Livingdocs Release November 2023: Document Commands API, Improved Search Experience & Real-time Teasers

Document Commands API

With this release, we introduce the Document Commands API. This new functionality allows external services to change a document's content and metadata, and even publish the changes. For example, this can be used to change the title of an article after an A/B-test yields a winning title.

Another use case is automated journalism. For example, it is now possible to have numbers in a running election report automatically updated while human users are continuously editing other sections of the same article.

This extension of functionality reflects the work Livingdocs is doing on APIs so that humans can better collaborate with and leverage the power of machines, so that editors can incorporate technology that takes care of tedious workflows and frees up their time to focus more on their content.

Improved Search Experience

Getting exactly the result you need in a search query is easier said than done. So we have introduced a new and improved search system allowing for more control.

When multiple terms are entered in a search query, only results containing all the terms in either the document content or metadata will be produced. If multiple terms are combined with the use of "and", only results with the terms in the exact order written will appear. We believe this will greatly increase the quality of search results, and are eager to hear your feedback on this significant improvement.

With this release, the new search functionality is enabled by default on the Media Library. For documents, it can be enabled via the dashboard, allowing for 1:1 comparison between the old and the new search. See the technical documentation for details.

Page Management: Real-time Teasers

Within Page Management, if an article is being published repeatedly, its teaser is updated in real time. Users with the page in question open in Livingdocs do not have to reload the document in order to see new teasers. This improves the UX in scenarios where users keep a page open all the time (a homepage, for example).

Further improvements in the November 2023 Release include:

1. Push Notifications

   The new and improved Push Notification Feature can now be used to trigger pushes from within the Article Editor Toolbar. Previously, this was only possible via Dashboards.

2. Links

   It is now possible to allow links to phone numbers in your documents.

Breaking Changes & Upcoming Deprecations

In order to keep Livingdocs as streamlined and user-friendly as possible, we periodically remove features when we have found better solutions to the problems they solve. We will always give you ample notice so that you have plenty of time to make adaptations to your setup. You can find a comprehensive list of deprecations and changes that may affect your newsroom in the Technical Release Notes.

Upcoming Deprecations

The deprecations below are coming down the pipeline. Please make note of them so they don't creating blocking issues for you once they are in full effect. 

1. Publish: Prepare Publish Flow → Publish Control

   We will phase out the old Prepare Publish Flow in favour of Publish Control in the January 2024 Release. Publish Control will be enabled in all scenarios and doesn't have to be activated. While we planned to put this into full effect in the November 2023 Release, we have opted to shift the timeline. 

2. Filter Sets

   As we have now enhanced the flexibility of dashboard configuration with different filters and columns — along with the ability to organise them in the main navigation — we are deprecating the Filter Sets feature which allows you to organise different filter settings and apply them from the Filter Bar. If you are using the Filter Sets feature, please contact us directly to discuss possible replacements for this functionality. The Filter Sets feature will be removed latest in the January 2024 release, with the potential for earlier removal if it is no longer being used by any users before the January Release goes live.

3. Certain Custom Publication Date Configurations

   With Publish Control having been available for over a year, we are deprecating old ways of configuring custom publication date fields used for some special technical scenarios. Please take note if this scenario applies to you.

To get more in-depth, technical information about this release, please refer to our documentation site. There, you can stream the recordings and peruse the slide presentations of our Feature Webinar and Developer Webinar, as well as gain insights into the technical specs.

We look forward to showing you what’s in store for our next release!