votesUP is constantly being developed and improved. On this page you can find an overview of all the latest news and changes.
Legend / Explanation
A11Y
Accessibility
BUGFIX
Bugfix
DESIGN
User interface & appearance
FEATURE
New functionality
I18N
Internationalisation and translations
SECURITY
Security improvements
STABILITY
General code maintenance
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DESIGN: If there was only one entry in a list ballot, voters could only cancel an accidental selection by reloading the page before the submission. This has now been changed: You can also undo the approval tick directly by clicking on it.
Note: Existing votings must be saved again to perform the conversion.
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I18N: Improvements to various translations.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 51 500 entries.
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BUGFIX: When starting a vote, higher voting weights were not counted correctly to the full list of entitled voters. This bug had been introduced with the new participant groups and is now fixed. Unfortunately, ongoing votings that encompass users with higher voting weights need to be restarted.
FEATURE: Proposals in Motions & Candidacies can be saved in a confidential draft version, in case they are not ready for publication yet.
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FEATURE: Emails containing a proposal also lists the submitters and the submission date.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 51 300 entries.
I18N: Improvements to various translations.
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SECURITY: Javascript security improved by extending verifications.
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FEATURE: When duplicating events, autostart settings for votings are also transferred if these are in the future.
BUGFIX: Connection errors when editing individual accounts have been fixed.
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BUGFIX: Group memberships were not displayed in the profile correctly. This error has now been fixed.
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I18N: Improvements to various translations.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 51 000 entries.
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FEATURE: The organiser can optionally set up ‘participant groups’. Individual votings can thus explicitly include or exclude eligible voters from an entire group. Participant groups can be used in addition to gender restrictions in votings. Participants can see on their profile page whether they are assigned to one or more groups.
FEATURE: Improvements for the election committee: Even while voting is underway, election observers can now access information about potential problems or restrictions affecting voters.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 50 700 entries.
FEATURE: Participants can request an email containing the proposal from a proposals round by a single click. Such e-mail contains replies to questions/sections, but no file attachments.
FEATURE: The voting weight of participants can now be changed by the organiser not only via the full pax list, but also in the individual view of an account.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 50 500 entries.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 50 000 entries.
STABILITY: Changing the event title before the registered end of the event will also update the invoice title for an ongoing limit increase.
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FEATURE: The feature « Reset Event » has received two additional options: you can now remove the entire agenda and reset gender attributions of all participants.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 49 500 entries.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 49 000 entries.
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STABILITY: Improvements to the recognition of unisex given names.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 48 600 entries.
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SECURITY: The one-time security token for two-factor-authentication is now only valid for 15 instead of 30 minutes.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 48 400 entries.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 48 200 entries.
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FEATURE: Before sending out personalised email invitations to all participants, votesUP shows a preview of the mail.
STABILITY: Correction of smaller inconsistencies in the HTML code.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 48 000 entries.
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FEATURE: The options for procedural/privileged motions have been expanded. Six new types of requests are available. To improve usability, the functionality has also been migrated to a dialogue window.
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BUGFIX: When exporting emails, not all selected filters from the participants manager were displayed by name correctly.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 47 500 entries.
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BUGFIX: Attempts to access documents that were no longer available resulted in an endless code loop instead of an abort.
STABILITY: Efficiency improvements for the internal management of downloadable documents in the event agenda.
I18N: Improved internationalisation of email templates.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 47 200 entries.
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FEATURE: Improvements to the export views for token-based user accounts and their QR codes.
STABILITY: Several improvements and updates to the codebase.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 47 100 entries.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 47 000 entries.
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STABILITY: Efficiency improvements to the database and automated processes.
DATA REDUCTION: Event announcements are deleted one month after the end of the event.
BUGFIX: If several limit increases were set in parallel for different time periods for the same event, the second limit increase was not available. This has now been corrected.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 46 700 entries.
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STABILITY: General and efficiency improvements to the code
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition comprises over 46 600 entries, which now also include many Eastern European names (in Latin and Cyrillic characters).
I18N: Several translation improvements, especially for the module “Motions & Candidacies”.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition comprises over 46 500 entries, which now also include many Eastern European names (in Latin and Cyrillic characters).
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 46 100 entries, which now also include many Eastern European names (in Latin and Cyrillic characters).
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 45 600 entries.
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STABILITY: Formatted items on the agenda could prevent votings or proposal rounds to be attributed to them. This problem is now solved.
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I18N: Several translation improvements, especially for the module “Motions & Candidacies”.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 45 400 entries.
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I18N: Several translation improvements, especially for the module “Motions & Candidacies”.
STABILITY: Several modernisations to the code.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 45 300 entries.
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STABILITY: Several code improvements, e.g. when adding partner agreements/advantages to an existing event.
I18N: Several translation improvements.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 45 200 entries.
SECURITY/PRIVACY: Validation of the TLS certificate is now possible via CRL instead of OCSP. This better reflects the state of technology and increases user privacy.
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FEATURE: The mode ‘Questions / List’ was added to the Brainstorming Sessions. While only entries with up to 32 characters are permitted in ‘Word cloud’ mode and up to 120 characters in ‘Sticky notes’ mode, this new mode allows up to 240 characters for each entry. The contributions are displayed as a list.
FEATURE: The automatic minutes can be amended with self-formulated entries (e.g. ‘Person X accepts their election’).
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BUGFIX: Yesterday's update made it impossible to create new proposal rounds. This has now been fixed.
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FEATURE: The CSV import of participant lists has been greatly improved. Tables formatted with regional character restrictions by MS Excel are automatically recognised and special characters are correctly reformatted.
FEATURE: In proposal rounds for motions and candidacies, there is now an option to allow guests to submit proposals as well.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 45 000 entries.
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STABILITY: Display and security enhancements in overview of all events an email address is registered for.
SECURITY: Improved abuse detection for the creation and duplication of events.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 44 800 entries.
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STABILITY: Improvements to the registration workflow for participants.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 44 700 entries.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 44 500 entries.
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STABILITY: Workflow improvements when registering participants.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 44 400 entries.
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FEATURE: The agenda for multi-day events can now display individual dates for the items.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 44 200 entries.
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DESIGN: When checking the quorum, a clearer message is now displayed in case the ‘relaxed’ conference mode is currently active.
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STABILITY: Creating partner events has become slightly easier.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 44 100 entries.
I18N: Several improvements to the translations.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 44 000 entries.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 43 900 entries.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 43 800 entries.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 43 700 entries.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 43 600 entries.
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I18N: Improvements to the internationalisation of the module “Motions and Candidacies”.
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I18N: Improvements to the internationalisation of the module “Motions and Candidacies”.
STABILITY: Thanks to new optimisations in the processing of temporary data, votesUP is now even better at adhering to the principle of data minimisation.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 43 500 entries.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 43 400 entries.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 43 300 entries.
STABILITY: General code maintenance
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 43 200 entries.
STABILITY: Improvements to security and efficiency for the “Forgot password?” feature, and general code maintenance
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BUGFIX: The presentation view was not updated when a presented voting was reset or permanently deleted. This has now been fixed.
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STABILITY: The refresh rate of the presentation view has been slightly increased.
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STABILITY: The agenda items are now sorted in a natural language order also without manual reworking.
STABILITY: Participants can now also use capital letters for the event ID and still log in.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 43 100 entries.
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DESIGN: To prevent participants on small displays from accidentally logging out, the logout button is no longer present in the menu bar, but only accessible via the footer.
DESIGN: The participant manager has been reorganised.
FEATURE: All organiser accounts, with the exception of the main organiser, can now be converted to voter accounts and vice versa.
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FEATURE: New filter in the participant manager for participants for whom an internal comment has been entered.
DESIGN: In the participant manager, it is now immediately apparent for whom a note has been stored.
FEATURE: Organisers receive an email if a virus is found in an uploaded document from a proposals round. Before, the file had only been removed automatically.
DESIGN: The page for the event settings has been significantly streamlined.
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STABILITY: Improvements to code efficiency and display speed.
SECURITY: Increased complexity of various checksums.
STABILITY: When duplicating events, the setting for gender-restricted votings are also taken into account.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 43 000 entries.
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FEATURE: When supporting a proposal in Motions & Candidacies, it is now possible to not let your name being published.
FEATURE: The organiser can now also add participants who have never registered for the votesUP event to the list of speakers.
FEATURE: The presentation view of votings now also shows how long the voting has been running.
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FEATURE: New filter in the participant manager: Display of accounts that have not yet received a personalised invitation email.
FEATURE:When editing participants, organisers can see who last edited the user. This display is only available for edits from 22 November 2024 or newer.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 42 900 entries.
BUGFIX: If there are several proposals to support in proposal rounds, the ‘Support’ button was not always visible for later proposals. This error has now been fixed.
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DESIGN: Several improvements to the proposals rounds.
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BUGFIX: When duplicating events, ballot papers with lists (of candidates) were not transferred correctly, so that empty votes were counted. This error has now been fixed.
BUGFIX: In the case of ballot papers with a prescribed minimum number of votes but restriction on the maximum number of votes, an error had occurred: not all ballot paper combinations could be submitted. This is now fixed.
STABILITY: The CSV import of participants is now a bit more tolerant towards file errors.
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FEATURE: Organisers can log all supporters for one or all proposals of a proposals round to the minutes.
STABILITY: When duplicating an event, more configuration properties of brainstorm sessions and proposals rounds are now correctly transferred.
DESIGN: If the submission ‘on behalf of’ is deactivated in proposal rounds, this no longer only applies to the proposal, but also to the supporters' dialogues.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 42 800 entries.
I18N: Translations improved and further completed.
STABILITY: Extensive code maintenance.
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BUGFIX: If a voting that had started automatically ended without anyone having voted, votesUP restarted it. This has now been fixed: the autostart date is deleted once it has been exceeded.
STABILITY: E-mail notifications to the organiser about the scheduled, automatic closing of a vote are now sent a little faster.
DESIGN: Better usability of the two-factor authentication on smartphones.
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STABILITY: Improvements to the ‘Conference (relaxed)’ mode and session management in order to minimise the number of participants being logged out unintentionally while still ensuring system security.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 42 600 entries.
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FEATURE: Proposals rounds can also contain a multiple-choice question.
DESIGN: Organisers are made more aware if the event has not yet been confirmed.
BUGFIX: Since yesterday's update, a saving problem had occurred when re-editing agenda items. This error has been fixed.
FEATURE: More formatting options in the preparation and for contributions to proposals rounds: Line breaks, formatting and clickable links are now possible.
FEATURE: More formatting options for brainstorming sessions: Line breaks, formatting and clickable links are now possible.
STABILITY: Unconfirmed events will be deleted after three days of inactivity. Previously, they were deleted three days after creation.
BUGFIX: The brainstorming sessions were not available during an ongoig voting. This has been fixed.
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FEATURE: Brainstorming contributions can be commented on anonymously or with a name and date display, depending on the configuration.
FEATURE: File names of uploaded documents in proposals rounds can be changed if needed.
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BUGFIX: If the organiser deleted a post in a brainstorming session shortly after login, for a short while only the navigation menu and not the brainstorming session was displayed for the relevant organiser account afterwards. This has now been fixed.
DESIGN: The design has been slightly improved when awarding stars and commenting on brainstorming sessions.
STABILITY: The filter for inappropriate language has been improved.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 42 500 entries.
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FEATURE: Organisers can submit proposals to a proposals round even when the round is not open for submissions to regular participants.
FEATURE: In proposals rounds, the opportunity to express support may optionally continue after the proposal submission deadline.
DESIGN: The use of brainstorming sessions has been improved for smaller screens (e.g. smartphones).
FEATURE: The permitted text length for sticky notes in brainstorming sessions has been increased from 80 to 120 characters.
BUGFIX: Since yesterday's update, an error had occurred when trying to delete comments on specific entries in brainstorming sessions. This error has now been fixed.
BUGFIX: When re-editing prepared ballot papers that included an automatic deadline, the deadline was lost when saving. This problem has been fixed.
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FEATURE: Participants with the role of ‘election board/observer’ can also have the voting results emailed to them.
FEATURE: Organisers can hide proposals from proposals rounds also later on.
FEATURE: Organisers can now request ask submitters up to five questions in proposals rounds instead of the previous three.
FEATURE: Previously, anyone who submitted a proposal was able to delete it. Now the proposal can also be explicitly ‘withdrawn’ so that it can still be viewed by organisers and supporters.
FEATURE: The organiser can now assign a status to each proposal. Among other things, this status affects the display for participants and the auto-creation of votings.
BUGFIX: When configuring proposals rounds, the ‘description’ field had not been saved.
DESIGN: The submission field “on behalf of” can be deactivated in proposals rounds.
FEATURE: Organisers have access to a counter of how often documents from the agenda have been downloaded. This feature is available for all files that have been uploaded since 1st November 2024. The counters are updated on every reload of the agenda management page.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 42 400 entries.
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FEATURE: The new module for motions and candidacies is online.
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FEATURE: It is now possible to comment on posts in brainstorming sessions, if the organiser permits commenting.
A11Y: Improved accessibility for blind users.
FEATURE: The QR code for the event can be displayed via the presentation view.
STABILITY: General code maintenance, e.g. to reduce unintentional logouts.
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BUGFIX: Newly created brainstorming sessions had not been available since the last update. This bug has now been fixed.
BUGFIX: In the presentation view the results for list votings can be automatically ranked again.
DESIGN: The Action Mode has been further optimised visually. For regular participants, the logout button is now only visible at the bottom of the footer.
FEATURE: Ongoing brainstorming sessions can now be visualised independently in the presentation view.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 42 300 entries.
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STABILITY: Requests to speak that were not made from the speakers list but from the welcome screen are now considered more quickly by the system.
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FEATURE: The presentation module has been fundamentally revised. In addition to automatically changing the projection content, it is now possible to select elements such as previous voting results or thinking rounds yourself.
DESIGN: When you wanted to verify a new event by clicking on a confirmation link, double-clicking sometimes led to the link being accessed twice and therefore apparently no longer being valid. votesUP is now a little more tolerant here and still displays the confirmation.
STABILITY/BUGFIX: Clicking on a login link for an event that you are already logged into no longer results in a re-login dialogue or redirect error.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 42 200 entries.
DESIGN: In ‘conference (relaxed)’ mode, the current voting rights are now displayed slightly differently than before. It had been confusing for participants that more voting rights could be ‘online’ than there were currently online participants (because they had already been online during the course of the day).
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A11Y: Major improvements to keyboard operation, especially for the backend.
A11Y: Keyboard accessibility of brainstorming sessions rounds were greatly improved. For existing brainstorming sessions, the improvements are active from the next user input onwards.
STABILITY: The brainstorming sessions require significantly less data traffic than before.
DESIGN: Word clouds are more compatible with Chromium-based browsers
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STABILITY: The automatic gender recognition pays attention to a range of provided pronouns.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 42 000 entries.
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FEATURE: Votings can start automatically at a time of your choice. The voting rights are processed like a digital absentee voting and calculated at the time of the start.
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A11Y: The keyboard operation has been improved. Previously, you could only jump directly to the footer, but now you can also just skip the navigation and go to the main content.
The terms of use have been updated to include information on cancellation deadlines, making it easier to find.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 41 900 entries.
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FEATURE: When duplicating an event, the brainstorming rounds can transferred as templates as well.
STABILITY: Settings and participant properties are now transferred more comprehensively when duplicating the event.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 41 700 entries.
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STABILITY: Documents within the event are downloaded instead of sometimes being displayed in the browser. This reduces the problem of auto-logouts.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 41 500 entries.
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FEATURE: Multiple brainstorming sessions can now run in parallel within one event.
FEATURE: Sticky notes in brainstormings can now contain up to 80 characters (previously 40).
FEATURE: Repetitions within the same brainstorming session are prevented so that it is no longer so easy to ‘upvote’ your own contributions in discussion rounds by repeating them.
FEATURE: Participants can rate entries in brainstorming session, whicht are not their own, with a star.
FEATURE: Deleting posts in brainstorming rounds has become more convenient and is now possible with just two clicks.
DESIGN: Several layout improvements for brainstorming sessions with sticky notes.
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FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 41 200 entries.
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A11Y: A dyslexia-friendly font can be activated for individual accounts. This option can be enabled by the organising team as well as in the personal profile.
Accessibility statement updated.
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BUGFIX: Yesterday's update regarding the deletion of all participants contained a bug, which has now been fixed.
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STABILITY: If you delete the participants via ‘Reset event’, all organiser accounts are now retained. Previously, you had also deleted all organiser accounts except your own.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 41 100 entries.
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FEATURE: If a limit increase is cancelled, the main organiser account receives an e-mail notification.
FEATURE: The joining of guests is now logged in the extended minutes.
FEATURE: Clearer documentation of limit increase requests and cancellations in the extended log.
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FEATURE: Up to 9 letters are now possible when numbering the agenda. This also makes numbering such as ‘ABC 10.1’ possible.
DESIGN: The header area has been optimised for additional screen sizes.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 40 900 entries.
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DESIGN: For limit increases, you can now specify whether the event is being organised by a charitable organisation and will then receive a discount. In addition to charities, youth organisations and open source projects are also accepted.
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SECURITY: Uploaded files are scanned immediately for viruses and malware and removed if necessary. In such cases, the main organiser receives a notification.
FEATURE: The organiser can prohibit individual accounts from uploading files, even if other participants are allowed to upload documents.
I18N: The translations for all language versions have been expanded and partially corrected.
FEATURE: The dictionary for gender/name recognition now comprises over 40 800 entries.
