ShortPoint Snapshot – September 2020

Dear ShortPoint Community,

In the first month of autumn we have two big announcements for you. Both speak for themselves: Lockdown Release and ShortPoint for Teams.

ShortPoint SPFx Lockdown release will bring you better performance, faster connections, and a more user-friendly and minimalist approach to the color palette. With version 7.0.2.39 you can expect a revamped ThemeBuilder with menus, header and Command Bar customization for modern SharePoint sites. We also came up with a solution to the image cropping problem in Page Builder elements and other long-waited improvements.

Other big news is we launched our app for Microsoft Teams! You can now build Teams tabs just like SharePoint pages. We’ve got some special demo pages for Teams, as well as an intro video to get you started.

I hope you love these new experiences that our team has brought to you this September.

Take care!

Kindest Regards,
Oksana Aloshyna
Customer Support & Success Manager

ShortPoint SPFx Lockdown Release

Backstory on why we called this release Lockdown – because, at some point, we felt like we needed to stop adding new features and improve what we already have. So, ShortPoint SPFx Lockdown is all about optimizing performance and solving problems. The Lockdown release will work on both Office 365 (SharePoint Online) and SharePoint 2019 environments.

 

Performance Improvements

  • Faster connection to the SharePoint lists that have user or publishing columns.
  • Connecting to SharePoint list has become much faster after eliminating calls to get view fields and view query on each page refresh.
  • Switching between view and design mode in modern SharePoint page is much quicker.
  • Connecting the SharePoint Events is very fast now.

 

Redefined Theme Builder

Here are some of the top innovations we have implemented for Theme Builder:

  • Header Customizations for Modern Sites
  • Command Bar Customizations for Modern Sites
  • Menus Customizations for Modern Sites
  • Live Preview
  • Responsive Preview for Tablets and Phones
  • Movable, Resizable, and Collapsible Theme Builder Window
  • Automated Custom CSS Validity Feedback
  • Re-Organized Theme Builder Colors for Better UX

For detailed information you are welcome to read this article.

 

Preventing Image Cropping

This was one of the top requested features to implement, and now we are proud to say that the image cropping problem is fully solved. Please enjoy the new anti-cropping settings in Slideshows, Tiles, Image Carousels, Image Titles, and Image Lists.

 

SmartCache+

With the Lockdown release, we are introducing the new SmartCache+ feature for ShortPoint connections. This feature will show cached data each time you refresh your page and replace old data with fresh data silently.

 

Shimmer Preloader

A more modern and elegant way to load the elements on your page. You will no longer see annoying spinning wheels scattered across the pages.


ShortPoint For Microsoft Teams

Finally, we have released ShortPoint for Microsoft Teams.
Watch this video tutorial to see how to build beautiful and engaging Teams tabs and conveniently present the information you already have in Teams..

Here are some useful resources to get you started:

We just started with tutorials, here are two simple ones to get you started – and we will be adding much more soon!

The Faces of ShortPoint

Meet Kyrylo, Our Customer Support Expert 

 

Kyrylo was the second person to join our Support Team, and since 2018, he continues to bring amazing experiences to ShortPoint customers on support meetings, via chat and support tickets. Kyrylo lives in Lviv, Ukraine. He is passionate about travelling and collects tourist maps of all places he visits. Kyrylo loves learning languages and can speak 6 of them! In the beginning of the year Kyrylo’s family welcomed their beautiful little daughter, Eva.

Coming Soon: ShortPoint Silent Upgrade

Imagine you will never take care of manual upgrades of ShortPoint in your environment.
Very soon, you will be able to update ShortPoint from a single location instantly, and push the update to all sites.

And if you’re worried something might go wrong, test the new versions in a sandbox environment to make sure that all sites will work perfectly with the new version before you upgrade.

We’re about to announce a revolutionized approach to ShortPoint Upgrades. Stay tuned for the October newsletter!

Monthly Visual Builder Update

Visual Builder is entering its final stage of development and this month, we will focus on testing.
To keep you excited, we have prepared a series of blog posts dedicated to the features of Visual Builder, and we will be publishing them all October long.

Please check the ShortPoint Blog to check the first feature, EasyPass experience, in the first week of October.

We Love Your Feedback

So many exciting things are coming your way. This Autumn season promises to be fruitful for features, tips and tricks, videos, and so much more.

If you’d like to tell us something about our product, our ideas, this newsletter, or how you feel about ShortPoint, you’re most welcome! We love hearing from you.

See you next month, ShortPoint hero!