Release Notes

Just like the FirstSpirit-Core, the use of third-party components is subject to intensive quality assurance. A plethora of supported operating systems, Java versions, interfaces to third-party systems and their combination and configuration options lead to an extremely high test complexity. In order to be able to ensure good serviceability and sustainability for the further development of FirstSpirit, the support for components that are no longer supported and/or used in regular intervals is discontinued. During a transitional period, customers and partners are given sufficient time to switch the operation, including with support provided by e-Spirit Technical Support, to alternative solutions. In the final step, the software code for components that are no longer supported will then be removed.

For the integrated “InternalJetty” web server, this last step was completed with the latest FirstSpirit Release.
The functionality has no longer been supported since August 2018 (2018-08) and has been discontinued by e-Spirit for quite some time.

The use of an external web server (specifically “Apache Tomcat”) is recommended as a substitution.
For new installations of FirstSpirit as of Release 2022.1, the “Jetty Web Server” is used as a web server as standard. This is a system module that is included in FirstSpirit (“FirstSpirit Jetty Server”). A configuration is possible using this module (FirstSpirit ServerManager / Server properties/ Modules / “FirstSpirit Jetty Server”).

Notes for existing FirstSpirit installations (migration)
A migration only affects on-premise customers and should already have been completed.
In the rare case that the “InternalJetty” is still configured for one or more web applications, a corresponding note has been displayed on the FirstSpirit start page for FirstSpirit administrators (“Application(s) of the internal Jetty detected...”).
If an external web server is not already being used, then before an update to FirstSpirit 2022.1, the “InternalJetty” must be deactivated (INTERNAL_SERVLET_ENGINE=0 parameter in the fs-server.conf file) and “FirstSpirit Jetty Server” must be activated and configured as web server.
With an update to FirstSpirit 2022.1, web applications that are still using the “InternalJetty” will be migrated automatically to the web server that is configured for the FirstSpirit default application “FirstSpirit start page” (fs5root). If this is not possible, the web applications are migrated to the “FirstSpirit Jetty Server”.
For more information about the migration of a web server, see https://docs.e-spirit.com/odfs/edocs/admi/firstspirit-ser/server-properti/web-server/index.html#migrieren_eines_webservers.

Fallback generation directory
If no web server is configured or for web servers of type “Tomcat” no web directory is specified (= the field “Web directory” is empty), a generation is done (as before) automatically into the directory

~/web/fs5staging

The directory ~/web served so far as generation directory of the “InternalJetty” and will be omitted in the future completely.
Therefore it is planned to adapt also the fallback generation directory with a future release accordingly.
In order to be able to determine more easily now whether the ~/web directory is still used in projects, with FirstSpirit 2022.1 the following will be recorded in the log in the case of a fallback (log level INFO):

Fallback to web directory:[...]

Removing parameters and files that are no longer needed
The following parameters in the fs-server.conf are no longer needed and should be removed when the “InternalJetty” is no (longer) used:

INTERNAL_SERVLET_ENGINE

# root directory of all web applications
WEB_DIR

# WEBAPP_xyz_PATH: directory of this web application
WEBAPP_ROOT_PATH
WEBAPP_WEBEDIT5_PATH
WEBAPP_WEBMON_PATH
WEBAPP_STAGING_PATH
WEBAPP_PREVIEW_PATH

WEBAPP_WEBEDIT_PATH

Likewise, the fs-webapp.xml file is no longer needed and can be removed.

The following modules and extensions are compatible with FirstSpirit 2022.1:

With FirstSpirit 2021-09, the release interval was changed from monthly to every 4 weeks.
At the turn of the year to 2022, the name of the release has now been adjusted to this condition: to create releases with more flexibility, the release name is no longer based on the digits of the month (e.g. FirstSpirit 2021-12) but uses a continuous counter. The digits of the year are separated from this counter with a period, e.g.

2022.1

for the first release of the year 2022.

The release name is used in familiar places such as info dialog boxes.

You will continue to receive information on new releases in the Community.
FirstSpirit instances of Cloud customers are automatically updated to the respective latest release (as part of the so-called “Patch Days”).

The navigation bar, which can be opened on the left-hand side of the screen, maps the hierarchical structure of the site (“Navigation” tab) or the page currently selected (“Page” tab) in a clear tree structure.

Various information about the elements of the navigation bar is visualized in form of icons, e.g. the workflow status, if metadata has been set, etc.
With the latest release, the display has been revised:

• While the element type icons continue to be displayed in front of the respective node, all other icons are now displayed after the element for better clarity.
• The design of some icons was marginally revised.

Overview of some visualizations:

released	no special visualization
edited / changed
in workflow
start node
hidden
metadata defined

If a corresponding workflow is configured for the project (FirstSpirit ServerManager / Project properties / Options / Workflow to delete elements), menu levels can now also be deleted directly in the navigation bar by using the “Delete” action.

The “Tailored UI” function allows for the project-specific arrangement, hiding, and disabling of functions in the ContentCreator. With this method, the interface of the ContentCreator can be adjusted comfortably to the requirements of each project as well as those of the editors. This is configured using the project component “CXT ContentCreator: Feature Configuration ProjectApp” (“FirstSpirit ServerManager/Project Properties/Project Components”).

Until now, the configuration affected all users of the respective project. With the latest release, the configuration can be limited to specific user groups.

The corresponding configuration dialog has now been expanded and marginally adjusted accordingly:

Configuration dialog
By default, the “Default availability” applies to the selected function. The function is thereby generally available to and can be used by all users of the project.

Via the options

• “Available for all users”
• “Available for selected groups only”

it is now possible to choose between an availability for all users on one hand and for users of specific groups on the other.

Available for all users: The function is available for all users of the project.

Available for selected groups only: The function is limited to (one or more) user group(s). The desired groups can be selected using the Plus icon. All groups that are defined for the project are thereby available. See also Dialog “Add groups” paragraph.
If groups are defined (groups are shown in the box), they will only be evaluated when the “Available for selected groups only” option is activated.
If no groups are defined (no groups are shown in the box), but the “Available for selected groups only” option is activated, the function is not available to any users (“unavailable”).

Dialog “Add groups”
The list of groups in the “Add groups” dialog is sorted alphabetically. External groups appear at the end of the list.
Groups that are no longer valid (such as deleted groups), are shown in red font.

Configuration on server level
All external groups of known projects are offered in the respective configuration dialog in the Dialog “Add groups”.

Whether group restrictions have been made for a function can be checked in the overview.

For more information about the “Tailored UI”, see https://docs.e-spirit.com/odfs/template-develo/contentcreator/customization/standard-functi/index.html.

FirstSpirit 2022.1 supports the following module versions for “FirstSpirit Content Experience Tools”.

* These modules require FirstSpirit 2020-03 or higher from this version.

The new .getGid method of the GidAgent interface (FirstSpirit Developer API, Package de.espirit.firstspirit.common) enables the determination of the GID of elements.

If the output of metadata is activated for the JSON generation via

$CMS_SET(#global.json.metaDataRendering, true)$

it will now also be included in the output for sections accordingly, e.g.

...
 "meta_field": {
         "fsType": "CMS_INPUT_TEXT",
         "name": "meta_field1",
         "value": "content_value1"
      }
...