We recently launched the latest release of Akumina’s digital engagement software, version 3.4, which includes our revolutionary release of multilingual content support as well as many other enhancements and features focused on saving developers, site admins and content authors time while simplifying the process for building out new and engaging digital experiences.

Over the last month, we've received an overwhelming amount of great feedback and support from our customers, partners and third-party analysts. We wanted to take a moment to provide a deeper dive into the 3.4 release to outline the most popular features and enhancements for those who may be interested in embarking on a digital workplace solution or for those customers who have not yet upgraded.

Multilingual Content Support

Unlike other intranet platforms, our support for multilingual is truly unique as it goes well beyond content support and allows organizations to deliver the right content in the right language as well as deliver unique experiences per language - a game changer for global organizations utilizing the Microsoft technology stack.

Easily Build and Localize Sites in Multiple Languages

A multilingual site structure should reflect your business, not be dictated by it. Akumina enables a site to have any number of languages inside of it whether you support 20 languages globally or have two languages you’re looking to display content in.

Akumina's unique simplified approach allows for only one single front-end experience and one site collection to support multiple languages. Therefore, organizations do not need multiple dedicated sites for each language nor would they require support to maintain multiple site collections.

Content versions can also be created from any source language to any target language, whether it’s English to Spanish or French to Japanese, any direction is supported.

Full Multilingual Content Control

To help admins and users easily manage multilingual content support through their intranet or site experience we provide intuitive apps in our AppManager allowing you to easily setup, configure and manage content for multiple languages. With the Language Manager app, users can setup new sites choosing from a list of 205 IETF language tags as well as configure default fallback language support and control what languages are visible on the front-end intranet site.

Token System for Managing Static Content

In addition to supporting managed content, Akumina has a unique token system which allows static content to be automatically replaced during page rendering with the appropriate language terms.

Unique Multilingual Tools & Content Publishing

Akumina goes the extra mile to make sure working with multilingual content is quick and easy. Multilingual content creation can be done by business users easily without any training. Akumina’s platform provides unique tools including automated language version creation and a side-by-side compare mode of language versions of a content item to aid in translating content, or identifying translation issues.

Site Widget Functionality is Language Specific

Site widget functionality can be personalized per language. This is a truly unique experience that will allow organizations to create unique experiences easily per language, meaning that the functionality and behavior of the intranet site can be tailored to the active language. For example, if you had a company calendar you could display image thumbnails and event titles in the English version but only display event titles and not thumbnail images for the German version. Culture specific media is also supported, meaning you can display different images, videos and other media options depending on the language.

Delete Functionality in Content Apps

New to the 3.4 release is the ability to easily delete content within content apps. Knowledge workers can now easily delete an event from a calendar or a news article, for example, removing the burden from IT users to have to delete content. Delete permissions are fully under admin control on a content app basis.

Add New "Widget Views" Faster

We’ve now added the ability to easily add new views per widgets. Widgets for reference are simply the building blocks populated on a site that control how content is displayed and the user experience. Last fall, we released a fundamental change to our widget framework resulting in increased flexibility related to how widgets are created, edited and displayed on sites, you can read about more in a past announcement.

Within 3.4, users now can add new views to be uploaded and configured to a widget directly within the Widget Manager without having to separately add the view within the view manager first, thus making adding new views quicker and simpler to perform.

Sync User Data from SharePoint Profile Service

The Akumina platform allows you to deliver personalized and contextual content based on user data such as their location, job role and department. We’ve now added the ability to synchronize and pull in user data out of the box from SharePoint Profile Service in addition to Azure Active Directory. You can also use our simple integration tools to connect to any people data source.

Add Multiple Admin and Reporting Groups to Global Settings

Previously, only one group was allowed for selection in the admin and reporting group fields within the global settings for each site. Now, you have the ability to specify multiple admin and or reporting groups providing organizations more flexibility and supporting options for how you structure your governance using permission groups.

Internal Helpers

With our 3.4 release we’ve also added internal helpers for developers to help make code easier to write and understand for JavaScript developers including a CAML Query Builder and Get List Method.

CAML Query Builder

The CAML Query Builder providers an easy way to generate CAML query inside of JavaScript, this frees up the developer from having write CMAL HTML by hand or looking up CAML syntax to retrieve an appropriate CAML query which our often hard to remember.

The CAML Query Builder Object only requires two inputs – CAML Query Criteria object (which contains the properties) and the row images (which is the number of rows that will be returned).

Simplified Retrieval Code for Developers - Get List Method

The Get List Method has been added to the Akumina framework to provide an easier and cleaner way for developers to retrieve data from list within JavaScript. This results in list retrieval code that is easier to write, understand, and modify than its standard JavaScript object model counterpart.

Interested in learning more or seeing a demo? Book a demo today and experience first-hand how the Akumina digital workplace platform can transform your workforce!