest-standing and most requested features, and we think this new tool really knocks it out of the park! This simple but powerful tool allows you to move feedback from one type to another with a single click (and confirmation)! 

Designed with simplicity and ease of use in mind, the feedback type conversion tool will bring over all of your critical ticket data without the need for any manual field mapping. Any fields not converted automatically will be stored in the ticket history, so no information will ever be lost. Additionally, the system will automatically notify the ticket submitter, letting them know their feedback has been converted to a new type so they can keep track of it. You’ll find these new options located in the right-hand menu, just below your macro list when viewing a ticket. It's also available in the new Quick Feedback Update tool, which we'll explain in the section below. 

This one has been on a lot of your wishlists, and it took a lot of hard work and planning to get it where we wanted in terms of flexibility and ease of use. Once you’ve had a chance to get your hands on it, we’d love to hear what you think!

It’s all in the cards!

We’ve been making a lot of tweaks to the information presented in feedback cards, which you see when viewing your feedback in dashboards or the feedback simple list. You’ve let us know (emphatically!) that these two methods of reviewing feedback are an integral part of your daily workflows. This time, we’ve got one we really think you’re going to love: the Quick Feedback Update tool, which gives you the ability to take all kinds of actions on a ticket right from the feedback simple list or dashboard!

To access this new functionality, simply open the expanded view of any feedback ticket card, and click the new Quick update hyperlink. This link will present you with a drop-down list of a huge variety of actions, including status updates, macros, and even the new feedback conversion tool mentioned above! You'll also be able to quickly reply to a ticket from the card itself (both as a single action or in addition to one of the previously mentioned actions). We love giving you solutions that increase functionality and reduce friction at the same time!

Note: Having full access to the new quick update menu requires having full access to the ticket itself. This means that you'll only see the full list of actions if you already have the ticket checked out. However, keep reading to learn about another awesome new feature developed in tandem with quick update that will really unlock the full power of this tool!

improvements 

📈  Improvements 📈

Check this out (or not!)

Sticking with the trend of streamlining the feedback triage process, we’ve got an (optional!) simplification that removes the need to take ownership of (or “check out”) a ticket before making edits. We’ve added an ownership section to the top of the Feedback collaboration settings menu within each feedback type, which contains the new checkbox “Require team members to check out feedback in order to modify”. Leaving this box unchecked means that any user who is a member of the feedback owner team can make edits at will, without taking direct ownership of the ticket!

Note: All existing feedback types will automatically have access to this new functionality! If you would like your existing projects/feedback types to function the same as before where checking out/owning the feedback is REQUIRED to make edits to a ticket you will need to enable the “Require team members to check out feedback in order to modify” checkbox in the feedback collaboration settings for each of your existing feedback types.

A link is worth a thousand words

Next on the list, we’ve got a new addition to our feedback reply toolbar that makes locating and sharing user replies easier than ever before! The new "Copy link" button allows you to create a link directly to a piece of feedback that will highlight and automatically scroll to the linked reply (as well as load the appropriate page of replies, if applicable). Whether you’re directing your triage teams’ attention to a specific reply, or requesting an update from a user regarding a previous reply, this new button will make pointing users right where they need to go a snap!

Making new like new again

And finally, we’ve got another addition to the ongoing list of feedback simple list tweaks and improvements. This time, we’ve added a bit of interactive functionality to the “New” indicator icon, allowing you to dismiss it without manually viewing the associated ticket. This change additionally allows you to re-mark a ticket as new if you’d like to remind yourself to check in on it later. This simple but impactful change gives you a lot more control over which pieces of feedback you’d like to keep a closer eye on, all without navigating out of the feedback simple list!

📝   Hope strings eternal: April's copy updates 📝  

All cased down and ready to roll

We've updated the platform to use sentence case for all of our text! Instead of seeing a mix of title case, sentence case, and ALL CAPS, this change displays text in a way that's consistent, scannable, and easier on the eyes.

Unlike title case, which has many different capitalization rules and variations, sentence case is simple and intuitive: the first letter of the first word is capitalized, while the rest of the words (except for proper nouns and acronyms) are lowercase. Because it resembles the way we write, sentence case is more natural to read and scan in English, making it easier to retain information. The uniformity of lowercase letters also reduces visual clutter, which improves navigation and helps important info stand out.

While the change might take some getting used to (especially if you've been with Centercode for a long time), we hope it makes communication in Centercode more effective for you, your teams, and your testers!

Title fields are string-loaded for sentence case

Connected to the sentence case update, we've added a nifty little feature that makes sentence casing feedback summaries and other title fields refreshingly simple. The Case Tool button appears on the right edge of a title or name field when it detects a capitalized word in the middle of a phrase. Clicking this button automatically sentence cases the text inside—meaning you no longer need to install a Chrome extension or wear out your eyes manually casing word after word. In addition to recognizing ALL CAPS as acronyms, it recognizes your company name, community name, and project name as proper nouns and keeps them appropriately capitalized.

fixes  

🐞  Bug Fixes 🐞 

Feedback Management

• The duplicate search interface will no longer prevent functionality for results searched for after initially loading on the default list

User Interface & Experience

• Professional edition now has the ability for feedback roles to be adjusted per feedback type
• A specific project string containing a single quote when translated will no longer interfere with the loading of the visual editor

We've got a big new feature for you this month, and we're not even making you wait until Christmas to open it! We're proud to announce that the  "Include Users" option when creating a project from a template is back—and it's better than ever. Learn more about what you can do with it below, and keep reading to see the other bug fix stocking stuffers we've wrapped up this month.

 new features  

✨ New Features ✨  

"Template Users" Brings “Include Users” Back and Better Than Ever!

The ability to carry over users when templating and cloning a project is a powerful tool that can save a lot of time when you're spinning up a new project. But the original implementation of this feature was all-or-nothing while your use cases called for something more deliberate or selective.

Because of the overly wide net it cast, using Include Users usually resulted in more confusion and clean-up work than it was worth once the project was cloned. Therefore, we took it back to the drawing board, and with some incredibly useful feedback from our users, we're proud to bring the "Include Users" feature back with some major improvements.

You can now access "Template Users" from the Project Template Settings menu, under the "Template Users" heading. This replaces (and includes the functionality of) the "Initial Team Membership" section. Adding "Include Users" to the project template process, instead of an ad-hoc decision you have to remember to make every time you clone a project, ensures you'll only need to set these options once to get the same results with each new project you clone from a template.

If you’re a project coordinator who maintains your templates and/or hands-off projects to PMs who request them, this also reduces the amount of follow-up needed to get your template ready for hand-off.

Additionally, the new Template Users section lets you get more granular by giving the option to select a specific team type (and individual teams for applicable Centercode editions).

Finally, to support this new feature, we've added some additional items to the Template Notes infobox that appears when you're configuring a new project during the cloning process. It now lists the specific number of users in each team type that will be included in the cloned project.

Using this powerful new function of the project template tool will make getting new projects up and running smoother than ever! Simply add your admin and support staff to the right teams and update your template to ensure the right people will be automatically included on every project using this template going forward.

improvements  

📈  Improvements 📈 

We’re Making a List and Checkboxing It Twice!

In addition to the big gift you've all been looking forward to, we've added a few ease-of-use updates to make your Centercode experience that much more comfy (like a nice warm pair of Centercode socks). We've started adding more context to our checkboxes to give you a better idea of what each one does. It's part of our ongoing effort to help you make the most of everything the Centercode Platform has to offer. And like a fruitcake that never seems to disappear….You'll see more of these holly jolly improvements into 2023.

fixes  

🐞  Bug Fixes 🐞 

Platform Security

• Shored-up a few scripting related security vulnerabilities

This month, we’ve got a veritable banquet of new features and improvements prepared for you! From new in-line image list view CDE items, to a quality-of-life improvement for project archiving, there’s something tasty for everyone. And as usual, we've continually deployed several bug fixes throughout the month that we've listed below.

announcements  

There's still time to enter October's Visual Theme Costume Contest. We're accepting screenshots until November 11th! Whether your site's theme is colorful or monochromatic, edgy or classy, this is a great opportunity to get your name out there in the world and score a little prize on the side! Check out the Announcement below for information on how to participate.

 new features  

✨ New Features ✨  

By Popular Demand: Feedback and User List Inline Images!

First on the menu is a dish many of you have asked for:  inline images and image thumbnails in your user management and feedback management list views. These new data points for the Centercode Data Engine have been a popular request, and we're excited to finally share it with you!

When creating a user or feedback view, you’ll notice three different view items related to file attachment form elements. These new items make it much simpler to get an in-platform view of images and files uploaded by users for specific forms.

“File Attachment Has Attachment” gives you a binary yes/no response if the user attached any files at all.

“File Attachment” shows a scaled version of the image inline:

“File Attachment Thumbnail” shows thumbnail versions of attached images:

improvements  

📈  Improvements 📈 

Simplified Project Archiving!

For our second course we’ve added the ability to archive a project from within the project itself. You’ll no longer need to navigate to Programs and Projects and find the specific project on the list (though that method is still available!). This option is located in the Project Configuration section of the Management menu when you're in a project.

Saving Time and Processor Power!

And last, but not least, is a feature designed to help you when your plate's piled a bit too high with automatically refreshing and distributed reports. We’ve implemented a new system that will automatically disable any reports that no one has viewed or interacted with in an extended period of time. This keeps your data fresh and your inbox uncluttered by old report emails you haven’t gotten around to turning off yet! (Note: This only applies to reports set to daily or weekly refreshes/distribution. Monthly reports will never automatically disable themselves.)

You’ll be notified of this two different ways: 

A new set of icons on the Report Management screen will show the status of reports that are set to auto-refresh. Green circle arrows indicate that a report is set to auto-refresh and has been viewed recently. Red circle arrows indicate that a report has not been viewed recently and will automatically deactivate soon. A red warning sign indicates that a report was set to auto-refresh, but it reached the time limit without being viewed, so it's been disabled.

When a report goes unviewed for an extended period of time, the people on its distribution list see an expiration warning at the top of their email with a link to refresh the report. To refresh it, they don't have to login—it just takes one user to follow the link and confirm that they'd like to keep receiving updates. This resets the report's expiration date and keeps it auto-refreshing and sending updates. No muss, no fuss!

fixes  

🐞  Bug Fixes 🐞 

Data Engine & Custom Reports

• User and Feedback Filter/View splash pages have been reworked to store prior selections as you are working within the page
• Corrected an issue causing "# of Activities" data counts to be inaccurate when factoring in regression features
• Corrected issue causing incorrect conversion to UTC date/time in exported Excel reports

We're starting July off with a boom! Centercode's July update has more new features and improvements than you can shake a sparkler at.

We're rolling out a brand new set of editions to provide even more ways to ensure every customer gets the Centercode experience they need. With these new editions come a host of new features and improvements for customers at every level. From a powerful new first-class age gate tool, to functionality updates to our basic views and filters, this release has something for everyone.

 new features 

✨ New Features ✨  

Powerful New First-Class Age Gate!

Centercode's new first-class age gate feature gives you a straightforward way to manage the age compliance requirements of your community. From within the Community User Account Settings page, select "Age Restricted" from the Date of Birth dropdown and enter a minimum user age. 

This kicks off two awesome functions. First, it will automatically prevent new underaged users from creating accounts. Second, it will scrub your entire community for date-of-birth data (or collect it if none is available) and present a number of different options for removing existing users who do not meet your criteria.

Improved Usability of Team Hierarchy, Types, and Roles!

We're making big changes to our team types across the board. For starters, we're renaming "team types" to "user roles" to better align with how our customers understand and use them. 

Second, we've removed restrictions on which permissions (access roles) can be granted to the various user roles. It's no longer a requirement for all Project Manager teams to have access to all administrative functions.

By only requiring that the primary Project Manager team retains admin access, you can create your ideal PM-Lite team. And by removing required permissions, if you can customize your teams, you can also fine-tune Support's access to reporting and other resources.

Next, a brand new user role has been added to all editions. "Observers" is an internal role for stakeholders and other non-support internal members that lets users view project data but doesn't allow them to make any changes. A read-only function, so to speak.

We're also updating the names of some of our existing user roles for clarity. The Internal Members role is now known as "Project Creators" at the community level and "Support" at the project level. 

Optimized Onboarding For Our New Editions!

We're introducing a simplified version of the onboarding process for the Impact and Professional editions of the Centercode Platform! This powerful but easy-to-use new tool strips down the traditional recruitment process so you can get new users into your community and projects quickly and efficiently.

Alongside this new Onboarding tool, we've added the ability to create a simple one-size-fits-all Community Login page, which is located within the Basic Settings section of your community. Getting your Centercode community up and running has never been easier!

improvements  

📈  Improvements 📈 

Remove Ted via Template Settings!

While Ted can be an invaluable resource for keeping your testers motivated and engaged, he's only able to do so in English, though he's working on his multilingual skills. To this end, we have added the ability to turn off Ted entirely and remove all associated icons and menu links ensuring that he doesn't show up in non-English tests.

This setting is located within the Project Template Settings page, shown below:

New Default Views!

We've updated our default views for both feedback and user searches to include additional commonly searched for information. This includes information like "Created Date" and "Last Login Date" for user searches, and "Title," "Status," and "Impact Score" for feedback ticket searches. In addition, the user type super filter will now filter based on the new account types.

Subscription Dashboard Update for the New Editions!

Tied in with our new product editions and user roles, the Subscription Dashboard has a new look for customers using one of these new editions. This updated dashboard makes simple work of keeping track of your users and how many remaining seats you have for each account type. Your edition and seat limitations are clearly listed, and it has easy-to-read color-coded bars that let you know when you're approaching any of your seat limitations.

Community Tools Navigation Update!

We've streamlined and updated how you access community configuration options to be more coherent and consistent across the platform.

You can now access all of the tools previously located on the Community Configuration page in a new Community Configuration fly-out menu at the bottom of the main Community Menu, similar to how Project Configuration options work. This means an easier to understand menu and fewer clicks to get where you need to go 🎉.

Project Creation Polish!

We've given the Project Creation menu a fresh coat of paint, including new icons, a more distinctive color, and clearer language. In addition, the system will now skip the Template Selection screen if there is only a single template available. This means getting your new project started is easier than ever! 

Project Menu Scrolling Bar Added!

We want Centercode to be accessible and easy to navigate across a variety of hardware setups, no matter the size and complexity of your project. This improvement updates the menus in the Navigation Bar with a scroll bar for those moments when your browser window isn't tall enough to show all possible menu selections.