Collaborator Release Notifications

Welcome to Collaborator v13.0!

Collaborator 13.0 is the latest release from SmartBear Software’s dev collaboration team. This new version enhances add multiple checklists per review as well as improves document conversion performance and the time it takes to load review information.

 

We try not to increment the Major build number very often.  However, it was necessary this time because backwards compatibility with the Eclipse plugin could not be maintained with the addition of the multiple Checklists feature.  Had it not been for the Eclipse plugin, this would have been a 12.x release.

 

Multiple Checklists

It is now possible to tie multiple Checklists to a singe Template and to have multiple Checklists displayed during the review process.  This allows unique Checklists to be displayed for different file types or for different disciplines to checkoff. 

Checklists

 

Improved Participant State Information

A new ‘Approved by workflow’ participant state has replaced ‘Active’ or ‘Waiting’ in scenarios where a review has been completed but the participant wasn’t required to send the review to ‘Completed’.  This can happen for non-approving roles such as the Observer role.

 

Performance Improvements

Collaborator 13.0 introduces many improvements for performance related to document conversion and processing.  These improvements will speed up conversion as well as improve user experience by providing status information within the UI.  For the specific details, please read the 13.0 version history information.

 

To learn more about Collaborator 13.0, please check out the links below.

 

Download the latest release of Collaborator.

You can view the full list of fixes and improvements here.

 

If you have any questions about licensing, please contact sales. If you have any technical support questions, please contact SmartBear Support.

Best Wishes,
Justin Collier & The SmartBear Team

Collaborator v12.5 and v13.0

Collaborator 12.5.12503 and 13.0.13002 are now available.  These releases are focused on incremental improvements. 

 

To learn more about these Collaborator releases, please check out the links below.

 

Download the latest release of Collaborator.

You can view the full list of fixes and improvements here.

 

If you have any questions about licensing, please contact sales. If you have any technical support questions, please contact SmartBear Support.

Best Wishes,
Justin Collier & The SmartBear Team

Welcome to Collaborator v13.1!

Collaborator 13.1 is the latest release from the dev collaboration team at SmartBear. This new version primarily focuses on improved performance.  There are also a few other helpful enhancements that are worth checking out – the ability to edit/delete comments and split chat messages, to name a few.

 

Edit/Delete Comments

End users have always been able to redact comments in Collaborator.  However, there has never been a way to edit or delete a comment.  Collaborator 13.1 now supports editing and deleting.  It is important to note that this feature will need to be enabled by an administrator.  This ensures that those organizations that need an unmodified record can continue to operate has they always have and those organizations that want more flexibility can have it by enabling this new feature.

Edit/Delete Comments

 

Document Conversion Speeds

Documents for newly created reviews will now be converted more quickly.  As an end user you will be able to immediately see the files in the diff viewer and see the conversion counter increment as the file is processed.  Our team tested against 33 sample files and the average processing time is now 2x faster than previous versions of Collaborator.

 

Database Query Reductions

Improvements were realized by caching metadata that allowed for the decrease in queries to the database.  The reduction in queries will improve overall Collaborator server performance.

 

 

Document Conversion Information

Prior to Collaborator 13, if a page in the document could not be converted, Collaborator would indicate the there was a problem with the entire document.  Now, if there is an issue, just the page that fails to convert will show an error in the diff viewer and the rest of the document will be processed.  Please note that the failed page my impact Collaborator’s ability to accurately diff the document.

 

Split Chat Messages

On the Review Summary screen, Collaborator displayed all chat messages as part of a single thread.  This meant that both user and system messages were combined in one long discourse.  Now, chat messages are broken out into three tabs.  This allows users to focus on the types of messages they are most interested in.

 

 

 

To learn more about Collaborator 13.1, please check out the links below.

 

Download the latest release of Collaborator.

You can view the full list of fixes and improvements here.

 

If you have any questions about licensing, please contact sales. If you have any technical support questions, please contact SmartBear Support.

Best Wishes,
Justin Collier & The SmartBear Team

Welcome to Collaborator v13.2!

Collaborator 13.2 is the latest release from the dev collaboration team at SmartBear. This new version includes some UI modifications as well as performance improvements and Microsoft Office plugins.

 

Configurable Home Screen

As a user you can now modify the fields that are displayed on the Collaborator Home screen.  You have the ability to include Review Custom Fields as well as other predefined Collaborator fields, such as your Role, the review Phase or Last Activity.

 

 

 

Improved Performance

With Collaborator 13.2 we have improved file retrieving times for Collaborator’s pull request integrations with Azure DevOps, GitHub, Bitbucket and GitLab.  In addition to improving performance for pull requests, there has also been an improvement for document review page load times inside the Diff Viewer.

 

Microsoft Plugins

The Collaborator plugin for Microsoft Word, PowerPoint or Excel makes it easy to create or update reviews with just a few clicks.  When using the plugin, there is no need to save the file and upload it manually to Collaborator.

Download plugins

 

 

 

Modified Mark Fixed, Edit and Delete Process

Previous versions of Collaborator forced users to expand the defect details in order for it to be Marked Fixed, Edited or Deleted.  Now, these options are available on the Defect toolbar.  This change will make it easier and quicker for users to modify the defects current settings.

 

 

 

To learn more about Collaborator 13.2, please check out the links below.

Download the latest release of Collaborator.

 

You can view the full list of fixes and improvements here.

 

If you have any questions about licensing, please contact sales. If you have any technical support questions, please contact SmartBear Support.

Best Wishes,
Justin Collier & The SmartBear Team

Welcome to Collaborator v13.3!

Collaborator 13.3 is the latest release from the dev collaboration team at SmartBear. This new version includes improvements to document review, our Azure DevOps integration and allows end-users to add new repositories to the managed repository lists for GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket and Azure DevOps.

 

Improved Document Scrolling

We continue to focus on improving document review performance.  In this release, we have introduced page caching to improve the loads times as users transition from one page to the next.  The cache now contains the current, previous and next pages.  Reading through the document and going to the next page will feel more natural.

 

Assign Multiple Reviewers

With Collaborator 13.3, review Authors can now quickly select and assign multiple people to specific participant roles.  This improvement will reduce review setup time for Author’s and allows reviews to be configured more easily.

 

Azure DevOps Reviewers

Many teams like to assign reviewers in Azure DevOps to a pull request.  Collaborator now adds reviewers associated with the pull request directly to the Collaborator review.  This allows reviews to be created and assigned more quickly and with less effort by the Author.

 

Allow Users to Add New Repositories

Prior to Collaborator 13.3, administrators had to add all new repositories to Collaborator.  Administrators can now provide access to individual users to access the remote system configurations.  This allows individual users the ability to add new repositories to be monitored by Collaborator.

 

To learn more about Collaborator 13.3, please check out the links below.

 

Download the latest release of Collaborator.

You can view the full list of fixes and improvements here.

 

If you have any questions about licensing, please contact sales. If you have any technical support questions, please contact SmartBear Support.

Best Wishes,
Justin Collier & The SmartBear Team

Welcome to Collaborator v13.4!

Collaborator 13.4 is the latest release from the dev collaboration team at SmartBear. This new version has many great usability improvements including in-app notifications, user @mentions, version info in comments, and a collapsible chat panel in the diff viewer.

 

In-app Notifications

The Collaborator toolbar now features a notification icon to inform users if they have been mentioned in a comment or if new repositories have been added to one of the tracked remote repository servers.

 

 

@Mentions

It is now possible @mention another Collaborator user while creating a comment or defect. This makes it easy to notify them via email as well as through the in-app notification feature that a comment has been left for them on a review.

 

 

Comment Version Info

In Collaborator 13.4, version information is now added next to the date/time stamp.  This makes it easy to identify and select the version that a comment or defect is associated with as users are reading comments.

 

 

Collapsible Chat Panel

Users now have the ability to individually collapse the Header or Chat panel in the diff viewer.  Additionally, there is a new ‘Focus’ icon in the upper right-hand corner of the diff viewer that allows both panels to be collapsed simultaneously.  The new collapse features make it easier to focus the entire browser window on the actual file diff.

 

To learn more about Collaborator 13.4, please check out the links below.

 

Download the latest release of Collaborator.

You can view the full list of fixes and improvements here.

 

If you have any questions about licensing, please contact sales. If you have any technical support questions, please contact SmartBear Support.

Best Wishes,
Justin Collier & The SmartBear Team

Welcome to Collaborator v13.5!

Collaborator v13.5 is here; the latest release from the dev collaboration team at SmartBear! This new version improves the document review user experience and adds support for GitLab Pipelines.

 

Different File Names are the Same Document

It is now possible to associate a differently named file with a file that is already under review in Collaborator.  For example, if you uploaded and reviewed myfile_v1.doc and now you want to upload the latest version myfile_v2.doc to Collaborator, previous versions of Collaborator would see this as two separate files.  With Collaborator v13.5, users can now upload a new version to an existing version.

Different File Names

 

GitLab Pipelines

Collaborator now supports GitLab’s merge request pipelines out of the box with version 13.5.

GitLab Pipelines for Merge Requests

 

 

To learn more about Collaborator 13.5, please check out the links below.

 

Download the latest release of Collaborator.

 

You can view the full list of fixes and improvements here.

 

If you have any questions about licensing, please contact sales. If you have any technical support questions, please contact SmartBear Support.

Best Wishes,
Justin Collier & The SmartBear Team