What's new in eLabFTW 5.0.0

November 19, 2023

Introduction

The 5.0.0 release is a major release. You can tell because before it was 4.x.y now it’s 5.x.y. But what does it mean exactly?

The major version number has been bumped because there is a breaking change: complete drop of APIv1.

And that’s it, that is the only big thing that changes, and hopefully it won’t impact many users, as everyone is now using APIv2, right? right?

Now, let’s talk about the other changes present in this release.

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 (for Sysadmins)

Update like usual: see documentation.

New features

Users features

New “Custom ID” property

A new property for Experiments and Resources appear: Custom ID. It is a number, and relates to the Category. It allows you to define an ID and easily get the next available ID with the “Get next” button. Useful if you’re importing an existing database of objects, and the number identifying them is important.

Before, when clicking the “Create” button on the top right, you either had a modal window opening asking you for the Category of Resource, or directly creating an Experiment. Now it will also display your pinned Experiments Templates in a window, allowing you to select a template or start from the common template or without any template at all.

Multiple fixes

Multiple minor fixes and enhancements are also part of this release, they are reported by users and it is very useful to have these reports, so if you find an issue, make sure to make it known so it can be fixed!

Admin features

Import an existing user

Previously, only a Sysadmin could modify the relationship between Users and Teams. Now, if the Sysadmin allows it (disabled by default), Admins can import an existing User into their Team.

For that, from the Admin Panel, look for the user you want to add to your team, by checking the box “Include users not in this team”:

Then, go to the ellipsis menu on the right and you will see a new menu entry to add the user to your team:

A Sysadmin is still required to remove a user from a team.

If you’d like to enable this feature on your instance, make sure this setting is active from the Sysconfig Panel:

Archive user without archiving experiments

Previously, archiving a user meant locking and archiving all of their experiments, too. Now this behavior is no longer the default one, but is still possible to toggle it when archiving the user:

Browse by status

The dashboard now also allows you to browse by Status, on top of browsing by Category:

Default ordering

Previously, entries were sorted by the date attribute by default, now the default setting is to sort it with the most recently modified entry first. Existing users will not be impacted by this change, but they can modify their preferences from the User Panel.

Add Czech language

It has been a long time since a new language was added. This release contains Czech as a possible language choice! Thanks to Ondrej Kuda for his help with the translations.

Major update of the text editor

The default text editor (TinyMCE) has been updated to version 6, and new plugins are now available, such as one transforming URL in links automatically, and another allowing to set “Accordions”, or togglable paragraphs:

Sysadmins features

Admin label

When listing users, the column with the team now displays clearly the word “Admin” when the user is Admin in that team. The gold border around the team name wasn’t explicit enough!

Conclusion

There are still many other changes that are not described here (see full changelog), so make sure to update as soon as possible!

Thanks to everyone who contributed directly or not to this release. Reporting issues on the bug tracker or in the chat is very valuable! Make sure to report any bug you might find, even the most minor one, it’s always appreciated!

To report a bug, select “Submit feedback” from the top right help menu:

The adventure continues!