Video Walkthrough of Specify 7.7
New Feature Documentation
User Tools Menu
Security and Accounts
Single Sign On Support (SSO)
Dark Mode
Order Subviews by Field
New Query Builder
Create a Subset from a Record Set
Export a Record Set to CSV
Transcript (Auto-generated)
Today, I’m going to be showing you specify 7.7 the biggest
update we’ve ever made to specify.
We have this new beautiful login screen here.
That has this username password the language picker
and the logon button.
We now support single sign-on. So for institutions
and universities that have any identity
of Provider that supports open ID endpoints.
We now support it out of the box.
If you have any questions about configuring this or want to learn more about this, please visit
our discourse page.
Let’s go ahead and log in.
So we’re going to choose the voucher collection here.
And now you’re going to see the new specify 7 homepage.
This tax on tiles option is not enabled by default since
it can be quite heavy on systems that have lots
and lots of tax on information.
But it can be enabled in the new user preferences menu, which I’ll
be showing in just a moment.
Let’s start by going to the data entry form. So you can admire the beautiful
work that our team’s put into creating a consistent and
scalable user interface design.
as you can see
the fields now have more padding.
Are consistent in their design?
And they can be scaled and retain their
resolution.
On all kinds of different devices specify 7.7
is now largely web content accessibility guidelines
2.1 compliant. We offer accommodation for blindness low
vision deafness hearing loss limited movement
speech disabilities photosensitivity and a combination
of these it’s accessible on desktops laptops
tablets and mobile devices.
Can be entirely navigated with a keyboard.
And use with screen reader software and motion in
different contrast can be reduced or configured in
the user preferences. This is the most accessible release of
specify ever.
The beautiful forms and specify 7 are incredible
we could talk about this forever.
But there’s some more features I’d like to show off.
Specify 7 now supports dark mode. So when you’re entering
data at night, you can have it be a lot easier on your eyes.
Just because the colors are one way at the moment doesn’t mean
they cannot be configured later and the user preferences menu. You’re
actually able to configure exactly how your dark mode or your light
mode displays. You can choose the colors for the backgrounds and
the fields.
Let’s look at it with data actually inside of it.
So we’ll go to this record set created here.
Now you can see that it contains all of the information from the previous version of seven
except with a much more consistent.
and easy on the eyes design
and see picklists now.
Are more consistent and in line with what the fields appear like.
And when you start using and typing it into a query combo box.
You can now see highlighted exactly is defined in
your search Behavior, which I’ll show later.
and the query combo box results
now when you open up a form dialog you’ll be able
to see a box with an arrow leaving it this allows you to open.
That form in its own tab so you can view the
record by itself.
If this goes for everything a single item, so you have the collection object
relationships here. You can now open the catalog number.
The question object with this catalog number here.
View it in its own tab.
Now I’m going to go over records because there’s a lot of new features involved with them.
So first, we’ll click on the record sets item the
navigation menu and then we’ll open up this subset record set that
I’ve created here.
So you’ll see this new record set.
It has this as its title.
And you’ll notice some new buttons that weren’t previously available in 7.
First the green plus button which allows you to add records to
an existing record set.
We’ve had so many institutions in collections ask for this
feature, and we’re so happy to finally be able to implement it.
And not only can you search by catalog number here? You’re also
able to click on our new query Builder option and build a
query that allows you to add a record to the record set.
This is going to be a very simple one.
I’m just going to pick this record here.
and select
and now you’ll see we have 33 items inside of
this record set including the record that I just selected.
And now you’re able to remove items from a record set without deleting it from
your database.
You can click on this red minus symbol
and remove the record.
super handy
in the top right of every record set you’ll now see this
little pagenator here.
Which has these four buttons and a field
that allows you to type exactly which number inside of that record set.
You’d like to jump to
So we’ll jump to the first the last record and then
just page a couple over.
page back
and it’s super handy to be able to type.
A number here and jump directly to it within that record
set.
Now you’ll even see we now have clone and add another
as a default on most data entry forms.
Clone works just like a carry forward option where
it clones everything from the record and you can make slight modifications
as necessary before saving.
we’ll go ahead and
save that
we can even do add another which just creates a
new blank record and you’ll see creating new record
here at the top of the record set within that record set.
So they’ve gotten a whole lot more useful.
Not only are these features part of the new record set.
We also have a new option to query from within
the record set itself. So if you go to edit the record set you
can click on query.
in construct a query
Either construct a new one or choose one from the existing list
of queries. You’ve already created.
And create only from within the record set you’ve specified.
This makes it super easy to create a CSV another
subset record set or even browse them
in the forms view from within the record set.
Welcome back to this in a minute when I show off our new query Builder.
But I’ll show you here you’re able to actually browse
within that subset.
Define exactly the record that you’re looking for.
Does the new record set features we have?
Now, let’s move on to the query Builder.
I’m going to click on queries here.
And I’m going to select the default collection object query
in this database.
So you’ll see the query Builder looks a lot different than it
used to.
We now have leveraged the workbench mapper to be
used as part of the query building process.
Query building in 7.6.1 was a
little bit slow when it came to navigating and choosing exactly
what operators and Fields you’d like to have President on your query.
Now it’s super easy and you can even use
the base of an existing queries field to
build a following one.
Since you can see we have the determinations full name here present
in the query and now we can just click on that item and
then choose another field from within the table that
that’s being referenced in.
So we’ll choose remarks and we can add it and then it throws it
right at the bottom of our query.
And it needs to be reorganized just as before.
Made visible or invisible and you can change the Sorting preference.
We even have added the ability to do.
Or queries, so if it matches either of your
Fields question here.
If it either equals one thing or is empty.
You’ll now be able to see results appear for it. So we have some really helpful
things just like that we’ve introduced.
Here now even able to reveal the hidden form fields on the
table.
Which allow you to scroll down to this hidden Fields area and pick out
a field that is hidden in your schema or a relationship
field that allows you to navigate into each one of these tables.
The new query system is so exciting in robust.
You can save the query save as which creates a duplicate.
You can give it a new name.
And you can still do account a query and query only on distinct
items just as before.
So let’s run this query.
Now you’ll see we have 91,262 results.
We can still create a CSV a Google
Earth KML.
Create a record set of these 91,000 records
or browse them in a form View.
This is super handy for when you’re doing small queries where you need
to find an exact item.
So now we’re able to actually view every item in our query in
this beautiful form view in a dialogue that we
can quickly close or turn into a record set permanently.
This makes finding records so much easier.
And you can now select a subset with these checkboxes
here and deselect all as you
wish.
So now we can go into the new
tree interface.
So let’s go into our taxonomy tree.
And see here, we now have these beautiful transparency effects.
7.7 was not just about increasing the features. It
was also about making consistent and beautiful design.
You can see these beautiful transparency effects, which can be disabled in the
user preferences.
And you can see we can check out these in a form view right here and then
open it up in a new tab.
Where we can dig in further on our tax on records.
Now this goes for every tree. We have these new customized.
beautiful trees
that allow us to really dig in.
To any node. And then now we can even type
in this and find this new search behavior that
allows it to highlight just the segment that we’re referencing and show
all possible results.
So now we’ll be able to navigate right in there.
And even just create a query on the Fly of that specific
node and find all collection objects related to it.
So as you can see, the the trees mode now uses these
buttons to streamline the functionality of merging moving
and synonymizing items together.
You can even now edit the ranks.
And change the name and title.
of each rank in the trees
So the new beautiful tree interface is incredible and I
think you’re gonna love it.
The workbench now supports uploading and rolling back
data significantly faster and has greater support
for large data sets.
We’ve been able to import over 8 million cells in a single upload.
We’ve also improved search and cell navigation.
You’ll have to try out the new workbench yourself to see all the amazing improvements.
Now that we’ve gone over some of the major upgrades. I’d like to show off some
of the new features that we have in specify.
If you click on the username in the top, right you’re
going to see our new user tools menu.
Now this has been incredible to use the last few months
as we’ve been working on this update.
We now have these new subcategories here. The user account settings
customization administrative tools exporting documentation
and developer resources.
So first we’ll go over the user accounts references here
which come down to changing the current logged in
users password.
And logging the current user out of its collection.
Some of the most exciting options I can show you are the user preferences menu
in the schema configurator.
I’ll get into these here. The user preferences are stored
on the browser locally, and these can be configured just
for the user itself. Not for the entire database.
If you’re a database administrator and would like to set defaults for
these user preferences that can be established as well.
Then we have the semic configurator tool which is very much
like the one in specifies six, which allows you to change the field labels
descriptions and make them hidden required
and change the value and formatters of the fields.
The administrative tools allow you to generate a master key for
remotely accessing specify 7.
Repair the trees and seven.
View your app resources, which is your you know your app resources
and view resources.
the security and accounts panel, which is all new and allows
you to configure the granular Security Options that we offer
and specify
Create a Darwin core archive, which you have to use with a metadata
and schema mapping definition.
This is pretty Advanced. So if you have questions about this, you can check out my documentation on
the specified discourse website.
manually update your RSS feed
And under documentation here. We’ve got the about specify 7Up
menu, which is the same menu that appears when you click
on the specify seven icon on the homepage. It shows you your schema
version information about the database information about
your version of six and seven and more.
The community Forum which brings you to the discourse page which includes documentation on
all the tools in this user menu as well as all the new
features and specify 7.7.
the technical docs which brings you to the GitHub Wiki
and then we’ve got our developer resources here.
Which allow you to clear your browser’s catch?
Check out the database schema, which I’ll be showing later.
and viewing the operations API and the tables API
So I’m going to work through the new features that we have in the user tools
menu. We’re going to start with the user preferences.
I’ve mentioned this a lot so far this video and that’s because it’s super
important to configure all of the options in seven.
So we’re going to go through the major topics here. So we have the general homepage
top level menu forms collection Choice
tree editor query Builder reports workbench
and geomap.
You can click on any of these and then jump directly to the
subheading.
That you need to reference when you’re customizing your
settings.
So with General first, you’ll be able to change your language, which is
super awesome. And if you want to help localize 7, we would
really appreciate it.
Can click right here and send us an email but by default
we have English and Russian.
For the theme you can choose your light mode
or dark mode.
You can reduce motion and transparency these currently
copy the operating system setting.
You can change your font size scale the interface and even choose
a font from your system.
Which these are all the local fonts on your machine.
That make it the easiest to work with and enter data.
You can change the background to specify when loading the background
during the dark mode.
And even the accent color which changes these accents and
buttons all over the system. You can
even disable the rounded Corners if you’d like.
You can figure error messages can be dismissed how dialogues
appear and different behaviors.
Here you can configure the home page and how I have the tax on tiles appear by
default. We have to specify logo. You can even use
a custom image and you can put a URL to it right here.
We can figure which items appear on
this top level menu.
You can change the schema configuration language here. So this
allows you to change how the field captions usage nodes
and table captions appear in the database. So if you have English users
and users that speak Portuguese, you’re able
to configure the languages to show the proper language for each.
You can change the behavior of the forms Auto numbering titles and
how they format and dynamically resize for
devices.
You can change the user interface scaling fonts form
widths and even the field backgrounds down
to the color of each invalid field disabled or
regular field as well as their Dark theme counterparts.
You can change the appearance here of the actual form itself so you can
change the foreground to make it.
Red, or we’ll keep that white.
And you can do the same for the Dark theme here and this background applies
to the background behind the form.
Then you can even change your query combo box search settings here.
The query combo box has had a huge update. It made it very easy
and usable to be able to search for things and that goes
for the search on the trees and the search of the forms.
You can configure whether the record said opens by the first record the last
record.
Whether you’re prompted to choose a collection every time.
And you can even change the tree colors here so you can change the accent color that
appears behind the tree when you view them.
You can enable the no restrictions mode. The query Builder that allows you to query on
any field in any table.
other behavior and appearance settings
Reports you can configure some basic workbench things
about the movement of the selector how many
blank rows will be at the bottom of your worksheet?
And even the data mapper when you import data how it behaves.
The Geo map function allows you to choose Its Behavior as well
down here. So we have all these really amazing preferences available in
7.7 and they can all be reset to
system defaults by clicking the reset button at the top of each category.
So the system preferences are so amazing being able to
configure. These preferences per user is super handy in the
last specified to be extremely accessible and useful for
people that have different needs and usage requirements.
So now we’ve got the schema configurators the next tool to be
looking at.
We can choose the language of the schema configuration. So when
we saw that language selector and the user preferences, this is
what it was referring to so we can have field labels
that are localized for people in Ukraine and field
labels that are localized for United States
English.
So we now we have the selection of every table possible in the
database and we can even go into the advanced tables and see every single
one available.
But all of the major tables that you need to mess with the schema configurator
is available in this first list here.
So let’s go to work on the collection object table.
Now we’ll be able to see under this mail section here
every field within the table as well as every relationship
field that connects to a different table.
To start we’ll look at the fields here. We’re going
to have on the left the caption of the entire table the description
of the entire table and the table format and aggregation
which we can choose from the list here.
We can hide that entire table or in this
case. This is the collection object. We’re going to leave that alone.
We can modify any of the fields from within the table.
And change their formatting whether they’re a web link
a pick list.
or the description and caption
You can see some really handy information like the length and the
type of field. So when you’re trying to use a new field for
a purpose, you haven’t used it for before you’re able to reference it
and make sure that the data you’re entering is compatible and that the
description aligns with what you’re trying to accomplish.
Let’s go to the text one field so I can show you.
You’ll be able to choose a pick list.
And even edit and create new items or new
picklist entirely.
It’s really handy to be able to unhide and hide
Fields easily from the user interface and 7 and you can even make it
required for that table before the data can be saved.
now that we’ve unhidden phenology here we can
save
and now
specifiable automatically clear our cache to make sure that the changes are
applied instantly. It’s super handy. So now
when I go back to the data entry form, I’ll be able to see the changes. I
made reflected immediately.
After saving we get to see the new table selector here again. So now
I can navigate to the next table that I’d like to modify.
Now in this case of I don’t have any need to change anything. I can
just click cancel.
And now I’m back at the home page.
And now when I go back to the question object form, I’ll see
my changes reflected immediately. So it’s super handy
to be able to use that feature.
In one last thing before I move on.
I’ll show you back on this table the fields and
relationships are separated in a way that makes it very clear. So
every table field is going to be listed in
this first list. And then once you get below to the relationships field
here, this will show all of those it’ll even
show the type of relationship and the table that the relationship
is with.
So there’s lots to learn about the schema configurator and I’ve made
documentation on that on our discourse page. So you can learn more now. I’m
going to introduce to you the security and accounts panel.
It’s an extremely complex and very recent Edition to specify seven.
It’s available in the user tools menu. So we’ll
navigate to that here.
And now you’ll see on the left side of this panel. We have a section
that are the institution and then a section that contains all
of the collection under that Institution.
First we’ll check out the institution.
From here, you can create a roll template which a
role is a collection of policies that can be assigned to users.
That can be used under any regular collection to
assign a group of policies.
Due to the complexity of this concept. I’m going to be making another webinar
on that topic next week.
You’ll see that we also have these user accounts to find under the
institution and this includes every single user that’s present
in the institution.
This is where you’ll be able to create new users and assign
them passwords agents collection access.
If you’d like to assign them individual roles, you’ll have to go under
these collections.
So first, I’ll show you what an example role template
looks like or what a role could be.
We’ll check out the Run queries role.
Please note. You cannot assign a role to a
user under the institution, but you can grant individual
users institution level policies that apply
to every collection.
So first, we’ll look at this role here. The Run queries role.
This is going to act as a template for roles under the
collections.
This role grants these following policies.
The access to the query Builder the ability to query
execute export and create record sets
from queries.
The access to all tables the ability
to read every single table.
The access to the tool of the query Builder the ability
to read create update and delete query Builder items and
the ability to recreate update and delete record set
items.
And you can click on ADD here and then choose from one
of these permissions here.
So we could Now Grant this person the ability to execute reports if
so chosen.
And you can also remove this role close it
or export it as a Json file to be imported in
other places.
in other databases
for now, we’ll ignore these roles and we’ll check out what user accounts
can be configured at under the institution level.
So under this demo user here.
This user has been given.
admin
permissions to modify all users to create
update and read
They’ve been granted collection access to the fish observation collection.
Their agent is just Zach.
And then you can assign a collection admin role.
Or read only role under the institution level.
Those are the only roles that can be assigned that an institution level here.
You could even see the collection level policies that apply to
only this collection and the only thing you’ll see here is
the ability to access a collection at all.
You can even see the user’s permissions that are read-only here
and click on these to find out where they’ve received the policy that
allowed them to access the said tables read
to create update or delete function.
Let’s go to the observation collection and see.
So we have the guest user here this user
under the collection. That’s read only Legacy. That’s the
role that’s assigned to it.
You’ll see under the observation collection. We only have two user roles.
Rather than being templates. These are actually roles
that exist in the collection itself.
And if we wanted to pull a template that we got from the
institution level we can create.
And then choose one of the role Library templates that
we had under the institution level to create under
the observation collection.
so from here we can create a
security admin account
here
Which gives full security settings within a collection?
We can save this and now we have a security admin role
under the KU fish observation collection.
So just to reiterate.
Under the institution level. We have a template library
of roles.
And under the observation Library here. We just have it actual
set of user roles that can be applied to users that exist within
the observation collection.
And these accounts have just been assigned to the collection, but they continue to
exist under the institution.
So there’s some really really awesome features. You can really fine-tune your
permission system on here and choose every single policy one
by one and pick exactly the kind of preference and security you’d
like to establish at your database.
You can create a role that gives all access for instance if
we go to.
Our admin account here. We can just check institution
app and get all policies to everything in the entire database
to a user and forget about it or we
go through and carefully select and add just
the permissions that we see fit.
And wish to allow for that user.
We can have users that can only export users that
can only read and run queries, but cannot delete or
create.
You’re allowed a huge amount of granularity and options
when you’re using a security and accounts panel.
So there’s a ton to learn.
We have the ability to change user passwords create invite links
with we’re using single sign-on.
And reassign and check out all of these permissions here.
We have some really super handy features.
And you can see the access to tools for each user.
As well as change the specify 6 permissions and you’re
able to create an admin remove an admin or even change the
user group that they have in six.
As you can see the security and accounts panel adds a
ton of options for database managers that are looking to restrict access to
certain functions for specific users.
It allows a ton of customizability and granularity and
configuring your security preferences.
You’re able to assign multiple roles to a single user which is
super handy. If you’d like to create a few subset of
permissions and then assign them to users across the collection.
Roles being able to be imported between Collections and from
the role library is super handy.
Now we’re going to show you database schema viewer
in 7.
You’re able to see the names of all the different tables. They’re labels.
The system whether they’re a system table, whether they’re
hidden their table ID field count and relationship count.
So this is going to be really helpful if you’re using the schema configuration tool. So you
understand exactly which ones are system what the
relationships are and what fields are inside of them.
So we’ll go to the collection object table first.
You can click on that.
And then you’ll see just like in the schema configurator the fields and
the relationships are separated.
You can see all the fields that exist from within that table and
all the relationships.
The really cool thing about this is that you’re able to click on the relationship Fields
here and jump into the related model.
So as you see we were in The Collection object here.
The related model here is going to be accession and
you can even view the database column the type
of relationship whether it’s hidden read only
required and even the other side name so
you can see the relationship from the accession table is
collection objects.
And whether the relationship is a dependent one or not.
You’re even able to see the type. So whether it’s a byte string
integer calendar float.
The like and the database column as well in the base table.
So there’s a lot of really useful features here if you’re looking to view and
manage your schema.
You can even download it as a Json file or as a tsv so
you can view it in external viewer.
If you need to visualize or get a better idea or search within the
table itself.
There’s some really awesome features built into this. So this
is really helpful for troubleshooting or understanding better
how the data model Works in specify.
7.7 is a ton of under the hood improvements that I didn’t even
have time to Showcase in this video. There’s a huge amount of new features
and feature requests that we’ve answered and been
able to implement this update. You can view the entire release
notes on our discourse page where you can read all of the new features and
options that we’ve addressed we can go to the GitHub page
here. If you all of the Milestones that we’ve opened and
close.
It’s really incredible to be able to go through this list and see how
much progress we’ve made in just a few short months.
Specify 7.7 is truly an incredible update and
we can’t wait to hear your feedback on it.
Thank you so much for watching.