This week we released several important—though largely unrelated—features, enhancements, and fixes, including support for @mentions, a new rich-text editor, and better storyboard navigation.

@mentions

Multiple customers, especially those with remote teams, have asked for the ability to actively get the attention of another Ready Room team member, specifically by typing an at sign (@) followed by a user identifier of some sort (name, email, etc.). Today, we are pleased to announce support for @mentions. You can use @mentions in either chat or in request comments simply by typing an at sign and selecting a team member from the list that appears. You can narrow down the list of team members by continuing to type contiguous characters that are part of their full name or email address. When the desired user is visible, they can be selected with the mouse, the enter key, or the tab key.

Notifications Panel

When the chat is sent or the comment saved, a green pop-up will appear briefly on the mentioned user's screen alerting them to the fact. A saved alert is also accessible via a new notifications panel. The notifications panel is next to the chat panel, and lists all @mentions and task assignments! The notification tab will display the number of unread notifications. Unacknowledged notifications are shown in bold. Clicking on the notification will mark it as read, decrement the counter, and redirect you to the appropriate request or to chat. Notifications can be deleted one by one or in bulk. Furthermore, an email will be sent to mentioned users—but not immediately. In order to avoid an email storm should a user be mentioned frequently, we collect up to 10 minutes of @mentions before sending an email containing all accumulated notifications.

Storyboard Navigation

This next feature is also by customer request. It is frequently necessary to edit multiple related storyboards, one right after the other. Previously, this required sorting and filtering the list of available storyboards, editing the first one, going back to the list to select the second, editing that, going back ... well, you get the idea. With today’s release, we introduce “Previous” and “Next” buttons on storyboards that respect the current filter and sort order. This allows you to create an ordered list of filtered storyboards, select the first to make some changes, then click “Next” to go to the second, then the third, and so on. The previous and next buttons will not be available if you have navigated directly to a storyboard via a link or the location bar.

Rich Text (Again)

The term “rich-text editor” refers to the ability to visually format entered data, such as by making text bold or adding tables and bulleted lists. Ready Room exposes a traditional rich-text editor with a menu bar on top when editing storyboards and scribe notes. In addition, Ready Room uses a “balloon” style rich-text editor (where a more limited set of formatting tools is provided dynamically upon highlighting text) in the description, comment, and notes fields of a request. The thing about rich-text editors is that they are difficult to get right. The editor Ready Room was using was very good, but to be honest, it tended to choke if the formatting got too complex. With today’s release, we have replaced that editor with a robust, commercial rich-text editor that is much more resilient and feature rich. The new rich-text editor should be familiar and intuitive, and most users will barely notice the change. However, there are some “power” features that are not visible in the menu bar are are worth calling out.

Auto-formatting

Use "short codes" to quickly apply formatting to created content without having to use the toolbar at all. For instance, typing an asterisk (or dash) and a space begins a bulleted list, and typing three consecutive dashes adds a horizontal line. You can see all of the available auto-formatting codes here: https://ckeditor.com/docs/ckeditor5/latest/features/autoformat.html

Keyboard Support

Of course, all of the common keyboard shortcuts are also available, e.g. Ctrl-B for bold and Ctrl-K for adding a link. You can find the complete list here: https://ckeditor.com/docs/ckeditor5/latest/features/keyboard-support.html

Chat

Chat is now rich-text enabled! Use wisely.

Bugs

• After deleting a scribe note, the user was redirected to an invalid URL. This has been fixed.