Sapphire Release Notes
Here you will find release notes for the most recent versions of Sapphire. Details include:
- Technical requirements
- New Features
- Improvements
- Issues Resolved
Release Date: 04 February 2022
Sapphire 1.5.2 relabelled Sapphire 9.0
May 2023 saw the release of EMu version 9.0, the first version to bundle our Collections Management System with a suite of tools that were previously add-ons licensed separately to EMu. The bundle consists of:
- Go: a web based client interface to EMu.
- IMu: a web browser search facility used to explore the collection.
- RestAPI: a REST API server providing access to the collection.
- Sapphire: a web based rapid data entry tool supporting simple task definitions.
- Server: the traditional EMu back-end server.
In order to align Sapphire with EMu going forward, Sapphire 1.5.2 was relabelled Sapphire 9.0; it is the official version of Sapphire bundled with EMu 9.0.
Requirements
- EMu 6.5-2109202 or later
- Texpress 9.0.01 or later
- TexAPI 6.0.012 or later
- Perl 5.8.8 or later (excluding 5.10.0)
Note: When upgrading to this version of Sapphire, EMu version 6.5-220204 or later must be installed. Failing to have the minimum EMu version installed will result in some Sapphire functions not operating correctly.
The Axiell EMu Ideas Portal allows you to view and submit ideas to a pool of ideas for future Sapphire development, vote for ideas, or ask us development questions:
Ability to stipulate whether to add to or overwrite nested table data
When a nested table is specified twice on a form, Sapphire notifies the user that this has occurred and that the form should be checked:
This may be legitimately done as a means of displaying readonly data at the top of the form and allowing new data to be added below. Any data in the second nested table field is combined with the data from the first nested table field to give the final saved data for the nested table. This processing means that data was always added to the nested table. On occasions it is desirable that data from the second field overwrites the first. To facilitate this a new popup is shown after the first one to allow the user to specify the way that the form should save the data:
-
The total time taken for a search is determined by three components: the search, any defined sort, and the time to build the results list for display. A search may timeout during any of these phases, which could result in Sapphire throwing an error when the next search is performed. To reduce the likelihood of this occurring, the maximum number of records returned using a search has been limited to 10,000:
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When multiple nested tables were used twice on a form, the order in which new data was added to the nested tables was inconsistent. All data is now consistently added to the end of the nested table.
- On occasion it was possible to enter data into a Sapphire field and a trailing period (dot) would be removed. The period is no longer removed.
- When displaying images where all generated resolutions were less than the image control width, the image thumbnail would display. The largest available resolution now display.
Upgrade Notes
See Upgrade 1.5.1 to 1.5.2 for details.
Release Date: 22 September 2021
Requirements
- EMu 6.5-2109202 or later
- Texpress 9.0.01 or later
- TexAPI 6.0.012 or later
- Perl 5.8.8 or later (excluding 5.10.0)
Note: When upgrading to this version of Sapphire, EMu version 6.5-210922 or later must be installed. Failing to have the minimum EMu version installed will result in some Sapphire functions not operating correctly.
The Axiell EMu Ideas Portal allows you to view and submit ideas to a pool of ideas for future Sapphire development, vote for ideas, or ask us development questions:
Ability to stipulate barcode field
The supplied Sapphire scripts for use with a form use hard coded column names to match records. As the hard coded column names may not suit all institutions, a Registry entry has been added to allow institutions to configure their own preferred column names. This entry has the following format:
Group|Default|Table|table|Barcode Column|script|column name
where table specifies the module to apply the setting for, script is the name of the script included on the form and column name is the name of the column to use for matching.
The following entry specifies that when running the sightbarcode script from a form, the input locationvalue should use the LocBarcode field to find the matching location:
Group|Default|Table|elocations|Barcode Column|sightobject|LocBarcode
- A new timeout setting is available for attachment searching. This setting allows for a maximum search time to be specified for matching an attachment record. With average typing speed, a setting of one second is deemed a reasonable limit and this is set as the default:
- Previously it was not possible to distinguish records created / updated through the use of Sapphire forms. All Sapphire form changes now have
sapphire
recorded in the Info field of the corresponding audit record. - Some attachment queries were extremely slow to match records where the typed letters exactly matched a term on the record. These terms now match records quickly.
- When adding an image to a form for the Multimedia module, two multimedia records were inserted, one with the multimedia information and one with the image. The information and image are now correctly stored in a single record.
- When a date field was near an image field, it was possible for part of the date picker to be hidden. The date picker now displays correctly, allowing all values to be selected.
- It was possible to create two forms with the same name, resulting in one seeming to disappear. Forms can no longer have the same name.
- On occasion a module cannot be edited error was displayed when trying to add a group. This error no longer display and the group is added correctly.
- It was possible for a field that was hidden on a form to appear if the associated column permissions in EMu were changed so that the column became readonly. The field now correctly remains hidden.
- It was possible for a field to appear as readonly on a form used for inserting records even if the user had insert permission. The field is now displayed correctly as editable.
- On occasion a sort error could be displayed when a search had no defined sort columns. An error is no longer shown and the search results are now correctly displayed.
- With a small number of EMu server versions, an error could be shown when attempting to re-save a record. This error is no longer shown with the latest EMu server version and the record correctly saves.
Upgrade Notes
See Upgrade 1.5.0 to 1.5.1 for details.
EMu 5.1 (1710021) is the minimum version of EMu that runs with Sapphire 1.2.0.
Sapphire is designed to operate in browsers which support a subset of HTML5. This includes:
- Desktop environments running fairly recent versions of most major browsers:
- Internet Explorer version 10 or above
- Firefox version 4 or above
- Chrome version 13 or above
- Safari version 6 or above
- iOS devices running iOS 6 or above
- Android devices running:
- Android browser version 4.4 or above
- Chrome version 36 or above
- Firefox version 31 or above
Note: The Sapphire tools will often operate successfully with earlier versions of these browsers. However, testing has shown that not all functionality is available in these browsers. For example, while many Forms will operate in Internet Explorer 9, this version of IE does not support the HTML5 function that enables a user to select files when attaching images.
- Restyled skin to match Axiell's branding.
- Updated button labels to eliminate confusing / misleading text.
- New warnings / prompts before continuing certain actions.
- Redesigned page layout providing better access to commonly used features.
- Responsive Form layout: multi-column forms respond when viewed on narrow screens.
- User group selection at login.
- Improved UI.
- New Form control enabling upload of all multimedia types.
- Improved multi-value controls: rows can be added / removed from anywhere in a multi-value field.
- Drop-in background: Sapphire can be re-branded by dropping in an image to use as background.
- Form data would be refreshed automatically after an error while saving.
- Button icons rendering strangely after recent Chrome update.
- Incompatible date format configurations between UI and Server causes display / save errors.
- Date-picker and Image controls clash.
- In some time zones date values are stored as previous day.
- Firefox displays inconsistent fonts in Form.
- Form designer description input field overlaps other input fields in Firefox.
- Ref Table / Column configuration fields in Form designer do not clear after changing field type from
attachment
. - Image control stores images in wrong order.
- Tabbing between fields does not occur sequentially.
- Form designer does not auto hide line configuration.
- Forms appear blank if custom layer added and then removed.
- Image control buttons not responding on mobile devices.
- Form designer auto suggests fat client only columns - fixed in EMu 6.2 (2004241).
- Form search result count displays n + 1 results - fixed in EMu 6.2 (2004031).