The February 2022 release of Alinity was deployed to Test environments on February 10th and Production environments on February 17th. A summary of the changes included in this release appear below.
We’re moving platforms in 2022
If you have been following our monthly release blog posts closely, you will notice the number of new and improved features in this release is lower than we usually provide. This is because our development team is working on migrating Alinity to a new hosting platform in 2022. The new platform uses the latest versions of cloud and database technologies and Alinity is being upgraded to take advantage of them. We will continue to upgrade Alinity with bug fixes and new features each month but at a lower volume.
The new platform will provide better performance, better security, and will make new technologies available for further improvements to the product. One of the new features we can take advantage of immediately after moving to the new hosting platform will allow us to automatically add computing resources to your system during peak periods like renewal, and automatically return to normal resource levels when demand drops. There are new options for document storage that will allow us to reduce storage charges going forward. The software will look the same as it does on our current platform so no special planning or retraining is required for this move. We are excited about starting this next chapter of Alinity’s progression. Please let us know if you have any questions.
Change List
| Change | Type | Applies To |
| Block Users with Javascript Disabled | New Feature | Member Portal |
| Javascript is fundamental to many functions of the site which could lead to members seeing a largely blank page after logging in if they disabled Javascript. Just as we block out-of-date browsers with an informative message, we have also added a block page for this scenario to inform members that they do not have Javascript enabled. This echoes a similar block added by Twitter for users without Javascript. | ||
| Complaint Number Updates | New Feature | General |
| You are now able to edit the complaint number for existing complaints. This feature is located in the same spot as “Change status” and other actions on the complaint details. | ||
| Failed Login Lockout | New Feature | General |
| A new system has been implemented to prevent repeated login attempts against a single user account. If the account has too many failed login attempts within the configured time period subsequent attempts will automatically fail until the number of failed attempts falls below the configured threshold. The same error message as other login failures is returned to avoid providing malicious actors with information that can inform them they have a valid user name or that they should stop attempting passwords from a list until the lockout is over. By default the time period is five minutes and the maximum number of attempts is 10, this is chosen to thwart brute force attacks while still allowing a member enough attempts that they are more likely to use the reset password feature before hitting the limit. These values can be changed by system administrators in “Setup” -> “Other Configuration” (search for “lockout”). | ||
| Password Expiry | Feature Update | General |
| The password expiry rules have been enhanced to allow you to configure different lengths of time before a password must be changed for administrators and members separately; this allows you to have highly privileged accounts change their passwords more often while reducing frustration for members who may not log in as often. You may also enter the value 0 to turn off password expiry although we don’t recommend this for administrators and deciding on this for members should attempt to balance security with convenience; educating members on good security practices can help mitigate risks if you choose to turn expiry off for their accounts. These values can be changed by system administrators in “Setup” -> “Other Configuration” (search for “password”). | ||
| Change Registrant Number | Feature Update | Registration |
| Modifying the registrant number has been moved to the context menu on the first group in person details alongside “Edit profile picture”, “Override initial registration” and other actions. This also secures these changes so that only System Administrators and Registration Administrators can change it, since the registrant number is used in many places both inside and outside your system this can help you prevent changes that may not have been fully thought through. | ||
| Registration Effective Date Change | Feature Update | Registration |
| A new action is available on applications, registration changes and reinstatements that allows you to update the effective date for the registration if the form has been approved but the registration has not been generated yet. Previously this could only be set during approval. | ||
| Show “All” Previous Employees | Feature Update | Organizations |
| A new option “All” is available in the Current employee section of the Org details screen. This option allows you to find all current and previous employees for an organization. Previously this could only be done by checking each individual registration year. | ||
| No Timer Warning for Paid Exams | Bug Fix | Continuing Competence |
| Paid online exams that were also timed did not provide the member with a warning about the time limit on the exam after they paid their invoice. Now the member is presented with a confirmation before starting the exam. | ||
| Base Admistrator Access to Email Attachments | Bug Fix | Correspondence |
| Base administrators were not able to access the attachments for an email message, this has been corrected. Note that should you delete any email message attachments the links are not removed from the previously generated PDF documents stored in the document library. | ||
| System Administrators Unable to be Assigned as Audit Reviewers | Bug Fix | Audit |
| System administrators were excluded from this list to prevent them from being picked by accident and to keep the list as short as possible. However there are very few system administrator accounts in an organization and occasionally they are required to review audit forms. System administrators are now included in the list of possible reviewers for audit forms. | ||
Next release
The March 2022 release of Alinity is scheduled for deployment to production sites March 17th.
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