What's New with DocQ: April 2022 version

Easter. Earth Month. April Fool’s Day. The start of spring (!). It’s that time of the year again when it is completely okay to put your co-worker’s stapler in Jello-O. Yes, The Office fans, we’re looking at you! 

We know, we know—but didn’t March just begin? It certainly feels that way but as the old saying goes:  time quite literally waits for no one. Play your cards right, and take advantage of all of DocQ 2.2 for a full and productive April. Let’s get into what is new for you. 

Announcement Panel Addition

Never miss what’s going on with DocQ again. With the addition of an announcement panel, notifications such as releases or maintenance updates, will be displayed in a drop down from the top panel of your DocQ dashboard. Users will be given a one week notice from the panel as to when DocQ will be unavailable due to maintenance or for our latest releases. 

“Show Me the Money”

We know you’ve been waiting for it! You can now define currency 💵 fields in your document templates. Default values can be defined for template variables as well. This means your web forms can now be pre-populated with default values that YOU can define when creating and editing your templates. 

Allow Adding Multiple Checks for Each IFTTT Condition

For our  “If This, Then That” (IFTTT) conditions, you are now able to validate if one or more variables are met when sending a document to another step. You can define if all variable checks must be true or if only one is enough for the condition to apply. You can choose one variable (creation date) or multiple variables (creation date and last name) when defining your condition. When changing the type of variable to a property you can choose from a drop-down with options such as file size, date of creation, name of document or document group. This allows you to be very flexible when adding conditions.

New Workflow Step - “Action Step”

With so many steps already available that can be included in our workflows, we’ve gone ahead and added another this month. Our new “Action Step” allows you to use the value of a variable to specify the DocQ user in which the document will be shared with. For example, you can now choose a specific department and then an individual within that department to take action. Previously, a static assignment was your only option and while this will still exist, the “Action Step” allows for more flexibility if needed. This new step can also be used in conjunction with parallel and group steps if needed. If that isn’t great news, we don’t know what is!  

New Ways to Use a Document’s Metadata

When creating a workflow, you can now choose to pre-populate data into a second form. For example, if an early step in a workflow has employee information it could be pre-populate into a form later in the workflow. This will result in the metadata being loaded into a new form when it matches. You may be asking yourself, what exactly is metadata? Quite simply: metadata is data that describes other data. It helps to organize, find and understand data. Using this new feature will help you regain a little bit of time back into your busy day. 

How can Metadata Help You? 

Some changes to  the metadata have been made that can be useful with the new Action Step. 

• A list of available metadata fields to select from is now displayed when selecting variables to input
• New metadata user types are available from a resource list such as:

• User
• Department 
• Role

Workflow edit step, select field Document custom metadata edit

Archiving Workflows

When it comes to workflows, here at DocQ we take things very seriously. Our goal is to keep the integrity of data in DocQ, so we don’t allow for deletions. But what happens when you click the delete button? Your workflow will retire or be “archived”. The history associated with that workflow or any document within the workflow will not be erased. This means your data is still safe within DocQ but the workflow will no longer be seen in your queue. 

Split Step Actions

Now when creating a split step within a workflow there are actions that are taken to the original document in order to avoid potential errors. The original document will be “frozen” in the split step if it is waiting for one of the following actions:

• The original document is deleted, the split will continue its workflow
• Move to another step or to another workflow
• Share via email

Default Values for Template Variables

You now have the possibility to add a default value in your template variables. Previously checkboxes and booleans were the only options to have an initial field. 

A Few Minor Fixes 

While we are always working on releasing new features every month, we also spend a lot of time on minor maintenance that should not go unnoticed. This month we have improved the following for our DocQ users:

• Adjusting the size of drop-downs that list items with potentially long names

• The functionality to scroll up and down with the available variable to be used for the document name

• All  forms match the new UI

• With a brand new interface that is cleaner, friendlier and easier to use, we ensured out forms do the same

• A delete option when adding attachments

• Just in case you don’t want to use the attachment you just added

• Removing the ability to populate invalid values into forms

• To ensure the values that are populating match the field 

• Guaranteeing documents cannot be created with empty names 

• Simply put, documents cannot be created without naming it first

Over here at DocQ we are always working hard because we want to see our clients blown away by our results. We are ready for whatever requests are thrown at us next and making sure we provide them with exceptional service. But we couldn’t carry out any of this without our incredible team that goes above and beyond every day, there is nothing we can’t handle, just try us! 

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