Released: 28 Aug 2024

Get ready for the highly anticipated Reisalpe release! This iteration of Portrait, the critically acclaimed platform, takes innovation to the next level with powerful new features and mighty enhancements, empowering your enterprise like never before. Discover the future of enterprise apps today!

Before we start, we invite you to check all those features we shipped since our last major-release:

Portrait 6.1.0 - Schöpfl - Scripting support, Boolean fields, Hot Reload Configuration,…
Portrait 6.2.0 - Schöpfl - Forms 2.0: Value sliders, Entry fields, Postprocessing for ELO, etc…
Portrait 6.3.0 - Schöpfl - Modal forms, password fields, group timeline entries,…
Portrait 6.4.0 - Schöpfl - Push notifications, list view on mobile, optimized config hot reload,…
Portrait 6.5.0 - Schöpfl - Field processor math operators, user view,…
Portrait 6.6.0 - Schöpfl - Document scanner, Revamped map view,…

Obviously, Schöpfl was a feature-packed iteration and made digitalization for our customers a lot easier and intuitive. With the upbringing of Portrait 7.0 we hat-tip to “Schöpfl”: We thank you for your services and say goodbye to Portrait 6.0. May the retirement be a relaxing one!

Release “Reisalpe” will be the next summit ahead. With the initial release, not only did we work on bugs and security, but we immediately bring in new features.

In the spirit of our versioning scheme, minor-releases in the 7.x series will also bring new features a long the way. Remember: Major releases mainly indicate that breaking changes are occurring.

Highlights

Section Actions

Forms based on existing entries

Section Permissions

Form Permissions

Conditions - Input validation

File Download and Preview

API changes

References

Elasticsearch index space optimization

Field Processor - new Helper and Types

Security improvements notice

At Treskon, we take application security seriously, which is why we continuously enhance the security features of our platform. We strive to strike a balance between automated configuration options and strict input validation, ensuring that our users can build flexible and dynamic web applications with confidence.

Please note that Portrait is designed to empower admins to create custom web applications. While we prioritize robust security, we also recognize the importance of flexibility and ease of use in our platform. As such, you may need to perform manual configuration or make informed decisions about trade-offs between security and functionality.

As an admin using Portrait to build your application, it's essential that you consider your own application's security needs and take responsibility for ensuring its security. With our latest update, we're introducing new configuration options that enable admins like you to further strengthen their application's security by adding custom input validation, permissions, conditions, and limiting form submissions to specific entries. These enhancements empower you to build applications that meet your unique needs while maintaining a high level of security.

Permissions

Sections can now be configured to be only accessible for admins.

Code Block
- name: hr role: ADMIN caption: HR group: Management

role String

ADMIN = only admins can see this section

USER = every user can see this data

If you don’t define it, role USER will be applied

Admin only sections will now be displayed in the administration view:

Section Actions

The Action inside a Section has been reworked and now support:

Conditional expression. See: https://portrait.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/PA7/pages/1029117068/Portrait+7.0.0+-+Reisalpe#Conditions
Handlebar Support for Labels and Links.
Use multiple Forms within a single section entry

This will be useful, if you need to allow an action/form only if a certain criteria is met.

Example

Imagine, Portrait is used to manage the inventory of field-service-engineers. Portrait has an overview of each service-engineers personal inventory. Therefore, Portrait, lists the current stock of the inventory.

In case an inventory item is low, the service-engineer shall be able to file a restock form. So, only if the stock is sub 3 items, the form restockItemForm shall be shown to the user:

Config inside the section inventory:

Code Block

sections:
  section:
    - name: inventory
      ...
      actions:
        - label: 'Order Restock'
          key: 'restockItemAction'
          type: 'FORM'
          condition:
            - expression: '{{lt Amount 3}}'
          value: 'restockItemForm'
          icon: 'shopping-bag'

This will show the button to open the form restockItemForm, because Amount is lower than 3:

Details, see: Actions.

Forms

Forms and the underlying onSubmit implementation got a big update:

Permissions

Forms can now be configured to be only accessible for admins.

Code Block
- id: createInventoryItem role: ADMIN onSubmit: type: ELO ... dialog: config/forms/createInventoryItem.json

role String

ADMIN = only admins can see this section

USER = every user can see this data

If you don’t define it, role USER will be applied

Field Processors

Field Processors support has been added to forms and is now also available for: Python, SQL. They work similar to the existing implementation of Field Processors for ELO:

For Python, the evaluated Field Processors are passed alongside the form fields to the python script via the --args flag.
For SQL, the evaluated Field Processors are available as variables for the SQL query.

Forms based on existing entries - Mode and Scope

It is now possible to link forms to existing entries. This allows Portrait administrators to further increase their application security and data consistency. To achieve this goal, we introduced multiple configuration options.

Update-Mode

With the new Mode Update you make the ‘previous’ entry-fields available as variables to be used for Field Processors, SQL queries or further processing in your Python script. In other words, the Create-Mode ignores existing entries - and therefore shouldn’t be used if you need conditions or security.

Note
Do not confuse the Update-Mode with an SQL UPDATE Statement.

Overview of the currently supported modes:

Submit-Type	ELO	SQL	Python	BLP 5.1
Create-Mode
Update-Mode
Delete-Mode
Default	Create	Create	Create	Create

The Update-Mode also brings you the ability to compare the new form-input with the existing entry data inside the index. The original attributes are therefore prefixed with ORIGIN_ (STATUS → ORIGIN_STATUS). Comes in handy, if you want to use Conditions on form submit.

Strict-Scope (ELO only)

Furthermore the scope setting was introduced. This was necessary, since it was possible in Portrait 6.x to manipulate unrelated Sord’s in ELO with some “bad-actor-energy”. We won’t go into details here.

However, with Portrait 7.x things changed with the setting the scope to STRICT. This will prevent editing unrelated Sord's which are not indexed in Portrait.

Therefore, it is highly recommended to apply this configuration.

Note
In the upcoming releases of Portrait, we may will enforce the scope to `STRICT`. Act now, to avoid issues in the future.

Plausibility check

In addition a check is applied:

SQL and Python
- If a form is submitted and no corresponding entry is found in the Portrait index, the operation is cancelled.
ELO
- If a form is submitted and no corresponding entry is found in the Portrait index AND the scope is set the STRICT, the operation is cancelled

Summary

Still unsure, what to do? We got your back:

If you have forms, that submit data to ELO, add the mode property to the onSubmit settings and set it accordingly. It will be either: CREATE, UPDATE or DELETE. Also set the scope property to STRICT.

If you have forms, that submit data to SQL or Python, add the mode property to the onSubmit settings and set it accordingly. It will be either: CREATE or UPDATE.

Please read our docs on the given use-case, wholeheartedly:

Post Processing (onSubmit) - In general, no matter the destination.
ELO - use the form data in ELO. You will find a separate chapter about the improved security considerations.
SQL - use the form data in SQL prepared statements.
Python - use the form data in python scripts.
BLP 5.1 - start ELO BLP processes.

This examples shall round it up:

Example 1: ELO - Update an entry

You have a form in Portrait, that should edit an indexed entry in Portrait and ELO. The config:

Code Block
- id: edit_entry_withELO onSubmit: mode: UPDATE source: sectionID scope: STRICT ...

Example 2: ELO - Delete an entry

You have a form in Portrait, that should delete an indexed entry in Portrait and ELO. The config:

Code Block
- id: delete_entry_withELO onSubmit: mode: DELETE source: sectionID scope: STRICT ...

Example 3: Python - Update an entry

You have a form in Portrait, that should edit an indexed entry in Portrait and run a py-script. The config:

Code Block
- id: edit_entry_withPy onSubmit: type: Python mode: UPDATE source: sectionID ...

Example 4: SQL - Update an entry

You have a form in Portrait, that should edit an indexed entry in Portrait and SQL. The config:

Code Block
- id: edit_entry_withSQL onSubmit: type: SQL mode: UPDATE source: sectionID ...

Example 5: BLP5.1 - Trigger a process

You have a form in Portrait, that should start a process in BLP5.1. The config:

Code Block
- id: edit_entry_with_BLP51 onSubmit: type: BLP5.1 ....

Conditions

With Portrait 7.0 we introduce the concept of conditions, which allows for extensive input validation to keep your data consistent at all times.

Furthermore, you can define which user can use which operation. Like this you can enforce “ACL” / permissions and define, which user is allowed to edit or delete an entry. I´

A condition is a boolean expression when evaluated either allow or prevent:

Section Actions: https://portrait.atlassian.net/wiki/x/AQBwPQ - conditional serving of user actions, based on the metadata.
Form submit: https://portrait.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/PA7/pages/1029112649/Post+Processing+onSubmit#Conditions - conditional validation of a form submit on the backend.

Example

Code Block

condition:
  - expression: "{{in SELECTED_STATUS 'STATUS1' 'STATUS2'}}"
    errorMessage: 'only STATUS1 or STATUS2 are allowed'
  - expression: "{{in SELECTED_EMAIL PORTRAIT_USER_EMAIL}}"
    errorMessage: 'you can only edit your own entries'

Multiple conditions can be set. All conditions need to match. (Logical AND between all conditions). You can build more complex rules with nested handlebars.

Code Block
- expression: "{{or (in SELECTED_STATUS 'STATUS1' 'STATUS2') (eq PORTRAIT_USER_ROLE 'ADMIN')}}" errorMessage: 'only STATUS1 or STATUS2 are allowed, Admin can do anything.'

If needed, variables can also be preprocessed with Field Processors, this allows a better readability.

Code Block

 - id: edit_entry
      onSubmit:
        type: ELO
        connection: eloconn
        mask: ELOMASK
        mode: UPDATE
        source: eloSource
        scope: STRICT
        condition:
          - expression: "{{or IS_VALID_STATUS IS_ADMIN_USER}}"
            errorMessage: 'only STATUS1 or STATUS2 are allowed, Admin can do anything'
        fieldProcessor:
          - field: STATUS
            value: "{{SELECTED_STATUS}}"
          - field: IS_VALID_STATUS
            value: "{{in SELECTED_STATUS 'STATUS1' 'STATUS2'}}"
            type: BOOLEAN
          - field: IS_ADMIN_USER
            value: "{{eq PORTRAIT_USER_ROLE 'ADMIN'}}"
            type: BOOLEAN

Conditional support on forms https://portrait.atlassian.net/wiki/x/SQNXPQ currently works for: ELO, Python and SQL.

For more details, see: https://portrait.atlassian.net/wiki/x/AYDHPg

Field processors

Field processors are a powerful tool to manipulate and evaluate data. Field processors are integrated in several areas of Portrait. Use them inside Sources to add or modify a field while reindexing data, use them within a form submit to validate the posted data, add them to actions to have conditional visibility of actions.

In this release we added new functionality to the field processors.

Boolean

A new type boolean has been added.

Example

Code Block
fieldProcessor: - field: BudgetLeft value: '{{gt Amount 0}}' type: BOOLEAN

Details, see: Field Processors

In Helper

Check if a given value is contained in a given list of other values:

Code Block
{{in SELECT_VACATION_STATUS 'GENEHMIGT' 'ABGELEHNT'}}

Also a combination with various split methods is possible:

Code Block
{{in PORTRAIT_USER_EMAIL (splitBySemicolon EVENT_PARTICIPANTS) 'admin@portrait.com'}}

Details, see: https://portrait.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/PA7/pages/1029114243/Field+Processors#In

File download

It is now possible to download files linked to an indexed ELO entry directly from the table or detail view.

Example

Code Block
sourceSpecific: mask: Service files: nesting: 1 mask: Service Document

Will be displayed like this:

Depending on the file type, a preview is available. All files are available to download.

Details, see: https://portrait.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/PA7/pages/1029114146/ELO+sources#Index-Documents%2FFiles

References

A new nifty feature is to reference between entries (across different sections) in Portrait.

Example

Imagine, Portrait is used to manage the incidents for service-engineers. Each service-engineer has a list of incidents. However each incident relates to a facility. Therefore it is useful to link from the incident to the facility, to see all documents, manuals and other details of the facility itself.

To achieve this, you need the new column type reference. The Config inside the section “incidents” looks like this:

Code Block

sections:
  section:
    - name: incidents
      ...
      columns:
        - label: 'Facility'
          key: 'ServiceFacilityNo' #contains the key of the target entry
          type: 'reference'
          options:
            sectionID: facilities-at # section where the reference should target
            fieldKey:  FAC_NAME # label for the reference, inside the incident section

The value of ServiceFacilityNo is 5001 (per example above) and this must also be the unique identifier for the entry in the facility source.

You can check this, by having a look at the URL of the target entry: https://service.customer.com/facilities-at/5001/

Info
For SQL you need to set the key manually. For ELO sources you can overwrite the unique key in the configuration of your source. Details, see: SQL sources or ELO sources.

Details, see: https://portrait.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/PA7/pages/1029113865/Column+Types#Reference

Search index space optimization

We optimized the required disk space for the search recommendations. To take full advantage of this, we recommend that you delete your index and rebuild them from scratch.

To do this:

Delete your sources that you want to optimize in the admin dashboard.
Restart Portrait
If mandatory, trigger a manual reindex if not configured periodic reindexing.

Breaking changes

Breaking changes led to a major release. In this chapter, we summarize the breaking changes - which might affect your installation and need to be considered, whilst upgrading.

SQL form submit parameter

We increased the security measurements whilst dealing with SQL write operations. This means, the SQL query will be parsed as prepared statement. For safety reasons, we enforce this style now for every SQL query. These changed are valid for all DML Statements. DDL Statements are not supported anymore.

Example

Given this example for the createNewCompany form:

Old - 6.x

Code Block
- id: createNewCompany onSubmit: type: SQL connection: internal query: \| INSERT INTO DemoOrganigram (Name, PARENT_IDS, PARENT_LABELS) VALUES ('{{Name}}', '{{PARENT_IDS}}', '{{PARENT_LABELS}}');

New - 7.x

Code Block

- id: createNewCompany
  onSubmit:
    type: SQL
    connection: organigram
    source: demo-organigram
    fieldProcessor:
      - field: Name
        value: "{{Name}}"
      - field: PARENT_IDS
        value: "{{PARENT_IDS}}"
      - field: PARENT_LABELS
        value: "{{PARENT_LABELS}}"
    query: |
      INSERT INTO DemoOrganigram (Name, PARENT_IDS, PARENT_LABELS)
        VALUES (:Name, :PARENT_IDS, :PARENT_LABELS);

In this given example, the form-data will be inserted into the table DemoOrganigram via the connection organigram.

The FieldProcessors can either be used to format fields or as a fallback in case of an optional field in the form. If not supplied the Query would fail as there would be no valid parameter :Name if not set previously. With the given FieldProcessor the fallback is an empty string.

Details, see: https://portrait.atlassian.net/wiki/x/pQNXPQ

ELO sources files indexing

When indexing files to the public folder, it is now required to set publicCache: true.

Info

This is relevant to you, if you use Portrait in public mode - without authentication.

ELO sources Adminbase and Chaosablage indexing

When indexing elements within the ELO Administration (aka. “Administration” folder) and “Chaosablage”, results are per default now ignored this can be changed with:

Code Block
sourceSpecific: blacklistChaosablage: false #default, if not set: true blacklistAdministration: false #default, if not set: true

In addition you can also provide own folder GUIDs that will be excluded.

Details, see: ELO sources

ELO source-ID's

With this version, we switch to a more classic approach, like how ELO uses GUID’s. In ELO the identifier for a SORD is either a Object-Id, or a GUID. We use the GUID of ELO, but previously we removed the surrounding brackets artificially. With Release 7.X we remove this artificially modification of the GUID:

ELO Unique Identifier	Old - 6.x	New - 7.x
GUID	`FC4B5EB2-359A-2FAE-C3DE-AC908A1A6BD9`	`(FC4B5EB2-359A-2FAE-C3DE-AC908A1A6BD9)`

Note
To maintain a consistent database ,we recommend to clear the existing ELO indexes and reindex!

There might be some changes required in your configuration, when if you used Field Processors, that use or manipulate the ELO-GUID’s.

Examples

Field Processor Use-Case	Old - 6.x	New - 7.x
A link to another Portrait detail entry. With 6.x you needed a substring manipulation.	`value: '{{#if PARENT_ELOGUID}}[Open](https://organigram.customer.com/complete/{{substring PARENT_ELOGUID 1 37 }}/hi){{/if}}'`	`value: '{{#if PARENT_ELOGUID}}[Open](https://organigram.customer.com/complete/{{PARENT_ELOGUID}}/hi){{/if}}'`
A link to the ELO Rich Client (via ELO protocol handler). In 6.x you had to add `( )` to the link.	`value: 'elodms://({{key}})'`	`value: 'elodms://{{key}}'`
When building references for the organigram inside Portrait, you had to remove the `( )`.	`value: '{{substring SHARE_SUBSIDIARY_ELOGUID 1 37 }}'`	`value: '{{SHARE_SUBSIDIARY_ELOGUID}}'`

This examples prove, that with the new , unaltered , approach, the configuration gets simpliersimpler.

API changes

We did our homework, and the API, especially the documentation for it, is now concise and this will increase the possibilites to better integrate Portrait in your automations. If you open the API docs you will find a clean and grouped doc now.

We also changed the following API routes, for better clarity:

API Use-Case	Old - 6.x	New - 7.x
Get all entries for a specific section or the global search	`/data/`	`/search/`
Get all entries for specific section or the global search with filter term (search query)	`/data/{term}`	`/search/{term}`
Retrieve the key value pairs for a single entry - nonetheless, what section it is in.	`/docDetails/{docId}` (where docID was similar to the entryID) This would lead to an issue when there would be the same entryID in two different sections. To guarantee uniqueness, docDetails was removed	Use either `/entries/{sectionID}/{entryID}` to query an unique entry. Or`/data/{term}` to perform a global search.
Method to retrieve a certain entry - via the source.	`sources/{index}/{entryID}` This is similar to`/entries/{sectionID}/{entryID}`	Use `/entries/{sectionID}/{entryID}`

Info
Currently there is a strong 1:1 connection between source and section. In the following, we plan to loosen up this restriction to connection connect a single source to multiple sections. This API change is one of the first steps towards that goal.

Page Comparison

Versions Compared

Key

Highlights

Security improvements notice

Permissions

Section Actions

Forms

Permissions

Field Processors

Forms based on existing entries - Mode and Scope

Update-Mode

Strict-Scope (ELO only)

Plausibility check

Summary

Example 1: ELO - Update an entry

Example 2: ELO - Delete an entry

Example 3: Python - Update an entry

Example 4: SQL - Update an entry

Example 5: BLP5.1 - Trigger a process

Conditions

Field processors

Boolean

In Helper

File download

References

Search index space optimization

Breaking changes

SQL form submit parameter

ELO sources files indexing

ELO sources Adminbase and Chaosablage indexing

ELO source-ID's

API changes