What's new in eLabFTW 4.6.0

Introduction

This release features a major user interface redesign. We worked a lot on improving how the app looks and feel, and we hope you’ll like it.

So what’s new in this version?

You can see the complete changelog on the release page. This blog post is more about going into details for some of the changes.

How to update

Update like usual: see documentation.

New features

General changes

Interface redesign

new elabftw design

The first thing that you’ll notice is the improved interface. There are too many changes to list, but here are some of them:

  • The 3 columns layout is no more: experiments will appear in a single column all the time
  • A button has been added to quickly toggle between table mode or classic mode when listing entries
  • The filters toolbar is togglable and masked by default
  • All the sections are togglables and will stay how you set them
  • The terms in the Sysconfig panel are now all translated (or at least translatable)
  • Tables are used when listing things like users or templates
  • Help text is present to explain things most of the time
  • In order to “Save” a change, simply click outside the field, the Save button at the bottom of the page has disappeared
  • Great care has been taken to improve the accessibility, in terms of contrast or labels for text readers
  • The Favorite tags and Todolist are more easily accessible from their buttons on the left of the screen
  • Less borders, more spacings, better colors, no more round buttons, etc…

Overall, you’ll find the new interface easier to work with and more practical.

Admin permission is no longer tied to a user

Before 4.6.0, being an Admin meant the user was Admin in all the teams the were part of. Now you a user can be Admin in Team A but not Team B.

The Sysadmin attribute is still tied to a user account, but it is now possible to be Sysadmin and not Admin.

Users features

Chemistry

You can now save what was drawn on the molecule editor as RXN. Unfortunately, it is not possible to load a RXN file into the editor, as ChemDoodle doesn’t allow it. Only .chemjson and .mol files can be loaded.

QR Code

You can now export an entry link to a QR code png image.

entity qr code

Simply select “QR Code” from the Export menu.

Admins features

Managing users

Now that the users are listed in a table, it becomes possible to sort them by clicking the column header. For instance you can sort them by “Last login”.

Sysadmins features

Privacy policy, terms of service and accessibility statement

You can now set a custom text for these three things, they will appear as links in the footer.

footer links

They are editable from the “Policies” table in the Sysconfig panel.

Update mechanism

It is now possible to revert an SQL schema update. See db:console revert --help. A --force option has been added but should not be used unless instructed to do so by Support. These set of changes will make it easier to revert to a previous version, without having to load a backup.

Internal ID (orgid) for users

Users now have a new attribute, “orgid” which might correspond to your own internal organisation ID, and authentication mechanismes can use this in order to match local and distant users.

SAML

The IDPs can now be added/modified via the REST API. See API documentation.

You can also choose to update the user email sent by the IDP if the matched user was found thanks to their “orgid”.

Automated timestamping

It is now possible to timestamp experiments automatically via a console command. See experiments:timestamp --help.

Add support for a Keeex service

Keeex (website) is a service that can run locally next to your eLabFTW container and improve the integrity and authenticity of timestamped files. It works by modifying the timestamped PDF before it is being hashed for RFC3161 timestamping. It adds information in the file which can later be verified directly.

Get in touch with us if you’re interested in using this feature: contact us.

Multi factor authentication enforcement

You can now select to force 2FA (TOTP) to all the Sysadmins, Admins or Users of your instance. This feature has been contributed by Marcel Bolten.

Improved monitoring options

See the new “Monitoring” section of the documentation for Sysadmins: Monitoring doc.

Dev corner

Many dependencies were upgraded, some with major versions. The old jquery.rating.js has been replaced by a few lines of SCSS (57 insertions, 430 deletions).

A new tests/clean.sh script is available to remove running test containers.

Conclusion

On top of the changes listed above, many other little quality of life improvements were done here and there, and at least 15 issues raised on GitHub were addressed.

Thanks to everyone who contributed directly or not to this release. The adventure continues!