Appspace SharePoint Intranet 5.3 release notes

Carousel Auto-play Controls (Hero & Apps)

Technical Info:

SharePoint Intranet: Hero

The Hero carousel now includes a visible Pause/Play toggle button, giving users full control over automatic slide rotation.

• Pause/Play toggle — Hero carousel
  • A clearly visible Pause/Play button appears on the Hero carousel.
  • When the carousel is running, the button displays Pause. When stopped, it displays Play.
  • The user's chosen state persists for the duration of the page session.
• Apps carousel
  • The auto-rotation animation has been removed from the Apps page carousel.
  • Users navigate between apps using the directional arrows.
• Keyboard and screen reader support
  • The Pause/Play button is fully operable via keyboard (Tab to focus, Enter or Space to activate).
  • The button carries a descriptive label that reflects the action it will perform, ensuring screen reader users understand the current state.

Editor Improvements

Technical Info:

• SharePoint Intranet: Editor Enhancements
• SharePoint Intranet: Text Editor Features

This release includes several improvements to the Appspace SharePoint Intranet editor, providing a more reliable and consistent authoring experience when creating and managing content.

• Links Handling
  • Improvements have been made to how links are handled within the editor, providing a more reliable and consistent experience when inserting, editing, and managing hyperlinks in content.
• Editor Tools Unification
  • The Toggle and Callout block types are now available across all supported content types, including Stories, Standalone Blogs, Blogs, and Sites. This unifies the editor toolset and gives content creators a consistent authoring experience regardless of the content type they are working in.
• Tooltips in Inline Toolbar
  • Tooltips have been added to the inline editor toolbar, providing descriptive labels for each formatting option. This improves discoverability and usability for new and experienced content authors alike.
• Drag & Drop Functionality Improvements
  • Drag and drop behavior within the editor has been enhanced for greater reliability and precision. Users can now reposition content blocks, images, and other elements more smoothly during content creation and editing.
• Reorder Columns & Rows within a Table
  • Authors can now reorder columns and rows within tables directly in the editor, removing the need to delete and recreate table structures when reorganizing content.
• Add or Remove Single Images in Image Galleries on Sites
  • Authors can now add or remove individual images from an image gallery on Sites without having to replace the entire gallery. This provides greater flexibility when managing visual content on site pages.

Data Export Functionality for Editorial Settings Dashboard

Technical Info:

SharePoint Intranet: Export Data

Building on the export capabilities introduced in version 5.2, this release extends data export functionality across additional areas of the Manage Spaces Dashboard and Editorial Settings. Global Admins and Global Editorial Managers can export datasets as timestamped CSV files for reporting, auditing, and planning purposes.

• Manage Spaces — spaces data
  • Global Admins can export a complete, unfiltered dataset of all enabled spaces — including Sites, Blogs, and Communities — as a timestamped CSV file.
• Organizational structure
  • Global Admins and Global Editorial Managers can export the full organizational structure — all nodes and sites — as a CSV file that reflects the hierarchical relationships between items.
  • The export includes the title and description for every node and site.
• Snippets
  • An Export button is available on the Snippets Dashboard, positioned in the top right corner and consistent in style with the Tags and Audiences pages.
  • Clicking the button opens a dropdown menu with export options. The button is visible only to users with Admin or Editorial Manager permissions.
• Tags
  • An Export button appears on the main Tags page and triggers an immediate CSV download containing all tags in the system, regardless of source.
  • The export includes three columns: Title, Source (e.g., Activities, Communities, Pages, Stories), and Entity (the specific object the tag is linked to).
  • The Export button is hidden when a search or filter is active, and reappears when the full list is restored.
• Audiences
  • An Export button is available on the Audiences management page, positioned alongside the New Category button and consistent in style with other export controls across the platform.
  • The export includes all audiences in a flat, filterable format (one row per audience), maintaining the two-level Category > Audience hierarchy.
  • Columns include the parent category, the audience name, the AD groups assigned to the audience, and the list of individually targeted users.
• Apps
  • Global Admins, Global Editorial Managers, and Local Entity Admins can export app data from the Editorial Settings App pages.
  • Two export types are available: a detailed app inventory with metadata for auditing and ownership tracking, and a summary of app counts per category for high-level reporting across entities.

Joining a moderated or restricted community now requires fewer steps for both members and community owners.

• Members can:
  • Click a single Request Membership button within the community to submit a join request.
  • Receive an automatic notification confirming whether their request was approved or declined.
  • Gain immediate access to the community upon approval, with no further action required.
• Community owners can:
  • Receive an automatic notification — by email or in-app — when a user requests membership, including the user's name and profile link.
  • Approve or decline the request directly from the notification, without navigating to a separate page.
• Applies to: Moderated and Restricted communities.

Community wiki pages now support version history, consistent with the versioning already available for Pages, Stories, and Community Blogs.

• Wiki authors and community owners can:
  • View the full version history of any published wiki, including the date, time, and author of each saved version.
  • Preview any previous version in read-only mode.
  • Restore a previous version by loading its title and body content back into the editor. The restored content must be saved to become the new published version, which is then logged as the next version in the history.
• Version tracking scope:
  • A new version is created only when a published wiki's title or body content is updated and saved. Changes to files, tags, or other metadata do not trigger a new version.
  • Drafts and unpublished content do not generate version history. If no published versions exist yet, the Version History panel displays a No history available message.
• Access:
  • Version history is visible only to the wiki author and community owners with edit permissions. Regular users cannot access it.

Users can now add or edit alternative text (alt text) for images attached to posted comments, ensuring image content is accessible to screen reader users across all activity types.

• Users can:
  • Access an Add Alt Text option from the three-dot menu on any comment that contains images. The option appears after See Translation and before Report.
  • Add or edit descriptive alt text for each image in the comment via a dedicated modal. If alt text already exists, the input field pre-populates with the current value.
  • Save changes directly from the modal. The alt text is permanently associated with the image and applied as the HTML alt attribute wherever the image is displayed.
• Applies to comments on:
  • Updates, Events, Praises, Wikis, Blogs, and Files across Activities (Newsfeeds, Communities, and My Profile), Stories, Pages, and Standalone Blog posts.
• Keyboard and screen reader support:
  • The Add Alt Text trigger is fully keyboard-operable (Tab to focus, Enter or Space to activate).
  • Focus moves into the modal on open, is trapped while the modal is active, and returns to the trigger on close or Escape.
  • Screen readers announce the modal purpose on open, the input field label, and the updated alt text when navigating past the image after saving.