4.2 versions

Quickly reorder modules on pages, images in galleries, and enhancements in the rich-text editor. This functionality saves users time and reduces mouse clicks as they rearrange content in Brightspot.

In order to streamline users’ experience, 4.2 allows editors to more easily create and manage dashboards by adding an additional menu option to the admin menu. The new page that is linked includes a searchable list of all existing dashboards, allowing editors better control over their environment.

In order to better utilize space and simplify the search experience, Brightspot 4.2 moves the full-screen view out of the actions and collapses the remaining actions into a drop-down menu. Editors still have one-click access to the most used actions, and now have the ability to display additional actions only as needed, helping them work the way they prefer.

Brightspot 4.2 allows settings to be saved to a front-end theme, preventing administrators from having to re-configure themes and other settings.

Brightspot 4.2 includes an All Sites list that features sites with or without a category, displays more results by default, and is now more consistent with how default filters appear elsewhere in the CMS. These changes make editors more efficient by saving them time as they search for the site they need to access. Additionally, site categories are now listed alphabetically.

Sometimes editorial teams need the ability to “check out” (like a library book) entire pieces of content and lock them from being edited by more than one person at a time. Now, locks have timeouts in order to automatically release them based on specific behavior. Brightspot still supports field-level locking behavior, but with this new level of locking, all fields are read-only when the content is considered locked. The following new features have been added to content locking:

• Inactivity timeout—If an editor navigates to another tab or minimizes the browser, after a configured amount of time, other editors viewing the content will be notified and can take over the lock. This setting can be disabled.
• Hard lock timeout—If an editor holds a lock for longer than the configured number of hours, that user is kicked off the page.
• Disable unlocking—A new setting and permission allows privileged users to disable unlocking preventing any other user from taking the lock.

4.2 adds the ability for editors to restore assets to a draft state upon un-archiving, which allows the asset to re-enter the content workflow. This is useful for editors who archive published assets when they discover a mistake (since archiving hides the asset from the front end), and want to resubmit it into the workflow so that the mistake can be corrected (instead of having the asset go live upon un-archiving it). “Bulk Restore” still defaults to Restore to Live.

4.2 includes a number of improvements to the Revisions widget:

• Revisions widget consolidation—4.2 consolidates the current workflow (and past versions) to be simultaneously visible in one UI, with a new color key and labels to indicate each version’s workflow status. The creation of a new revision is not automatic and is now opt-in, making the decision to have more than one working revision at a time intentional.
• Better record of impersonation—4.2 improves impersonation by showing when someone has been impersonated, effectively establishing an audit trail. For example, if Jane Doe updates an article while impersonating John Smith, the Revisions widget now displays that “Updated – John Smith. Impersonated by Jane Doe.”
• Custom expiration—Editors may now set a custom expiration in Brightspot 4.2, helping reduce the number of unnecessary, additional revisions that were created as a result of the previous 24-hour expiration period not being long enough. Not only does this save the editor time, but they can now also enjoy more efficiency and control over their operations.

4.2 includes a number of improvements to the image editing experience:

New full-screen design—Adds a new fullscreen design for image editing, featuring a combined focus and edit tabs, enabling editors to interact with the focus and see cropping options in a single view, which helps to increase their efficiency as they work.
Better field placement—Rearranges field placement (like putting the File field before the Title field) to remain consistent across the UI, helping editors move more quickly as a result of working in a familiar environment).
More organized fields—Consolidates the Metadata, Location, and Usage tabs onto the Main tab, helping editors more readily access these kinds of information and cleaning up the interface so they can more easily focus on other elements of the image. 
Clearer field names—Renames the “Meta Data” link when editing an image to “Source Data.” This source data refers to any information that Brightspot inherits from the original source of the image, such as keywords, captions and ICC profiles. The task of renaming this field helps reduce redundancies and more clearly communicates to editors about functionality in the platform.

In 4.2, administrators are now able to reset two-factor authentication for a user.

You can now define a list of common colors for each site that are displayed as swatches wherever the color picker appears in Brightspot for that site.

To present editors with a cleaner, less crowded UI, 4.2 introduces a dedicated Advanced tab. In the new tab, editors will be able to find the following:

• Analytics and Community widgets
• Display Settings (including hiding settings, internal and external promo overrides, and DAM-specific settings)
• SEO Settings
• Style Settings (including Front End and Layout fields)

To give editors more options and tools in order to more effectively communicate with one another from within pertinent places, we 4.2 improves the Conversation widget. In the new widget, editors can:

• Perform line breaks
• Add hyperlinks
• Add images
• Apply rich text elements and lists
• Group conversations together in collapsible threads
• See new messages in real time
• View in a full-screen mode

4.2 includes a number of other improvements to the Conversation widget:

• Comments made in the Conversation widget are now numbered. This both allows editors to more easily follow the flow of a conversation that occurs in the widget and also helps if there is ever a need to reference a certain comment to clarify an idea.
• Original comments now display above the replies, which are now indented. This helps editors stay on the same page and communicate more efficiently with one another.
• The @ symbol now only triggers the user search drop-down when it is either preceded by a space or when it is the first character on a new line. The user search drop-down no longer appears when, for example, users type out an email address.
  

To reduce mouse clicks, 4.2 adds a Recently Used list in the left navigation of the module picker that is specific to each editor, saving them the time it would take for them to navigate to the specific module they want to use.

4.2 saves time for administrators in multi-site environments by enabling them to copy themes.

4.2 adds more robust capabilities when engaging in translation efforts:

• New Translations tab—The Translations and Localization tabs have been combined into a new tab called Translations to drive more efficiency for editors.
• Improvements to Translation dashboard widget—The Translation widget has been improved to allow editors to configure what statuses are shown in it and to rename it (to reflect any aforementioned configurations), giving more flexibility to editors who want to enable their content teams to produce better content.

For editors who manage audience variations per site, 4.2 enables them to make audiences site-specific.

To provide teams more valuable information on the dashboard, editors now have access to a widget that displays a custom-set module. Using the same layout as the Recent Activity widget, the module has fields that can be set one time within the dashboard, with all editors seeing that specific setting. This enables editors to ensure their teams are seeing important information like which articles are in an initial draft phase or links to reporter profiles, helping improve performance and communication across the newsroom.

4.2 allows multiple workflows per content type and site combination. This functionality can be leveraged by projects to allow programmatic selection of a workflow instead of forcing workflows to be based on current user site and content type.

To better support editors' visual preferences, 4.2 adds a Dark Mode.

In order to present administrators with a more intuitive interface, 4.2 introduces a new organization of fields found in Sites & Settings. Fields have been more neatly organized into the following tabs: Main, Front-End, Integrations, and CMS. Similarly, Profile fields have been reorganized. Fields like Notifications and Subscriptions have moved into a cluster under the Main tab, with features like Content Templates and Dashboard options making the move to a new CMS tab.

Administrators may now modify existing content types to their liking instead of having to build from scratch. In this case, administrators would start with an existing content type, like Article, and use it as a starting ground to add fields that fit their needs exactly. Once the change has been made, users may use content forms to move the field into the right place in the content edit form.

Editors may drag and drop URLs that are associated with published content in the URLs widget. This is handy since Brightspot is natively multisite, and as a result, many pieces of content may need to have multiple permalinks on multiple sites.

To reduce mouse clicks, editors may now create new assets right from the main header. No longer will they have to click into the search panel, then navigate to the Create widget.

When an editor selects a date range filter, 4.2 displays default ranges (Today, Yesterday, Past 7 Days, etc.). This functionality also works for dates that can be set in the future (Tomorrow, Next 7 Days, etc.).

4.2 adds a number of improvements to the Email to CMS feature:

• To help administrators, 4.2 adds an admin page that helps administrators find any failures or issues and more easily find content created via this feature.
• 4.2 also enhances an existing feature that allows users to simulate sending an email to the Email to CMS system. Mock emails help developers with testing, Sales with demoing, and CMS editors for general testing. To help with demos in particular, this email has been made to look more like an actual email form.

Site redirects were originally built so that they required a site owner. In 4.2, site redirects can now be created and maintained when administrators are on the Global site.

Styleguide has been rewritten to address minor issues and to improve the feature overall. As part of these efforts, Styleguide no longer depends on gulp.js. Additionally, its UI has been updated to 4.2 and gives front-end engineers the ability to apply customizable theme and template overrides.

To facilitate the management of users who need varying levels of access across multiple sites, 4.2 allows editors to be able to be associated with multiple roles. Editors with multiple roles enjoy the permissions of each, additively. Additionally, different dashboards can be implemented per role, displaying as tabs for the editor once logged in.

To help editors make type selection faster and easier, they may now “favorite” content types in the Quick Start widget. Once favorited, content types will slide to the left of the Quick Start widget for easier, more repeatable access.

In an effort to clean up the UI when multiple selections are made in a dropdown list, the dropdown list now only displays the first selected item, followed by a numeric count of the other selected items.

Administrators now have the ability to override integrated search credentials at the site level. This is helpful if two or more sites have different accounts for an integrated search provider, like Adobe Stock, for their separate billing.

Editors now have the power to create new content types. Before, this was only possible with developer involvement. Editorial content types enable editors to adjust to requirements with speed, allowing them a full suite of options to craft exactly the kind of content types they need to produce engaging digital content on the front end.

In Sites & Settings, administrators may now click a magnifying glass to search for text within tabs, clusters, labels, and fields.

Administrators may now create one-off themes when creating new sites. After creating a new site, users may select One-Off from a drop-down list and apply any settings or overrides to the theme right away.

A new API allows projects to add custom authenticators, including Google. To use a custom authenticator, implement ToolAuthenticator then configure the authentication settings.

JW Player can now be configured to be the front-end video player, including as an option with Amazon Elemental. It can be configured with the JW Player API credentials or with the player ID from a JW Player account.

In order to save editors time as they review content, 4.2 allows users to search the text documents that have been uploaded to Brightspot. AWS Textract automatically extracts text from the document file itself and makes the extraction searchable, saving editors steps.

Brightspot 4.2 adds an Amazon Translate plugin so that editors may quickly translate text inside the CMS, saving them time and expanding their ability to communicate with others.

4.2 gives editors more flexibility by expanding the number of languages supported by AWS Transcribe. Before, English, English (Australia), English (UK), French, and Spanish (US) were supported. Now, in addition to those languages, 4.2 supports the following: Canadian French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Korean, Spanish (Spain), English (India), Hindi, Arabic (Saudi Arabia), Russian, and Chinese. Having access to these languages gives editors greater bandwidth to cater to their multilingual audiences.

Tealium is a customer data platform that collects and unifies customer data. Data is pulled from websites and from APIs, and customer data is combined to create actionable and comprehensive customer profiles. By providing Tealium customer data directly in Brightspot, editors enjoy an expanded number of targeting options that they can leverage and improve audience segmentation capabilities. This is especially useful for B2B publishing customers, who rely on data like this in order to better engage their audiences.

A new Marketo integration allows users to automatically map fields from forms in an existing Marketo account to reduce time and complexity it takes to put such a form on a Brightspot site.

Google Analytics gives users access to one of the most widely used web analytics tools in the market. Together with Brightspot metrics, this integration can be used to provide additional insights going forward. The integration will augment better site- and page-level analytics.