Update 18

Update 18 for Vision launches on Monday, November 18th, 2024. Services will be down for approximately 30 minutes while we complete the update, and of course, we'll notify all users when services are back online.

The maintenance window start times are as follows:

Summary

Update 18's primary focus is to integrate importing into Vision. We know it's been a long time coming, but there's so much more to importing than you may first think, and the customer experience is always at the forefront of everything we do.

Additionally, Update 18 simplifies users by removing unused permissions, and external users are now view-only internal users. Moving forward, they're all simply users!

Let's dive into the details!

Importing

Our customer-facing team has been testing importing in our development environment until we are sure it is ready for the live system. Now it's live, they'll spend some time using it on your behalf until we're sure it delivers the very best experience.

Importing isn't just as simple as throwing a file up and turning it into data records. Bad geography, incomplete addresses, missing data, poorly formatted data, unescaped bad characters, and duplicate postcodes in an allocation are just a few examples of things that can go wrong. We want to ensure it handles things as best as possible so that when you click "import", you'll get what you expect to see.

In the meantime, having it available to the entire customer-facing team will allow us to import even faster on your behalf.

Removing external users

This feature has been available since 2016 and is still utilised by only a tiny fraction of our customers. Moving forward, internal and external users will be one and the same - users!

The benefit is that now every type of user can access any layer you want them to, including Postcodes and ZIP codes (for example) that were previously unavailable to external users.

And don't confuse external users with sharing. You can still create as many territory shares as you like!

How external users will be migrated on the update

You needn't worry. We'll automatically convert all external users into regular users. Those active in the previous 90 days will be converted into view-only users with the same layers they were previously given. Those inactive for more than 90 days will be removed from your organisation, and any access to your data will be revoked. 

Please note that each user will now take up one of your user licences. If you're already at your limit, they'll still be added at no extra cost.

Simpler permissions for users

When we launched Vision, we tried to imagine all of the permissions options our customers would want. After 8 years, it's clear what wasn't needed, so we're removing many unused permissions in favour of a more straightforward approach and making your lives easier when adding new users.

The remaining permissions are for exporting, editing, and both organisation and billing administration.