New features delivered in 24.05

The following features and enhancements are included in NexJ CRM version 24.05.

Additional support for not communicating with entities

The Do Not Contact (DNC) feature is designed to warn users from sending communications to contacts or households that do not wish to be contacted or the firm has decided not to contact any longer and was included NexJ CRM version 24.02 (CRM-97).  In this release, additional functionality is supported for this feature:

• When a user tries to create a new opportunity or service request for a contact flagged as “Do not contact”, they are now warned to confirm whether they intend to do that (CRM-1040, CRM-1041).

• When a user tries to add contacts flagged as “Do not contact” as participants to a campaign, either individually or using a batch command, the user is now warned about this and can choose to either include or exclude these contacts from the campaign (CRM-1039).

• When a campaign has participants that have been flagged as “Do not contact”, some workflow actions may not be executed for these participants (CRM-2206).

• When users create reports or dashboards, the contacts flagged as “Do not contact” are identified with the “[DNC]” prefix in the Full Name field, where appropriate (CRM-1738).

• Users can now include the Do Not Contact attribute as a field in reports and use it for sorting, filtering, or in a calculated field where possible (CRM-1036).

• When adding a contact to a household or specifying a household for a contact, if there is a mismatch in the “Do not contact” value between the two entities, the user is given the option to change the value so that the contact and household are both flagged or both not flagged (CRM-2075).

Reporting enhancements

The following enhancements to the Reporting workspace and functionality have been included in this release.

PDF export formatting enhancements for reports and dashboards

In order to give users a greater control over the layout and formatting of PDF exports, a new PDF Format card has been added to Settings tab of a report (CRM-515). You can use the settings on this card to specify how to treat reports where both the rows and columns exceed a single page, which parts of a report should be included in the PDF, font size and padding, and other settings.

For dashboards, a new Settings dialog was introduced with similar options (CRM-1892). This dialog can be accessed from the More Actions menu on a dashboard.

In addition, default values were updated to ensure better compatibility with reports that contain a large number of columns.

Changing report ownership

Users with appropriate privileges can now change the ownership of reports (CRM-2089). This feature is intended for the support staff who regularly help CRM users configure their reports. It can also be used when transferring reports from one CRM user to another.

In the All Reports or My Reports tab, click the More Actions button and select the Set Owner command. When report ownership has been changed, both the new and the previous user are notified.

Only users with the rpt:gReportAdmin privilege have access to this functionality.

Canceling a report export

You can now cancel a report export that is in progress or has failed due to an error (CRM-1877). In the Export History tab for the report, use the Cancel button on the row with the report export details. When a report export is completed, this button is replaced by the Download button.

Default sort order

A default sort order on the name attribute is now applied to each report, even if no sort field was selected in the report configuration (CRM-2136). For example, a Contacts report would be sorted on the Full Name field by default.

Subject area enhancements

New association fields have been added to the following subject areas. Where possible, they can be included in reports, used for filtering or sorting, and included in calculated fields:

• Custom Fields field has been added to Contacts, Companies, and Households subject areas (CRM-1794)

• Categories field has been to Contacts, Companies, and Households subject areas (CRM-1793)

• Household Member Role field has been added to the Households and Contacts subject areas (CRM-1773)

Global Search enhancements

You can now click the question mark icon in the Search field on the Global Search page to see supported syntax and examples (CRM-1255).

You can use the Related search word in the Refine search dialog accesses by the filter icon (CRM-1675). Use this operator to specify information related to the search term. By default, the only related information you can specify is for activities, specifically the names of contacts or users included as participants in the activity. For example, you can search for the term “email”. To limit the results that are displayed, you can then specify the value “jones” in the Related field in the Refine search dialog. This will display all the emails where either the For field or the Assign To field contain "jones".

Keycloak support

This release enables system administrators using NexJ Admin Console to manage CRM users to create and manage records in Keycloak at the same time (CRM-1539). This allows the administrators to directly manage identity and access for end users.

Use NexJ Admin Console to synchronize the following actions with Keycloak in real time.

Creating new users

On the User page in the Details tab, click the Add button to create a new user in both NexJ CRM and Keycloak (CRM-1863). For users that should be authorized through Keycloak, specify the keycloak: prefix in the Login field. For example, keycloak:jsmith.

The new user will be created with the default password specified for the environment during deployment. They will need to change the password when they log in for the first time.

Updating user information

To edit a user’s record, on the User page, open the user record and click the Edit button next to the user First Name field. Changes to the users first name, last name, login, and email are synchronized with Keycloak (CRM-1865).

Deactivating and reactivating users

For active users, on the User page, open the user record and click the Deactivate User button below the user information (CRM-1867). The user’s account is deleted in Keycloak (CRM-1864).

For inactive users, the button changes to Reactivate User.

When a user is reactivated, they will have the default password specified for the environment during deployment. They will need to change the password when they log in for the first time since their reactivation.

Unlocking users

If a user’s account gets locked from too many incorrect logins, the administrator can unlock it (CRM-2146). On the User page, open the user record and click the Unlock Oauth User button below the user information.

When a user is unlocked, they will have the default password specified for the environment during deployment. They will need to change the password when they log in for the first time since their account was unlocked.

Usability enhancements

The following additional usability enhancements are included in this release:

• The email dialog accessed from the Activities tab has been revised to match other email dialogs in the application (CRM-1488).

• When adding an activity plan to a contact’s record, you can now specify both date and time in the Start and Due fields in the New Activity Plan dialog (CRM-1853).

• You can now add new product types during runtime using the Admin Console on the Enumerations page (CRM-2198)

Security enhancements

This release included the following security enhancements:

• The Apache Tomcat server version has been updated to 9.0.89 (released May 3, 2024) (CRM-1517)

• The googlei18n/libphonenumber library has been upgraded to 8.13.26 (release November 21, 2023) (CRM-1279)

Automation enhancements

This release includes the following automation enhancements:

• Selenium has been upgraded to version 4.18.1 (released February 19, 2024) (CRM-1766)