eniston Changelog

Today we released an update that fixes 8 small bugs. Those were mostly behind the scenes, like slow queries and errors during background jobs.

It is now also possible to rename subcategories. Finally, right? We know that this has been long overdue, sorry it took so long.

Ever since we launched eniston in 2020, it was possible to use a custom subdomain like help.domain.com.

Over the years, more and more customers asked to use their root domain (e.g. domain.com) as their custom domain for eniston.

As root domains technically cannot have a CNAME record (which is basically just an alias of a domain), it is needed to use an A record that points to a certain IP address. We always avoided going this route because if we ever want to move our platform elsewhere, our IP address would change and customers would need to update their A records or their workspaces would not work anymore.

That being said, we recently moved eniston to a different provider and we don't plan to move again any time soon.

Because of that, we added the possibility to use root domains as custom domain. We updated our setup instructions accordingly.

This is one of those updates that you don't see, but hopefully still notice.

We migrated our infrastructure to another service provider and took the chance to also upgrade the underlying servers and software to their latest versions. It was initially planned to also move from eniston.io to eniston.com for the main domain, but we ran into various issues a couple of hours after the switch that we decided to roll back on that.

You should hopefully feel that everything runs faster and snappier, as the overall performance improved significantly after the upgrade. We also refactored a few slow queries and will continue to refactor more parts of the code to improve speed and security.

Our main datacenter remains in Germany, but we recognize that our customers are spread all over the globe. Because of that, latency may be the reason eniston is somewhat slower to you, depending on where you are. We are currently preparing our first datacenter outside of Germany.

Because the majority of our customers are located in the US and Canada, our first additional datacenter will be located in the western region of the USA. We plan to introduce this datacenter sometime in April, with more following later this year.

Today we fixed a handful of bugs and added minor additions.

You can now see which team member has two-factor authentication activated and who hasn't. In a future update, we will also add an option for admins to force 2FA for all team members.

We also added an option to reset article views. While building and testing your workspace, you automatically generate views for articles when viewing them in the frontend. This data is used for the "Popular articles" view as well as the "Most viewed articles" in the dashboard. You may reset this data from within the workspace settings if needed to get a clean start.

Today, we shipped a small improvement that will probably reduce our weekly support tickets by ~10%. Ever since we launched our "Team" feature, the process was this:

• Admin invites member
• Member receives invite via email
• Member creates account
• A default workspace is created along with a 30-day trial
• Member is confused about the trial notice
• Member has to actively accept the invite
• Member has to actively use the workspace switch to access the team he / she was invited to

And yeah, that caused a lot of confusion and admins asking us why members have to pay for eniston. We simply didn't communicate it well enough and had built a process, that was simply confusing. But we learn, we change, and we improve. And no, team members never had to pay anything for as long as they are part of a team.

The new process looks like this:

• Admin invites member
• Member receives invite via email
• Member creates account and automatically joins team

No more manual accepting, no need to manually switch the workspace and hopefully, a lot less confusion on all sides. It's a small change, but we're sure a very needed one.

Today's update mainly focuses on our "Docs" theme. We added new options, tweaked a few things and improved the performance.

Custom copyright notice

As of today, it is possible to provide a custom copyright notice. The default looks something like this:

© 2024 Workspace One

So essentially the copyright sign, current year and the name of the workspace. You are now free to put whatever you like there. So something like © 2020-2024 Miller Co. is now possible. You can use the placeholder ###YEAR### to insert the current year. The copyright notice can be changed in the "General" workspace settings. This change applies to both themes.

Disable table of contents

We also added an option to disable the table of contents for the "Docs" theme. Many like it, many don't. If you decide to disable the TOC, think about the people viewing your workspace. Maybe they prefer to have it. Anyway, it's now up to you, the admin, to disable or enable it. It's enabled by default.

Navigation

We also improved (hopefully) the navigation of the "Docs" theme. It is now possible to click on a category title to get to the detail view. This was kind of hidden before, as it was only accessible by using the breadcrumb navigation.

We also added an option to collapse all categories by default and only allow one category to be open at a time. This may be handy if you have a very large navigation. You can change this behavior in the "Appearance" settings of your workspaces.

As a part of "going with what's popular", we decided to integrate an AI assistant into our editor. The AI assistant is powered by OpenAI ChatGPT 4 and lives right where you need it when creating and editing content.

The AI assistant can help with various tasks such as creating completely new content (if you have a writer's block), improve writing, expand text and a couple of more pre-defined prompts.

Consider this an "early access" phase as we're still fine-tuning a few things over then new weeks.

The AI assistant is part of our "Enhanced Editor" add-on, which currently costs €7.49 per month. Other features are custom text color and text background color, as well as footnotes. We plan to launch additional editor features which will be included in the subscription.

Please note that AI responses can be inaccurate, so be sure to fact check certain things. We cannot be held responsible for false claims and inaccurate information provided by ChatGPT.

Yesterday we upgraded our systems to the latest versions and missed to upgrade some underlying dependencies. That was causing errors when uploading images via our editor. This is now fixed.

One thing that has been requested over and over again was the ability to duplicate an entire workspace. Starting today, this is finally possible.

When duplicating workspaces, all categories, subcategories and articles will be duplicated into a new workspace. Most of the settings will be duplicated as well, but not all. You also have to invite your team to the duplicated workspace, as those are not duplicated.

Those things are not duplicated into the new workspace:

• Workspace custom domain
• Workspace team
• Article ratings and feedback
• Article shadow categories
• Related articles

To duplicate a workspace, simply head over to your workspace settings and scroll all the way down. In addition to transferring and deleting a workspace, you now see the option to duplicate the workspace.

Two-factor authentication (2FA)

We also added the possibility to add an additional layer of security to accounts. When set up, a one-time code needs to be entered in addition to regular login credentials. You will need an authenticator app like Authy, Microsoft Authenticator, or Google Authenticator - the choice is yours.

To enable 2FA, simply go to your account settings and find the section "Two-factor authentication".

Custom scripts

Ever since eniston launched in 2020, we never allowed custom scripts / integrations to be added freely, due to security concerns. Over time, we added many pre-defined integrations that could be easily added to workspaces.

We understand that this is slowing down processes for some of our customers, that is why starting today, custom scripts can be added. We are being notified when custom scripts are added or edited and reserve the right to remove scripts that try to harm the integrity of our platform.

Bug fixes

We also fixes a few smaller bugs, mostly under the hood, but also a couple of styling issues were fixed in the backend.

Today we shipped a tiny improvement (we hope) for the editor.

The editor now uses the browser's spell-checker and highlights words that may not be correct. It is now also possible to right-click within the editor and access the browser's default context menu.

Today's update brings a few improvements to the "Articles" list, as well as a choice for the default view mode (Dark / Light / System) and two bug fixes.

Articles list

The "Articles" list provides a quick glimpse into all articles that exist within a workspace. It is sorted alphabetically by default. Due to quite a few requests, we added a new view that will allow you to group those articles by category. The view preference is stored in the current session and will eventually reset to the default sorting.

Default view mode

Dark mode, light mode, system preference... everyone has different preferences and some change during the day. The default mode for the frontend view (where you and visitors view your workspaces) has always been light mode. Visitors were able to switch to dark mode if they preferred.

That switch still exists and won't go anywhere. But we added a new option to the "Appearance" settings that allow you to set the default mode. Visitors will still be able to use the toggle to switch the mode however they prefer. This is stored in the browser's local storage, and if a preference was already set by a recurring visitor, changing this value in the settings won't overwrite it.

Bug fixes

We also fixed a bug that would throw a server error when a draft article had a shadow category assigned. Draft articles don't appear in the frontend, but we missed a little where clause in our database query that would allow them to sneak in when shadow categories were loaded. This is now fixed.

Another bug we fixed was causing paginations to miss track of which page you were on. So when going back and forth, at some point, an error 404 would be thrown. Really weird, but yeah, that is now also fixed.

Today's update brings a lot of smaller improvements to the backend, as well as a new feature and a bunch of bug fixes.

Filelist

First off, we added a filelist to get an easy overview of images that were added via the editor. You can see how often files are referenced (used within articles) and also delete them if they are not used anymore. You may also copy the link to an image to re-use it in other articles without uploading it again.

With this update, we also separated the export. The workspace export in the workspace settings does not include files anymore. Files can now be exported directly from within the filelist. The export will also include attachments that were added to articles.

In a future update, we will also include article attachments in the filelist for easy reference.

Business Lifetime plan

We also added a "Business Lifetime" plan for people who don't want to subscribe yet to another service. This plan is currently reduced, sort of a "early-bird" special if you will. So grab it while you have a chance.

More about this new plan can be found in our dedicated blogpost.

Bug fixes

We also fixed 7 little bugs, including an issue that would appear in the team list after having more than 15 people on your team. The pagination should now respect a list of more than 15 members.

Also, when an article was indexed for search (= can be found via the search in the frontend) and then disabled again, it would still be searchable and an error 404 (not found) would be thrown when trying to open the article. Our indexer now removes articles that are not enabled anymore.

Many little UI changes

We also changed A LOT of tiny things across the whole backend area. From colors, to spacings, to font sizes - almost every part of the backend was slightly updated or modified.

One last thing...

It is now possible to directly chat with us from within the backend. No need to go to our dedicated help center article anymore. The chat can be enabled and disabled at any time.