v2.29 - Performance boost part 2 and reporting updates

We continue with our performance upgrades and add a few improvements and bug fixes in this release.

Performance boost - Phase 2

Our last release optimised several aspects of paid transaction checkouts, this release adds optimisations for free checkout flows
In addition to some specific optimisations we have a significant 'general' upgrade to our database layer which will allow us to scale performance in a new way. I will be monitoring and 'tuning' our resources further in the coming months. This resource tuning and auto-scaling is an ongoing process.

NEW: News Article Preview

When articles were in an un-published state they could previously only be viewed by Evessio admins.
A new 'Preview' link can be shared with external stake holders allowing articles to be more widely reviewed before publication.

Removal of the Google Analytics report from the event dashboard

This report (EVENT > Dashboard) was previously made possible by having a parallel Analytics collector run by Evessio.
This has now been removed from most themes and will be fully retired over the coming months.
Without these collectors the analytics are not possible and have thus been removed.
In addition to 'cleaning' up the themes the evolution of Google Analytics, GDPR and cookie management have made this a worthwhile removal.
Google Analytics and Tag Manager data are all still available in the normal way by adding your own tags in EVENT > Settings.

API Update

To clear up an inconsistent reference to the 'status' of products and product items we have added 2 new status fields.

Products (e.g. Awards Nomination, Event Attendance) can be active or disabled.

Product Items (e.g. "Event Ticket", "Category XXX", "Table of 10") can also be disabled within a transaction.

This change is additive and non-breaking so will not affect any existing API calls.

/transactions will get a new field “product_status”
/orders will get a new field: “product_item_status"

Other Improvements

Awards Voting - earlier in the year we tightened up controls on voting by limiting anonymous public voters by their IP address. This had the unwanted side-effect of preventing voters within the same network (e.g. in a company) from voting independently. We have lifted this restriction and now use a session based identifier. We will look at further improving the challenging process of uniquely identifying anonymous voters next year.
Custom reports
- Blank fields in webforms - a field merging issue which caused some fields to be blank has been resolved.
- Various issues with column and field merging have also been addressed.
Duplication of transaction history items - in some cases 'Completed' and 'Invoiced' statuses appeared twice in transaction histories - this has been resolved.
Product selection missing after preferences form - these has been an issue where a selected product is lost after passing through a preferences form, this has now been resolved.

Bug fixes

[EVESSIO-10863] - [Admin Part]: Event: Data: Values, counts are multiplied in spreadsheets by the number of languages of the Event
[EVESSIO-11872] - [CAP]:Event: Dashboard: Error "NaN" is displayed in console if go to "Dashboard" section
[EVESSIO-12388] - [CAP]: Awards: Judging: Scoring: Custom: "Save" button is active if score field is empty
[EVESSIO-12390] - [CAP]: Revenue: Transactions: List: Transaction status is not updated to Invoiced in Transaction History
[EVESSIO-12394] - [CAP]: Event: Data: System Report: Values, NET, Total counts are multiplied in spreadsheets by the number of languages of the Event
[EVESSIO-12418] - [CAP]: Event: Dashboard: "Validation error : Error while generating Google Analytics for event" message appears if open dashboard
[EVESSIO-12416] - [Event Site] : Internal issue occurs when user tries to create an account on Event Site
[EVESSIO-12365] - (Spike)[CAP]: Revenue: Transactions: TX details: "Complete" and "Invoiced" transaction record is duplicated in history table
[EVESSIO-12437] - [CAP]: Awards: Nominations: It's possible to click "Save" button for editing nomination answer several times
[EVESSIO-12444] - [CAP]: Event: Data: Custom Report: View: "Transaction ID" data are duplicated in column in Product (single) Report type
[EVESSIO-12449] - [CAP]: Revenue:Transactions: Edit Personal details: Error 500 appears when user tries to edit Personal details if Product has more than 1 language set
[EVESSIO-12450] - [CAP]: Website:Pages: Error 500 (Internal Server Error) appears when user tries to delete content from the page or template
[EVESSIO-12452] - [CAP]: Awards: Judging: Assign Categories to Judges: Error 500 (Internal Server Error) appears when user tries to assign category to judge
[EVESSIO-12408] - [Event Site]:Awards: Judging: Round: Tick is not green if set all scores of "Custom" score. Error "Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'gH')' is displayed in console
[EVESSIO-12409] - [Event Site]:Awards: Judging: Round: Scores are not displayed in "Nomination details" modal window if set new added "Custom" score
[EVESSIO-12445] - [CAP]: Event: Custom Report: View: Data are not displayed in merged Column if user hasn't filled the source field and it takes the upper position in source list
[EVESSIO-12413] - [CAP]: Events HQ: Reports: Custom Report: part of columns are missing in Excel despite of they have different Column Name
[EVESSIO-12452] - [CAP]: Awards: Judging: Assign Categories to Judges: Error 500 (Internal Server Error) appears when user tries to assign category to judge
[EVESSIO-12454] - [Event Site]: Preference Form: Basket: User is not redirected to the post log-in page after submitting Preference form. Selected products are not displayed in Basket
[EVESSIO-12459] - [CAP]: Revenue: Transactions: List: Counter of Products for Test Transactions doesn't work
[EVESSIO-12460] - [CAP]: Event: Data: Custom Report: View: Data are multiplied by number of added fields of the same Source and Column Name