Release 195 of the Bipsync Research Management System is now available. Along with the usual set of improvements and bug fixes, we’re excited to introduce a significant addition to the Mail Classifier feature.
Import Email from Office 365
Way back in Release 164 we introduced the Mail Classifier, and in the time since a lot of our clients have taken the opportunity to effortlessly import email relevant to the research process directly into Bipsync.
The first version of the Mail Classifier was designed to work with as many mailbox hosts as possible, through the use of the ubiquitous IMAP protocol. It was successful in this regard, but there is no denying that IMAP is somewhat antiquated — it was introduced in 1986 and hasn’t changed a great deal since — and as a result can be difficult to work with while being limited in key aspects; a lack of support for modern authentication techniques being one key example.
This led us to develop a new adapter for the Mail Classifier which allows it to integrate directly with Office 365 via Microsoft’s Graph API. Because Microsoft Graph has been designed with Exchange’s functionality in mind, it makes the process of mail retrieval more robust. It also allows us to authenticate with mailboxes using the OAuth technique. OAuth is a very secure authentication process which allows users to connect Bipsync to their mailboxes without having to supply their credentials to us. During authentication the permissions required by Bipsync are communicated to the user, giving them confidence that we are treating their data appropriately.
The Office 365 Adapter for Mail Classifier therefore improves the feature significantly for clients who host their mailboxes in the Microsoft’s cloud. Over the next few months we’ll be reaching out to eligible clients to encourage them to switch from the IMAP adapter, but any clients wishing to do so now, or wanting to take advantage of the Mail Classifier for the first time, are encouraged to get in touch with us.
Improvements and Bug Fixes
- Added a new rule action which is able to update a date field on a document when an associated task has been completed.
- Increased the range of the “Date Created” note filter to include all dates within the last 20 years.
- The value of a text field can now be included in the tokens that are used to represent contacts within the app.
- A given document’s Bipsync ID can now be accessed and copied from the metadata menu within the app. This is available for clients through configuration on demand.
- Reports that are delivered via SFTP can now be saved to a specific file path.
- Fixed an issue which caused some SFTP upload jobs to fail.
- Fixed an issue which caused files which had been converted from note attachments to become inaccessible when the original attachment was deleted.
- Fixed an issue which caused some contact autocomplete results to not appear.
- Fixed an issue which caused some event lookup field values to not persist.
- Fixed an issue which caused the reporting app to list multiple copies of the same note when the date range of a search was expanded.
- Fixed an issue with format of exported tasks.
As usual, please contact us with any questions about this release, or if you have any feedback or suggestions about the Bipsync platform.
