New Features in Release 20.002

While we are constantly working on LL21, we started to merge selected features to the 20-branch. This provides us with the agility to quickly react to frequent demands and offer a much shorter time to market for our subscription customers.

Last week, release 20.002 went online including two major new features:

  1. A new data provider for Google Spreadsheets. Similar to our existing provider for Microsoft Excel, we now have a new way to directly connect to Google Spreadsheets data. Google Spreadsheets is a cloud spread sheet service that allows to enter or import data and run calculations on it.The new provider complements the Google Big Query provider we’ve released in version 20 and allows to easily bind directly to data in the Google cloud. If your file is published on the web (File > Publish to the web” in Google sheets) you can just use:
    var provider = new GoogleSpreadsheetsDataProvider("<Table ID>", true);
    LL.DataSource = provider;
    

    If the data is not published, you need to enable access via the Google Developers Console. Then, you can use the provider like this:

        
    var provider = new GoogleSpreadsheetsDataProvider("<Table ID>", true,
    "<refreshToken>", "<clientID>", "<clientSecret>");
    LL.DataSource = provider;
    

    The refresh token can be created with our token generator app that comes with List & Label.

  2. Supporting PDF as field type. Also in 20.002, we’ve added a new field type “PDF”. This enables easy drag and drop from the Variables-/Fields tree. No more hassle with choosing the correct path, using the correct object etc. Your application can now simply pass all PDFs that are to be available. A sample code would look like this:
        
    using (ListLabel LL = new ListLabel())
    {
          LL.DataSource = <Your Datasource>;
          LL.Variables.Add("Documents.GTC", @"c:\users\public\gtc.pdf",
              LlFieldType.PDF);
          LL.Variables.Add("Documents.Prospectus",
              @"c:\users\public\prospectus.pdf", LlFieldType.PDF);
          LL.Design();
    }
    

    Which gives you the following structure in the field tree:

    From there you can drag and drop the documents to the workspace directly. Also, the PDF object offers a new content mode:

    This makes it much easier for the end user to work with PDF content.

     

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2 Comments on “New Features in Release 20.002”

  1. The PDF field type is great!!! Helps a lot for ordinary users to abstract away file paths. Thanks for that!

    But going this direction further, it would be great to get some kind of List&Label field type. This would allow to create building blocks of smaller entities which can be edited separately but the ordinary user can just drag&drop them from the field/variables list. This would allow to group multiple fields or variables in a visual way together. Some kind of block templates.

    Regards

    Mike

    Reply
  2. Mike,

    Thanks for this excellent suggestion. We’re already thinking in this direction. Actually, we’re about to launch a new user feedback portal (which you could test drive if you’d be interested, just contact me via PM). My next blog post will probably cover this portal.

    Your suggestion would be an excellent addition to the list of suggestions there – if you don’t mind I’ll add it right away.

    -Jochen

    Reply

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