4minitz Versions Save

Version 1.5.2 has a fixed database migration-23 and an additional database migration-24 that repairs what v1.5.0 migration-23 did wrong.

For details see #437

Hotfix to prevent Migration#23 (details see #437) to corrupt infoItems in minutes

The 4Minitz team proudly announces 4Minitz v1.5

After our first public 1.0 release six month ago we got quite some feedback from small and large companies that introduced 4Minitz. Where applicable we implemented some of their valuable feedback (especially LDAP usage and Docker deployment). Additionally we could realize some shiny new features. Happy Minuteing! ;-)

Important!! >>> With Issue #433 we fixed a possible data leak. So, please update!!! <<<

Some 1.5 Stats? Here you go: 6 month in the making, 8 contributors, >400 hours of work, 15 shiny new features realized, >60 issues solved, >400 commits, >200 files changed, >6000 lines of code added to project.

Dear users, if you now feel like you want to say "Thank you" to our contributors, feel free to add a New "Thank You" issue and ★Star★ our github project, if not yet done so. Also you may tell your business colleagues from other companies to try out 4Minitz. Then, please report problems and improvement ideas in our github issue tracker. And last but not least: if you are familar with JS/HTML/CSS and want to join, feel free to get in contact with us - we will find a great starting point for you! Thank you! ;-)

By the way: 4Minitz 1.0 has been downloaded and used in these 30 countries: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, El Salvador, France, Germany, India, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, Mauritius, Netherlands, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam, Zimbabwe

Then, one last sentence to our admin users: We really appreciate your feedback and your patience in discussing improvement ideas on 4Minitz. Your systems make our IT world run! So, keep up the good work! To make your live easy here comes the second most important question:

How to migrate from 1.0.x to 1.5.x?

General

1. Most important news: there should be no extra hazzle in database migration for you - regardless if you used a previous /develop/ or /master/ version. 4Minitz has a built-in database migration framework, that carefully migrates your data, if necessary, to our new DB schema. No animals will be harmed!
2. That been said: BACKUP YOUR DATA ANYHOW! (Think of: settings.json, MongoDB, stored attachment files & stored HTML/PDF minutes documents)
3. We introduced a few new settings you might want to include in your settings.json. This will not happen automatically. We won't overwrite your settings! Though we have quite useful defaults for these new settings (if not specified), you might take a look at ldap.importOnLaunch, ldap.hideStandardLogin, ldap.label4Username, ldap.label4Password and docGeneration for PDF & PDF/A protocol file persistence.

Update Docker Instances

1. Stop running 4Minitz container (CTRL+C)
2. Backup the complete 4minitz_storage directory on the host system
3. Consider changes to your settings.json (see above!)
4. Pull the newest 4minitz:stable image and spin up a fresh container with your existing 4miniz_storage data directory. Data will be migrated automatically.

Update Non-Docker Instances

1. Stop your 4Minitz server
2. Perform data backup. See admin guide Backup chapter
3. Get the newest code. E.g., via git pull
4. Perform an npm install
5. Rebuild/restart your 4Minitz instance. Some data migration info may fill your console

4Minitz 1.5 - What's new

New Features

• #33 My Action Items shows a list of all my action items from all meeting series where I am invited
• #313 Show a Single Topic from minutes edit on a topic select "Show History", on My Action Items select "Show Topic" to get the finalized context.
• #194 Warn on Concurrent Edits users are now informed with a warning, if a second moderator edits the same topic / item / detail data or the meeting series meta data.
• #351 Quick Item Entry below topics (Click topic background to activate, then press CTRL+ENTER to confirm). Also includes quick adding of details (Press ENTER to add detail lines below).
• #39 PDF & PDF/A protocol file generation. Allows server-side archiving and user file downloads of protocols in long-time archivable PDF/A format. see below: already enabled for docker deployments!
• #345 Finalize Quality Checks now warn e.g., if no participants attendance box is checked; no topics discussed; action item with no responsible, ...
• #398 Docker image now has PDF/A protocol file generation enabled by default (all necessary tools installed & configured the right way!) ==> Hint for Admins that migrate from older docker images: Consider to change the setting docGeneration.format to "pdfa"
• #377 Convert ActionItem <=> InfoItem if the item was created in current minutes
• #382 Pinned Global Notes allow moderators to make the global notes text sticky, so it is propagated to the next meeting. E.g. for global meeting rules "No Phones, No Tablets, No Notebooks"
• #428 Participant Counts gives you live stats while marking present people in the room.
• #399 Long readable usernames (e.g. "John Doe") from user profiles are now displayed at various UI places instead of the short login usernames (e.g., "john123")
• #427 & #430 Three new settings in LDAP section to increase user interface of LDAP login: ldap.hideStandardLogin, ldap.label4Username, ldap.label4Password ==> Admins consider adding them to your existing settings.json!
• #315 Automatic NEW label for new details allow users to focus on new stuff
• #397 Upload files attachments usability: Area is now expanded by default and shows a "Quick Hint" help
• #432 Admin View with user list allows to filter for "online users" (to determine who is e.g., disturbed by installing a server update)

Fixed Issues

• #433 [!!SECURITY!!] Topic data publishing did not check for user's access rights
• #424 LDAP user import stopped working in Docker deployment
• #435 After change of our schema validator, responsible fields could be null, leading to UI exception
• #425 Informed Users where not included in Minutes EMails / PDF stored protocols
• #426 A fresh docker image crashed in first launch with an empty database (Migration Step#20 was broken)
• #423 #422 The "Standard Login" page had some confusing usability flaws
• #406 & #412 The The official MongoDB driver for Node.js made a breaking API change. So our importUsers.js script was broken.
• #343 Performance of "responsible" select2 box optimized for setups with "thousands" of users
• #395 iOS11 camera photo uploads fixed (Apple changed photo extension from JPG => jpeg)
• #393 Docker deployment: It is now possible to specify a docker run -e MONGO_URL=... to use an external MongoDB instance outside of our docker image.
• #339 LDAP auto whitelisting
• #348 LDAP issues (e.g. allow to bind with arbitrary LDAP attributes)
• #348 LDAP auto-import on launch (as the docker image admins can not use the importUsers.js script)
• #354 ROOT_URL broken on docker deployment (Attachment URLs not working)
• #386 IE11 file upload was broken (introduced with v1.1-develop)
• #347 Un-Finalize does not remove all fresh created items from the topics collection
• #292 Non-Moderator can open MS editor by appending "?edit=true" to MS URL
• #350 Fixed some migrations
• #362 Tab "Action Items" did not display labels
• #364 Sort-Order of items now persistent after drag'n'drop re-order
• #374 Migration V18 "lost" some items. So migration V21 fixes this. This was only important for 4Minitz servers that migrated from 1.0-develop to 1.0 final release.
• #379 Edit topic showed wrong "Edited by other user message"
• Fix a bug that crashed minutes finalize (introduced with 1.1-develop)

Changes "Under-the-hood"

• #420 When admins do not switch off updateCheck in their instances, then from this version on we are able to send important update notes to their running instance. These update notes are then bundled into the "Admin Update EMail" sent by their own instances.
• #403 We migrated from the stalled kadira:flow-router to the vibrant ostrio:flow-router-extra. Thanx to @Dr-Dimitru from VeliovGroup for keeping the router alive!
• #394 We updated 4Minitz to Meteor.js 1.6.0.1 and then 1.6.1
• #398 Docker image now uses node.js 8
• #346 We added some more E2E security checks
• #349 Finalize performance: Optimise invalidation of the new-Flag
• Fixed many ESLint warnings and code duplications reported by CodeClimate
• Carve-out BUILD_DEPLOY.sh from BUILD_DOCKER.sh to prepare "ready to run" node deployments
• Our Docker images now have meta data labels. See here: https://microbadger.com/images/4minitz/4minitz
• private/createTestUsers.js populates user DB with an arbitrary number of users.
• #365 Admin tools: exportMeetingSeries and importMeetingSeries to migrate a specific meeting serieres (with all needed users) to a different server.
• We put quite some effort in hardening our End-2-End tests to ensure quality

Hello World!

The 4Minitz Team proudly announces version 1.0.2 of 4Minitz.

New

• #178 We now have a nice 4Minitz Landing Page with a cool Demo Video. Check it out! ;-)
• #176 Admin gets "new Version"!"-eMail if new stable version of 4Minitz exists.
• #281 Action items now have an integer for "Priority". So we can sort them by this field later-on.
• #297 #267 You can now download a static HTML protocol file for every minutes to your local drive (Backups anyone?)
• #300 Meeting Minute EMails now include a short overview for every action item (AI: Who does what?)
• #326 With more than 4 visible meeting series you now have a nice "Filter/Search" meeting series entry field. Press ESC to reset
• #325 LDAP import has 2 big improvements: you can now specify which LDAP fields map to which 4Minitz user attribute. And you may use Microsoft ADs userAccountControl to filter out inactive user accounts.
• #320 Topics, Items and Details now get attributes (createdAt, updatedAt, updatedBy) for better sorting. This information will show up in the tooltips.
• The participant list now shows a small eye icon behind every user's name that is currently (remotely) connected and watches the meeting minutes.
• #341 Your browser tabs now show the meeting name while you are editing meeting minutes
• #316 The initial screen after login now shows a loading-gear animation while data is not complete

Fix

• #282 App loads again on IE11
• #285 Attachment uploads via iOS devices work again
• #291 Delete of meeting series does not throw a client side exception
• #288 Server Error 500 if user changed his mail address to an already existing address
• #304 Meeting Series can be deleted again
• #310 'Send Agenda' crashed on "TrustedEvironment: false"
• #306 Create multiple #Labels in item Editor
• #287 Browser's BACK button with an open bootstrap dialog blocked app completely
• #317 On delting an old topic the "close topic" convenience macro now also removes the recurring attribute
• #293 refactoring of user invitation to prohibit multiple adding of the same user to a meeting
• #327 IE11 had problems with href="#" links on our UI TABs
• The "Connection Lost" warning is kept back for a few seconds now to prohibt flickering up during initial loading of app
• #331 Firefox had problems to download generated meeting protocols
• #333 The sort order of topics was lost between the last finalized minutes and a new meeting minutes
• #336 The OnlineUsers "Eye" icon was not showing anymore
• #334 The "New" was sometimes not invalidated on the "all time history topic list"
• #338 LDAP login produced a client side exception
• #342 Protocol document generation produced a client side exception

Under-the-hood

• #265 #171 We created some tests that check if security checks in methods are still OK
• #216 Topics are now refactored out in a new MongoDB collection
• #306 Security: A meeting series moderator is not able anymore to post arbitrary role strings to the role save method
• #269 We now have a nice admin guide for docker on Windows deployment
• #312 Sometimes subscriptions took way too long to load. Now 4Minitz is even faster!
• #99 Admin Doc was improved for running secure and safe
• #337 Confusing! We had two ways in specifying the ROOT_URL. Now they are synced

We are heading towards our 1.0 release.

New

• #75 "Skip Topic" will hide the topice from agenda for the current meeting - but will present it in the next meeting
• #68 "Re-Open Closed Topic" on the "Meeting Series All Time Topic List" will allow to inject an already closed topic to the current meeting, again.
• #63 Optionally send Verfication EMails & Reset Password EMails if admin configures this in settings.json
• #211 Users get EMails about their role changes by moderator. New checkbox in Meeting Series editor
• #251 Easy "Check All/None Participants" convenience macro checkbox
• #266 During minute taking you may easily edit invited users now (Hint: click pencil icon in participant list)
• #268 You may enter "@Responsible" in the subject of a new topic to speedup your workflow

Change

• #233 The "New Info/Action Item" dialog allows now to easily enter first markdown details to a new item. The old "automatically open details editor 3 seconds after item dialog SAVE" was confusing to users
• #234 If you edit details that where already finalized in erlier minutes, the visible details timestamp is set to current date
• #235 new InfoItems set a default subject "Info" - often we see users repeat the topic subject here, if only one Info Item is needed for a topic. The new default makes filling out the dialog quicker

Fix

• #239 Performance on rendering of the "all time topic list" of a meeting series was drastically improved.
• #248 Drag'n'Drop could duplicate checkboxes of items
• #256 Labels lost their color after Astronomy migration
• #276 Admin broadcast messages were broken after Astronomy migration
• #257 Expand/collapse of items got confused after drag'n'drop order change of items
• #260 Hide quick help was broken
• #272 Date of last meeting got lost on meeting series overview
• #271 Info Item editor sometimes opened on the wrong info item

Under-the-hood

• #196 #246 Our Collections are now migrated to the Astronomy framework - Thx Jagi for your great framework!!!
• #265 First E2E security checks are in place. Here we check that server-side methods are hardened against tempering
• #234 details docs now have their own unique _id - so we can track them over time
• We migrated to Meteor 1.5 - This may allow us in future to do "lazy importing" of packages/templates.
• Finally we added some E2E tests to harden our precious admin features (De/Activate users, Register new users, send admin broadcast messages)

Thanks to our studens Jessica, Olga, Patrick, Robert & Simon with the pre-release v0.10.0 the following features where realized:

New

• #8 On Minutes edit view: we finally moved all our many "edit icons" to a nice drop down menu
• #217 Info/ActionItem Drag'n'Drop sorting is now possible within a topic
• #219 Admin can now specify a "legal notice" (Impressum) via settings.json. This will be shown in the about box
• #200 If you forgot to set checkmarks on attending participants you'll now get a warning on finalize
• #218 Error / Hint messages are now shown as temporary "Toasts" - nice! ;-)
• #210 User profile dialog now allows to change your own long user name and EMail address
• #207 Topics now can get #Labels
• #208 "Quick Add Topic" field allows to quick add #Labels and @Responsibles
• #206 The "Connection Loss" dialog is now more user friendly. And 4Minitz will warn you if you try to close your browser tab while the server connection is lost.
• #209 We made the participant list 2 columns (if list is long enough und screen is big enough)

Fix

• #229 Deletion of Items was possible in later minutes
• #228 Edit Action Items was sometimes broken
• #226 You can add more than one #Label in quick entry mode or subject field of the "Edit" dialog

Under-the-hood

• #172 We have a nice seeding tool for performance tests
• #230 We migrated to Meteor 1.4.4.1
• #232 Responsiveness was improved in code

With the bugfix-release v0.9.1 the following bugs have been fixed

Fix

• #213 It is now - again - possible to edit action items
• #212 The demo/demo user should not be allowed to change her password. ;-)
• #214 External links to meeting series IDs should work now (even reload was broken on this route)

With the pre-release v0.9.0 the following features where realized:

New

Happy Admin

• #186 Docker support: 4Minitz can now be easily brought into production on Linux and Mac (sorry, Docker for Windows does not allow our embedded MongoDB). See docker hub for details: https://hub.docker.com/r/derwok/4minitz/
• #170 Admin Role: adminIDs can be specified in settings.json. This gives the admin a special admin menu where she can:
  • Send broadcast messages to all logged in users (e.g., "4Minitz is going to maintenance in 4 Minutes").
  • Register new (Non-LDAP) users with initial password and welcome message. This is especially handy, as the "Register" link on the Login Page can now be disabled via settings.json forbidClientAccountCreation
  • Show/filter all users and toggle users active/inactive. Inactive users can not log in anymore.
• #190 LDAP import via internal cron: LDAP import can now be triggered at regular intervalls via importCronTab in settings JSON. This works also in docker deployment!
• defaultEMailSenderExceptionDomains in settings.json allows to specify a defaultEMailSenderAddress that is only used when users with "external" mails address do a "Send Agenda" or "Finalize Minutes". For "internal" senders (where their domain matches defaultEMailSenderExceptionDomains) their real mail address is put into "FROM:"
• forbidClientAccountCreation Removes the "Register" link from the login page. This is handy for intranet installations that are reachable from the outside internet. If you specify an admin

Happy Users

• #175 "Informed" User Role: In the meeting series editor the moderator can set users to the "informed role". These users have no access to the meeting series or minutes inside 4Minitz, but get the meeting minutes finalize protocol via EMail.
• #208 Quick Add Topic entry field to end of agenda in minutes edit view
• #201 "Hide closed topics" filter on minutes edit view
• #181 Navigation to prvious / next minutes. (Navigation links below minute date on minutes edit view)
• #187 Non-LDAP-Users now have a "Change Password" dialog in the shiny-new "user dropdown" menu
• #74 Real (long) usernames are now supported on registering and inside the 4Minitz WebApp

Other Small improvements

• #185 The "About Dialog" can now show version info without git (optionally we get them from package.json)
• #182 New InfoItems get a "NEW" badge

Fix

• #198 & #205 Deleting a topic from previous minutes in later minutes did also delete it from the "list of historc topics". This was surprising & dangerous! So it is forbidden now!
• #188 Empty details should ask user if she really wants to delete existing details
• #189 Some CSS & JS effects were broken (e.g. the material ripple effect)
• #179 Download of attachments now works also in IE11. Thanks to @VeliovGroup for helping with the fix!
• #180 Possible security hole - user strings could make it into error message box
• #174 Handle LDAP not reachable more graceful

Under-the-hood

• #167 Make E2E tests green again on desktop Chrome. (In headless mode TravisCI checks green).
• #192 We now check our npm dependencies via https://david-dm.org
• We migrated 4Minitz to current meteor 1.4.3.2

With the pre-release v0.8.0 the following features where realized:

New Features

• #58 New Tab "Items" on meeting series view
  • The Tab "Topics" and "Items" have a full featured search & filter bar.
  • E.g. you can filter only open action items or search for "#Decision" lables
• #34 Upload Binary Attachments
  • Moderators can now promote invited users to the Uploader role
  • Moderators and Uploaders can attach files to the current minutes
  • Uploaders can only remove their own attachments
• #148 Some Server Statistics in the About Dialog (Just click the 4Minitz icon!)
• #128 Global Note for Minutes can be entered on every minutes and will be part of the sent minutes email
• #125 Branding via Settings.json - You can now embedd you own logo to the header bar, activate a demo account and show/hide the 4Minitz advertising bullets at the login page
• #157 Admin Broadcast Messages - The admin can now force display of broadcast messages to all connected clients (e.g. to show a 'Server is going down in 4 Minutes' message).
• #140 Doc: Add FAQ - We now have a growing collection of Frequently Asked Questions

Further Small Enhancements

• #147 Mailaddresses in the "additional recepients" now receive the minutes eMails also on finalize
• #145 Improve user experience for finalize workflow (show progress messages)
• #151 Show (un-) finalized minutes indicator icon on "all meeting series list" overview
• #86 Hide "Helpful hints" is persisted per user / per hint
• #163 Improve UX for editing details - In creation of Action/Info Items now automatically a first details instance is added and gets a flashing cursor. Enter markdown stuff as needed or press ESC to remove it. And details now have a trash can to delete them while editing.
• #169 Make REGISTER link configurable on login screen - An admin can now switch off the possibility that new users regiuster themselves on the login screen. E.g. for LDAP scenarios.
• #168 Some low-hanging 0.8 UX improvements, for example:
  • On Minutes edit view we now have the first global keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Alt+T opens the "New Topic" dialog from everywhere in the page (except when dialog are open).
  • Font size on some texts has been increased for better readability
  • Click on topic/item subject text now opens topic/item editor, so we can get rid of Pencil (Edit) Icon.

Fix

• #150 Prevent complex dialogs from accidental closing - e.g. when clicking outside of the "Add Topics" dialog. This was interpreted as "Cancel" and all entered content was lost
• #136 Don't publish all users with details to logged-out users
• #137 Dont log the full user list to console on meeting series edit
• #146 Flash messages are gone away
• #144 Multiple Finalize Triggers
• #156 Invited Users cannot see minutes date anymore
• #153 UserRole for series is not removed from user DB if user is removed from series
• #161 Internal server error when sending an agenda for meeting minutes
• #160 Uncaught Error in Minutesedit-Template
• #162 Saving details with CTRL+Enter or Esc does not work in firefox
• #142 Bug editing details
• #164 Exception when deleting an info/action-item
• #143 Prevent adding existing topics again

Under-the-hood

• #152 4Minitz is not runnable in a URL with subfolder like https://www.company.com/4minitz (ROOT_URL)
  • We switched from IronRouter to FlowRouter. As the IronRouter is not maintained anymore and had an unfixed show-stopper bug. IronRouter was not able to work on sites where ROOT_URL had a trailing sub directory like in ROOT_URL=https://www.company.com/4minitz
• #127 Bring 4minitz.com to real "Continuous Deployment" - we now automatically deploy only(!) green TravisCI builds to our https://www.4minitz.com & https://develop.4minitz.com demo systems.
• #133 4minitz: https://www.4minitz.de has wrong SSL key, Automate the Let's Encrypt update process.
• #149 Migrate to meteor 1.4.2.3
• #116 Include stylesheet files in Server-Side-Templates

With the pre-release v0.7.1 the following bugs were fixed:

Fix

• #147 Discover mail addresses in additional participants and send agenda and minutes to them, too