Question

Will Web Access 11 have automated folder content refresh?

Web Client

Updated August 29, 2016

asked on August 24, 2016

We've been using Web Access more and more in our projects. However, one major sticking point that keeps coming up over and over (both in demos for prospective clients, and existing projects) is the need to manually refresh the page to see if any of the folder contents have changed. Users find this very disruptive, since the only way to find out if a workflow has kicked off after they do something is to press F5.

I wanted to check to see if Web Access 11 will have automated folder refresh. We aren't talking about a "folder contents have changed - click here to refresh" button like Justin Pava talked about here. What we mean is the feature as it exists in the desktop client.

If Web Access 11 won't contain this feature, we'll go ahead and implement it ourselves by customizing the WA front-end with some supplemental back-end technologies (yes, it is THAT big of a deal for us). But I wanted to check with Laserfiche development team first before we undertake that project.

1 0

Answer

SELECTED ANSWER

replied on August 25, 2016

Ok, we will look into expanding the feature to support full auto-refresh in 11. I added a task to investigate it further.

1 0

Replies

replied on August 25, 2016

We are working on a refresh notification like in Justin's post, but we don't plan on adding the full auto-refresh because users find it jarring.

0 0

replied on August 25, 2016 • Show version history

I am interested in how you guys reached the conclusion that users find auto refresh jarring. That's quite literally the exact opposite of what our users say. Not just internally in our Rio environment but also the users of our customers.

Besides, why not implement it and add an option to turn it off, like in the client?

Lack of auto refresh is a major regression as far as we're concerned.

0 0

SELECTED ANSWER

replied on August 25, 2016

Ok, we will look into expanding the feature to support full auto-refresh in 11. I added a task to investigate it further.

1 0

replied on August 25, 2016 • Show version history

Thanks Robbie!

In the meantime, we started using the WA API.

First, we created a custom WA action that does the following:

webAccessApi.refreshFolderTree(); 
webAccessApi.refreshContentsPane(); 
webAccessApi.refreshMetadata();

We put it on the toolbar without issues. It's kind of hidden there though (I couldn't find a way to change the icon or make it more prominent), and takes a few clicks to get to, so I tried to find a way to hook it up to a keyboard shortcut. When I couldn't find one, I ended up doing this...

Edited C:\Program Files\Laserfiche\Web Access\Web Files\browse.aspx and added this at the bottom inside the last <script> tag:

function dockeyUp(e) {
    if (e.keyCode == 192) {
        webAccessApi.refreshFolderTree(); 
        webAccessApi.refreshContentsPane(); 
        webAccessApi.refreshMetadata(); 
    }
}
document.addEventListener('keyup', dockeyUp, false);

Essentially, this hooks up the ` key on the keyboard to those three functions. Much easier to trigger for users! (I can't get the template colors on the folder tree to refresh though... bug?)

I did notice this while poking around:

Which is interesting... are those options implemented? If there's an out-of-the-box way to turn on refresh via polling, we'd be willing to consider it. (I guess I could always hook up those WA API functions to an interval..)

0 0

replied on August 29, 2016

I tried your code on WA 10.1, it reloads the template color correctly. Maybe this is a bug that is fixed in the upcoming update. That option in browse.aspx is a leftover from the old feature, it isn't used in WA 10. The next 10.1 update will have a refresh button to do what your custom code does.

1 0

You are not allowed to follow up in this post.

Question

Question

Will Web Access 11 have automated folder content refresh?

Answer

Replies

Sign in to reply to this post.