The new Borealis interface is here! We received lots of good feedback from our beta users and we want to thank them! We made a lot of small adjustments and now it is completely ready for everyone to use!
We wanted to find a way to bring you all the important information for a stakeholder in a single dashboard-style page and we think we actually did it! Along the way, we realized our technology needed a bit of a face-lift so we actually moved everything to a new technology framework that helped us bring a lot of cool features with it. Here is a break down of the new improvements
You are not 100% ready to dive in yet? Do not worry. It is possible to go from the new interface to the old one and will be until June 2022.
Featured
New menu on the left
When looking at any record in Borealis, the tabs that appeared at the top of the screen have been replaced by a menu on the left
This new menu allows for
- Showing all the sections directly in the page. The former tabs quickly became too wide and the rest of the sections were hidden in a "..." option.
- The number of records in each section is now available, so no need to navigate to empty sections to see if there is anything.
- We even added an option to create data in the related sections directly from the menu!
Dashboard-like Individual and Organisation page
On top of the new menu, we reorganized the page so that you get the most relevant information in one place!
This new page contains the following sections
- Header now shows the main position of Individuals (or the location for Organisations) and the main contact information
- The left box shows
- The identification information
- The organisation members in case of an organisation
- The team members assigned to the stakeholder.
- The right box shows the latest communications with the stakeholder, in a nice new format that focuses on the most important aspect of the communication.
Note that the empty fields are all hidden from this dashboard-like page to focus on the information that is there.
Improved communication page
The communication page also got a revamp.
This new page contains the following sections
- The header shows the title, date and participants
- The left box shows all the classification information, like the Subject categories, General atmosphere, and type of communication.
- The right box shows the details of the communication. If the communication was an email, the formatting of the email is kept as is: Fonts, formatting, tables, and colors will show exactly as in the email. This panel will also show the summary of the communication, if one was entered.
Note that the empty fields are all hidden from this dashboard-like page to focus on the information that is there.
Communication creation - stakeholders suggestion
Back in 2019, we introduced a cool AI-based feature that automatically found person's names and Organisation's names when you were typing your communication's details. This features automatically matches existing stakeholders and if it can't, it makes it easier to create new ones.
Both Borealis and the users loved the automatic identification, but the process to add the stakeholders as participants was not the best. We decided to work on an improved version of it.
The suggestions now appear in a little section at the bottom with one-click decisions to add the stakeholders as participants to the communication.
Quick view - a customizable sidebar
A lot of feedback from the beginning of the beta was that you liked having the Comments, documents and tasks available in the right-hand side of the page. So we brought it back but much better than before!
This new sidebar is now customizable by a superuser and the sections that appear there can be chosen, ordered and customized. You want to see the tasks, but only the open ones? You would rather see the list of grievances a stakeholder made? You prefer the documents at the very top? All of this can be done with the new quick view.
Many other improvements
You can head to the list of improvements if you want to know more and to the FAQ if you have any questions on the new interface.
Other improvements
Advisory notice
You want to make sure your users are aware of the rules regarding storage of stakeholder information or any other important topic? It is now possible to configure an advisory notice that users will see every day when they log in. As a superuser, you can find the section to activate and configure it in Configuration -> Advisory notice.
Please note that this notice will only show if users are using the new interface.
Sending emails to borealis - bcc
When sending multiple emails to Borealis at once, the bcc recipients will now be added as participants to the communication.
Stakeholder engagement
In Issues - The "Subject categories" field is now customizable so it can be marked as mandatory, optional or completely hidden.
Social investment module
In Strategic Community Investments, the Objectives are now optional and the process can move forward without entering one. Most of the section are now hideable using the "Fields configuration" tool if you want to remove sections that are not interesting for you.
Social baseline module
In a study, it is now possible to update the category for multiple additional questions in batch, for an easier filtering and reporting.