Versa July 15th Release Notes

Published on Saturday, 15 July 2023
Release

Special Note About This Release

  • This is a rather small maintenance update for Versa. We initially planned for this release to include the newest version of DevExpress WPF for Versa (which includes some new features for the grids and a lightweight theme). However there is a bug with the splash screen in the update that DevExpress needs more time to fix.

  • Most likely the next update will be out either later this month or during our maintenance schedule next month.

New Features

Repair Categories

  • We added 5 new default sub-categories for Fannie Mae projects. These actually were available to use since Thursday evening, but we figured we would note them in here:
    • Fannie - Life/Safety
    • Fannie - Critical Repairs
    • Fannie - Deferred Maintenance
    • Fannie - Items of Note
    • Fannie - Short Term Replacement of Capital Items

Improvements

Addresses and Buildings

  • We shortened the maximum length for the following database columns to the indicated character length. This was because these columns were accidently set to "varchar(max)" aka unlimited. This was taking up more space than necessary and causing a potential performance problem.
  • Note that these lengths are much longer than things we normally put into Versa so that we have enough wiggle room. If you try to save something longer than maximum, Versa will either disallow it or truncate the text. Columns with asterisks next to them are not normally visible in Versa.
    • Address.StreetLine1 - 200 characters
    • Address.StreetLine2 - 200 characters
    • Address.City - 200 characters
    • Address.State - 200 characters
    • Address.ZipCode- 25 characters
    • Address.County - 200 characters
    • Building.Name - 200 charaters
    • Building.LastEditedByUser - 128 characters *
    • Building.HudAPIId - 40 characters *

Bug Fixes

Interface Screen

  • Removed an unnecessary event handler on the "Install Date Year" field on the add/edit item panel form that was causing the form to fire off laggy calculation events every time the form was opened up the first time that it was shown.
    • IF you notice any fields suddenly not calculating automatically when changing the Install Date year, please let IT know via JIRA

Other Changes

Updated Dot Net to 7.0.9

  • We updated Versa to the latest version of Microsoft's Dot Net framework, version 7.0.9. This update contains a fix for a security exploit discovered by Microsoft that would have allowed a malicious program or other party to hijack Versa and use it to execute elevated commands.

Telemetry

  • We added telemetry to help us determine which themes are currently being USED with Versa. We suspect that the Windows 10/11 themes are not being used; if the telemetry from this update indicates that is the case, they will be removed to free up space.

PM Data Lookup View Removed

  • We removed the PM Data Lookup View from Versa since the telemetry indicates no one is using that feature. We replaced it with a button that simply opens up PM in your default browser.

Removed Unused Parcel Permissions Group

  • Versa was using a Parcel permissions group that was used previously for beta testing the parcel export. We decided to remove it since it is no longer needed.