HotDocs Advance Release Notes

About Release Notes

Because we update the various parts of HotDocs Advance independently, we provide the following:

HotDocs Advance Release Notes – the release notes for the web application you use to organize uploaded templates, launch interviews, and download assembled documents
HotDocs Core Assembly Service Release Notes – the release notes for the core service responsible for delivering the interview and for creating assembled documents
HotDocs Author Release Notes – the release notes for the HotDocs Advance template authoring tool

About HotDocs Advance Release Notes

These release notes refer specifically to the HotDocs Advance web application you use to organize uploaded templates, launch interviews, and download assembled documents. Because we make updates to the web application independently, we provide you with separate release notes found here.

Upgrading HotDocs Advance

For customers upgrading from versions 1.29 and lower, to version 1.30 and higher, HotDocs requires setting the UI URL in the HDA Api settings file.

When upgrading, use the following parameter to set the UI URL in the HDA Api settings file:

HdaInstaller.exe upgrade --setting UiUrl=https://{tenancy}.appDomain/UIApplicationPath

For example:

HdaInstaller.exe upgrade --setting UiUrl=https://{tenancy}.yourorganization.com/HdaUi

This setting is additional to any other flags or parameters used on upgrade.

See Upgrading Hotdocs Advance for more information.

New Features and Enhancements

The following HotDocs Advance incremental releases contain new features and enhancements:

1.39

New Features

Advance API version 2.0 is now available. This version supports work items using multiple templates.
- API 2.0 enables you to assign more than one template package to a work item. This can be useful if you have a set of templates that have a similar scope regarding the same matter.

Compatibility: Please note that API 1.1 and the Advance user interface can only access work items that have a single template, regardless of which API was used to create them. However, API 2.0 can create and access all work items.

Advance API versions 0.1 and 1.0 are obsolete and will be removed.

Feature enhancements

This release contains improvements to Single Sign-On.

1.38(28 July 2024)

New Features

An initial release of Advance API version 2.0 is now available. This version introduces support for work items using multiple templates.

1.37(4 June 2024)

Feature enhancements

This release contains various background improvements to HotDocs Advance.

1.36(8 April 2024)

Advance API versions 0.1 and 1.0 are deprecated. These API versions will be removed in a future release. You must upgrade any integrations that rely on these versions.

New Features

Root Administrators can now download a report with details of documents generated per month.

Feature enhancements

Site Administrators can now configure work groups to disable standard users' permission to edit default answers.
You can now set custom date ranges when generating the Document Assembly by User report.

1.35(11 January 2024)

New Features

Administrators can now download a template from Advance. Downloaded templates can then be imported into Author for editing.
Root Administrators can now enable and disable calls to the API.
The report of all tenancies now shows whether API access is enabled.

Feature enhancements

Improvements to the styling and accessibility of Advance, such as when creating and editing users.

1.34(2 October 2023)

New Features

You can now continue editing an interview which another user has saved and exited.
Site Administrators can now download a report with details of administrative user actions.

Feature enhancements

You can now abandon an interview from the interview page.
You can now add new documents during post-processing and optionally choose the order of assembled documents using the HotDocs API.
This release contains various background improvements to the security, stability and styling of HotDocs Advance.

1.33(7 August 2023)

New Features

Root Administrators can now generate a login link for a site which enables users to set a login password for the site.
Root Administrators can now download a report with details of root user activities.
You can now map an Azure AD group to the Root Administrator role.

Feature enhancements

Root Administrators can now update user roles when editing user details from the Advance root application.
You can now use a POST request with the Custom Interview Event webhook.

1.32(12 May 2023)

New Features

You can now watch work items to monitor the changes and updates that other users make to them.
You can now view watched work items only using the Show watched only checkbox.
You can now retrieve unanswered interview variables from an assembled document's metadata using the HotDocs API.

Feature enhancements

You can now optionally notify users with details of the work items you share with them. You can additionally add a custom message to the notification.

1.31(14 March 2023)

New Features

Integration Administrators can now control users' access to assembled documents and answer files on work items.

Feature enhancements

You can now view the version number of your Advance instance on the HotDocs Advance Swagger Documentation page.
You can now change the default time of post-processing on assembled documents by updating the configuration setting PostProcessingTimeout.
You can now view the number of assembled documents for each work item in the work items table under the column heading Documents.

Note: You must upgrade Advance to version 1.31 to edit the PostProcessingTimeout setting.

1.30(17 January 2023)

New Features

You can now use In-interview Action Links to give users access to external workflows from the interview.
You can now filter work items using work item statuses.
HotDocs Advance now uses a Pendo integration for metrics gathering. For further information and details of installation flags, see Metrics Gathering.

Feature enhancements

Integration Administrators can now manage Webhooks.

1.29(27 August 2022)

New Features

You can now save your assembled documents to your organization's instance of iManage.
You can now activate PostProcessing webhooks when a user completes an assembly for a specific template.

1.28(9 June 2022)

Feature enhancements

Action Links now use an HMAC to authenticate the data being sent from Advance. Webhooks now also use an optional HMAC authentication method.
You can now download all assembled documents in a work item with a single zip file.
To delete tenancies, you must now enter the tenancy name to confirm deletion.
You can now activate LoadInterviewEvent webhooks when a user loads an interview for a specific template.
The JSON response data from webhooks now has a maximum size of 200Kb.

1.27 (13 November 2021)

New Features

You can now use Template Links to enable users to open Advance and create a work item from an external source. For example, a knowledge base.
You can now use Load Interview Events to populate interviews with external answer data when a user loads an interview.
The Advance user interface style has been updated.
You can now use Action Links to give users access to external workflows from the work item details pane.
You can now use the Branding API to update the custom logo displayed in client interviews.

1.26 (3 August 2021)

New Features

You can now set a custom logo for your client interviews.
You can now create a public interview link to collect data from unknown external users.
A new API resource, publicInterviewLinks, is available to create and manage public interview links.

Feature enhancements

Installing Advance with restricted SQL access permissions is now documented.

1.25 (31 March 2021)

New Features

Advance now supports .Net Core 3.1.x hosting bundle.
A new webhook, the custom interview event, is available. You can use this to connect to external data sources during interview.

Improved keyboard accessibility.
Better programmatic announcement of dynamic screen changes.
Improved field labeling for screen readers.

1.24 (15 January 2021)

New Features

You can now add SMS code authentication to client interviews as an extra layer of security, using Azure Active Directory B2C.
The expiry time for a client interview link can now be customized.
Advance now provides API methods for adding images to work items.
Quick documents are now included in reports.

1.23 (9 October 2020)

New Features

You can now upload images to interviews for templates asking an Image variable.
You can now add a passphrase to client interviews as an extra layer of security.
A new report on document assembly activity by user is available to administrators.
A new report on template usage over time is available to administrators.
You can now filter work items by date and other fields.
You can now configure Single Sign-on using authorization code and PKCE, including for Salesforce.
Work items can now be shared either with all users of a work group or with specific members.

1.22 (30 July 2020)

New Features

You can now download documents for a previous version of a work item.
You can now overlay answers from other work items into your interview. A Site Administrator must enable this setting.
A new feature, a work group default answer set, allows you to create a set of common answers shared across a work group.
The Advance APIs now allow you to:
- retrieve metadata for a work item version.
- retrieve the answer set for a previous version of a work item.
Advance now saves interview answers more frequently to long term storage.
You can now download an answer file for a work item.
A new administrative function is available, Site settings; you use this to edit settings for your site, such as whether new work items are shared by default.
You can now generate a report on template usage within your site.
A new site usage summary is available to administrators.

1.14 (11 November 2019)

New Features

You can now set a tenancy to automatically approve all uploaded templates, making the new template version immediately available to users.
Advance now requires .NET Core version 2.1.1.

1.13 (22 August 2019)

New Features

When assigning access permissions for a work group, you can now use the Everyone user group to include all Advance users in the work group.
You can now send an invitation e-mail to a user (inviting them to log into their Advance tenancy) after the user is created.
You can now configure your tenancies to use Single Sign-on (SSO).
Advance now sends e-mails over SSL by default.
The Advance installer now includes settings for configuring the application pool used by Advance.
You can now filter the tenancy list in the root application.
Advance now defaults new work items to private.

1.12.19191 (15 July 2019)

New Features

When assigning access permissions for a work group, you can now use the Everyone user group to include all Advance users in the work group.
You can now send an invitation e-mail to a user (inviting them to log into their Advance tenancy) after the user is created.
You can now configure your tenancies to use Single Sign-on (SSO).

1.12.19162 (12 June 2019)

New Features

Advance now defaults new work items to private.

1.12 (25 April 2019)

New Features

When creating a new work item, you can now upload a HotDocs answer file to pre-populate interview answer data
You can now assemble documents using the Advance REST API
You can now view user roles and e-mail address data in the response from the user details REST API endpoint
You can now view the last logged in date in the response from the users REST API endpoint

1.7 (28 February 2019)

New Features

Work Items created using the API are now automatically populated with assembled documents
Root administrators can now view and edit tenancy users from the root application
You can now create, complete, delete, and save assembly sessions using the API.

1.1.5 (12 December 2018)

New Features

Core Assembly Service updated to support TLS 1.2

1.1 (26 October 2018)

New Features

Added Quick Documents feature; you can now assemble documents without answer data or documents persisting in HotDocs Advance.
Permissions for Site Administrators have changed; Site Administrators no longer have universal permissions.
You can now create private work items which are visible only to the owner and Site Administrators or Content Administrators.
Advance now supports Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2.
Work items created through an API are marked as "New".

1.0 (14 September 2018)

Initial release of HotDocs Advance