Specify 7.11.1 Global Testing

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Specify 7.11.1 Global Testing

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GBIF Citation: Bentley A, Osborn R (2025). Snow Entomological Museum Collection. University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute. Occurrence dataset Snow Entomological Museum Collection accessed via GBIF.org on 2025-07-24. Occurrence Detail 5139898369
Image Credit: Samanta Orellana, University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute

2025-08-01 - 2025-08-08

Specify Collection Consortium Members,

We would like to announce the beginning of the one-week Global Testing Period for the Specify 7.11.1 pre-release. The focus of this release is on: 1) adding capabilities requested by SCC members, 2) fixing bugs, and 3) updating components to improve performance and prepare for future enhancements.

We invite you to inspect 7.11.1’s new capabilities and review the release’s overall behavior by testing your important tasks and workflows. We recognize and highly-value your essential role in validating Specify for operational continuity as part of the release management process. Thank you in advance for your scrutiny.

Global Testing Goals:

The purpose of the Global Testing Period is to ensure continuity of function between software releases.

  1. Enhanced Software Quality: Your perspectives and responses elevate the quality and performance of Specify software.
  2. User Experience Improvements: Your feedback on new user interface components and behaviors directly improves user experiences for everyone in collections institutions around the globe.
  3. Collaborative Progress: Your engagement and forum postings about new features and changes made to Specify foments collaborative discussion and strengthens our consortium.

Major Accomplishments & Features

Specify 7.11.1 includes user-facing improvements and important back end software updates, including:

  • A Modernized Back End: We’ve updated Specify’s core technology stack to Python 3.11 and to the latest version of SQLAlchemy as part of an update to Ubuntu 24.04. This made Specify more secure and performant.
  • Further independence from Specify 6: In a major, longed-for milestone, data entry and interaction dialogs now use user settings directly within Specify 7, removing the dependency on legacy Specify 6 XML configurations. This streamlines the user experience and simplifies database administration.
  • Community-Driven Features: This release contains several SCC member requested features, including new date and precision fields for Accessions, support for catalog number ranges in Bulk Carry Forward, and new protective warning dialog to prevent accidental disruptions during Batch Edits.

Release Announcement

7.11.1 (August 2025)

Added

  • Adds new date and precision fields to the Accession form, including DateAccessioned, DateAcknowledged, DateReceived, Date1, and Date2, along with corresponding precision fields (#6645 - Requested by Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona, Ohio State University, Natural History Museum of Denmark, and Museum für Naturkunde Berlin)
  • Adds support for specifying a catalog number range during Bulk Carry Forward in Collection Objects (#6710 - Requested by KU Entomology and Louisiana State Arthropod Museum)
  • Adds a warning dialog before committing changes through Batch Edit to inform users about possible disruptions to other Specify users (#6599)

Changed

  • Changes data entry and interaction dialogs to use user settings instead of the legacy XML configuration, and removes the “Copy Specify 6 settings” option (#6587)
  • Changes confusing heading text in Batch Edit results to improve clarity for related record matches (#6573)
  • Disallows editing coordinate fields in Batch Edit to prevent data inconsistencies. A warning dialog is shown when restricted fields are included in a query (#6657)
  • Moves the “Show author in the tree” option to User Preferences for better individual control (#6842)
  • Upgrades Python to 3.11 and SQLAlchemy to 1.4.54 as part of the Ubuntu 24.04 update (#6667)

Fixed

  • Fixes an issue where GeoMap displayed duplicate markers when multiple collection objects shared the same locality (#6900 - Reported by Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and Natural Resources Canada)
  • Fixes an issue where loans were not automatically closed after all preparations were returned (#6442 - Reported by The University of Kansas)
  • Fixes an issue where query results returned 1 for Day and Month fields when the original date only included a year (#6475 - Reported by Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria)
  • Fixes an issue where new Determinations and Collectors were not automatically marked as current or primary on Collection Objects and Collecting Events (#6581 - Reported by Ohio State University Mollusks)
  • Fixes an issue where some Django migrations, including those for business rules, were not run by the Makefile (#6720 - Reported by University of Florida)
  • Fixes an issue where newly created records had an incorrect timestampCreated value set to midnight instead of the actual creation time (#6734 - Reported by Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria)
  • Fixes an issue where null version fields caused crashes by requiring all version fields to default to 0 (#6384 - Reported by Gothenburg Museum of Natural History)
  • Fixes an issue where picklists from non-hierarchical tables failed to load (#5044 - Reported by University of Michigan)
  • Fixes an issue where attachment URLs broke by defaulting to the database name instead of the collection name in single-collection databases (#7097 - Reported by California Academy of Sciences)
  • Fixes an issue where the catalog number field in the preparations dialog stayed red even after entering a valid number (#6487)
  • Fixes an issue where users could enter a negative preparation count and incorrectly see a loan-related error message (#6462)
  • Fixes an issue where numeric values exceeding the maximum limit were rounded instead of showing an error message (#6454)
  • Fixes an issue where required fields in Schema Config, such as Agent Type, appeared editable but were still enforced by the database (#6558)
  • Fixes an issue where the same preparation could be added multiple times to a gift, exceeding the available quantity (#6482)
  • Fixes an issue where editing preparation counts in a disposal interaction caused an error (#6479)
  • Fixes an issue where entering an invalid catalog number during loan or gift creation prevented users from selecting a record set (#6466)
  • Fixes an issue where links to specific tables in the Data Model page did not scroll to the correct section (#6461)
  • Fixes a spelling and description error in the Paleo Context table in Schema Config (#6460)
  • Fixes an issue where records opened from table formatters or aggregations were editable instead of read-only (#6483)
  • Fixes an issue where importing a query with geology fields into a non-geo collection caused an error (#6455)
  • Fixes an issue where tree rank titles were blank when the rank name was present but the title field was null (#6616)
  • Fixes an issue where Geologic Time Period records had start and end periods in the wrong order, causing inconsistencies in Chronostratigraphy data (#6434)
  • Fixes an issue where some queries failed to open due to incorrect relationship handling in the form (#4966)

The full changelog is available on GitHub.

For source code go to the GitHub Specify 7 repository

For more information about Specify 7, or about this release, see Specify 7 | Specify Collections Consortium, or email support@specifysoftware.org.

Share Feedback

[!warning] Please Report Any Issues
Please report any issues you may encounter directly to support@specifysoftware.org to be passed along to our development team!

Testing Specify

[!note] Specify Cloud :specify:
Specify Cloud users can contact us to discuss methods of evaluating on their instance. We can set up a test instance upon request!

For self-hosted users, these steps should be followed by an IT administrator.

Backup and Create a Testing Copy of Your MariaDB Database

Before proceeding with any update, it is crucial to back up your existing MariaDB database and create a testing copy. Do not use a pre-release version for your production data.

  1. Log into your MariaDB server:

    mysql -u your_username -p

  2. Create a backup of your existing database:
    Replace your_database with the name of your database and backup_file.sql with your desired backup file name.

    mysqldump -u your_username -p your_database > backup_file.sql

  3. Create a testing copy of the database:
    Replace your_database with the name of your original database and your_database_test with the name you want for the testing copy.

    CREATE DATABASE your_database_test;
USE your_database_test;
SOURCE backup_file.sql;

  4. Exit MariaDB:

    EXIT;

Deploying Pre-Release Specify

To evaluate the latest changes, you or your IT administrator will need to pull the Docker tag 7.11.1-prerelease for the specify7-service.

To help you get started, we’ve compiled comprehensive instructions for updating your Specify 7 instance. For a detailed guide on pulling the latest pre-release Docker image and configuring your environment, please refer to our new documentation:

This guide will walk you through the necessary steps for both single-instance and multi-instance (e.g., production and testing) deployments. If you have any questions about deployment, please don’t hesitate to contact us at support@specifysoftware.org.