We’re about to release RSpace version 1.57 and will be updating all our customer servers over the next few days. Most of these improvements have been driven by user-feedback, so please keep telling us how you want RSpace improved!

The main enhancement this release is to Export. All exports to HTML and XML now generate an export report listing what was exported, and any problems that prevented items being exported.  This report is linked from the ‘export-complete’ notification:

The report page lists what was included:

If you are an Enterprise customer using external file-systems, it is also now possible to included linked files from these filesystems in the export. This means that your XML and HTML exports can truly represent a complete snapshot of your work – great for long-term archiving of a project, or deposit to a repository.

Selecting the checkbox ‘Include filestore links’:

opens a configuration dialog. Here, you can configure size limits for file inclusion, exclude certain file types, and perform a scan to see what files will be included. The scan will also check if there is likely to be enough storage space to generate the archive.

Two other notable improvements:

Firstly, we’ve fixed the long-running issue where drag-and-dropping files into the Gallery put files always in the top-level folder, even if you had browsed to another folder. Files will now appear in the current folder.

Secondly, we’re making some usability improvements to forms. The My RSpace -> Forms listing will now show just your own forms, with an option to show all forms.

You can also search forms by the username of the creator:

Two more Forms improvements which have been suggested – being able to hide forms, and to organise forms in folders – didn’t quite make it into 1.57,  but at least one of these should be in 1.58 in April.

We regularly  receive bug reports where the underlying reason was that the user’s browser was Microsoft IE or Edge. We support Firefox, Safari and Chrome, but Microsoft browsers do have some incompatibilities with RSpace. For this reason, RSpace does not support Microsoft browsers. Hopefully, Microsoft’s decision to rebuild Edge using Chromium engine will result in a more compatible browser in future.

For our Community users, two improvements in group management. Firstly, you can now remove yourself from a group without having to ask your PI or admin to remove  you.

Secondly, we’ve redesigned the ‘Create Group’ workflow into a series of short steps, which hopefully will be  easier to follow and help you make the right choices for your group.

Finally, we’ve added back the ‘Anchor’ feature in the editor where you can make internal links to headers within a document – very useful if you have a long document.

To use the anchor tag:

• Select some text where you want your anchor inserted (i.e. a point in the text that you want to link to).
• From the top menu – Insert > Anchor.
• Give the anchor an ID/name of whatever you wish and click ‘OK’.
• Go to a piece of text and highlight it.
• Click on ‘Insert   -> external link‘ or Command/Ctrl K shortcut
• Click on ‘Anchors’ and the ID just created should be selectable.
• Select it and hit ‘OK’. Now, when clicking on the hyperlink you should be taken directly to your anchor point.

Thanks for reading this and of course we look forward to hearing your feedback on these and any other issues.