We are extremely excited to announce the release of DronaHQ 6.2. Version 6.2 brings a number of new features, enhancements, security updates, and bug fixes.What’s new?

  • Secure storage : Key-value storage
  • Secure storage : SQLite instance
  • Custom home screen
  • Improved offline sync
  • Feedback and rating mechanism
  • Enhanced quiz submission export
  • New login workflow for client
  • Plugin API for delete notification
  • Single Sign-on for admin portals

How do I get it?

You can download the latest version of the DronaHQ container app from Play Store , App Store and Windows Store , and the DronaHQ SDK/Documentation from our GitHub repository. The DronaHQ Admin Panel has also been updated to allow remote administration of some of these features.

Detailed Overview

SECURE STORAGE

DronaHQ 6.2 now supports secure and sand-boxed storage for each individual micro-apps. Sand-boxing storage for micro-apps prevents a micro-app’s data to be accessed by other micro-apps . There are two types of sand-boxed storage available with this release:

Key-Value Storage – This would allow developers to store discrete values for items such as app preferences, app configuration, or app state. It is similar to the local storage; but values that you place in key-value storage are available to micro-apps within their own instance of the key-value storage. If one micro-app changes a value, other micro-apps cannot see that change. Refer to our documentation for details of what methods are supported with this feature.

SQLite Instance – With this release, we have also added a secure & sand-boxed implementation of standard SQLite database for micro-apps. Refer to the documentation on how to utilize Cordova-sqlite-storage within your apps. Note that the use of SQLite instance is per micro-app within the DronaHQ container, and cannot be cross-referenced across micro-apps.

CUSTOM HOME SCREEN

DronaHQ version 6.2 now provides an ability to customize your client app’s home screen instead of using the default native screens. A lot of you have either already customized, or would like to customize your home screens with a look-and-feel and layout for the micro-app icons that speaks to your brands. This feature enables you to create custom home screens yourselves from the management console, and push it to the client apps. Note that there may be situations where you are only deploying one app for certain users, in which case, you should just skip the default DronaHQ home screen and have the users navigate directly to the micro-app. This new feature not only allows you to modify the layouts and your app icons, you can also decide to add some of the micro-apps to the navigation menu, which come handy if you have too many apps and do not want to have a secondary screen full of icons.

IMPROVED OFFLINE SYNC

With version 6.2, we have also improved the offline sync method available within the client apps. The ‘upload’ method now allows developers to set custom ‘request headers’ & timeout. It also accepts all 2xx responses now as a successful submission, which was restricted to only 200 status codes in previous versions.

Previous ‘upload’ method:
DronaHQ.sync.upload(remoteUrl, requestMethod, requestData, imageLocalPath, successCallback, errorCallback)

New ‘upload’ method:
DronaHQ.sync.upload(remoteUrl, requestMethod, requestData, imageLocalPath, options, successCallback, errorCallback).

  • A new parameter “options” has also been added to the upload object.
  • Request header can now be included as a key-valued pair in the “header” field of the options object.

{ header: [{"key": "value"},{"key": "value"}]}

FEEDBACK & RATING MECHANISM

One of the biggest struggles and complaints with our micro-app ecosystem was the lack of ability to gather user reviews. App administrators did not have a way to capture critical data that would allow them to understand what was making a micro-app tick , what was causing a micro-app to fail, and which aspects of a micro-app could to be improved. Version 6.2 now provide our users the ability to rate each micro-app and provide their valuable feedback in a very intuitive way. By simply long-pressing an app icon on the home screen, and feedback pop-up appears through the user can rate the app and provide his/her feedback.

ENHANCED QUIZ SUBMISSION EXPORT

The DronaHQ Admin Console allowed an admin to export reports that contained the details of any quiz attempted by a user. We have enhanced this feature to now allow a cumulative export containing the details of the quiz attempted by all users in a single report. You no longer need to export the quiz details for each user separately.

NEW LOGIN WORKFLOW FOR CLIENT

One use case that we have seen becoming more and more common is enterprises are now having to provision the DronaHQ client app to external users (such as contractors, vendors, etc.), that may not be a part of their Active Directory (AD). If the enterprise’s client app is provisioned via the AD, there was no way for external users to get access to the client app. To handle this use case, we have made some changes to our login workflow. With the new login workflow, users will be asked for their email first, if their email is connected via AD, they will be redirected to their respective AD login page, else they will asked to enter their password for DronaHQ account.

PLUGIN API FOR DELETE NOTIFICATIONS

App notifications are nothing but messages that alert users about critical activities in their app, and over time these messages (or notifications) lose their meaning or purpose, since they were meant for a particulat period in time. With version 6.2, we have added a capability for micro-apps to delete notifications using the delete notification plugin api. This can be used to clear notifications from the app inbox, such as the ones that are targeted to be viewed only a limited number of times or the ones that have a limited lifespan. Refer the our documentation for more details on how to use the delete notifications API within your apps.

SINGLE SIGN ON FOR ADMIN PORTALS

Another important issue we have been hearing from customers is that often the micro-apps themselves have their own admin portals, with it’s own unique login page. Now, as the number of such micro-apps grow, it becomes extremely tedious to maintain different links for all such micro-app admin portals. To address this issue, we have added an SSO (Single Sign-on) integration for micro-app admin portals with the DronaHQ admin console itself. The SSO integration process itself is extremely easy and well documented to provide you a jump start at implementing the SSO with other admin portals.

THANK YOU

We are proud of this release and would like to thank you (our customers and prospects) for your continuous feedback, and feature requests, which makes it possible to us to continuously improve the product. We already have a good pipeline of new feature requests that we will get started on soon, but please do keep your great feedback coming.