The new DRACOON web app is expected to be deployed on the DRACOON cloud in mid-December and will then replace the existing web app. On this page, you will find the information you need to prepare for the migration to the new web app. You will also learn how you can already provide your individual branding (e.g. company logo) so that it will be available for your users in time for the launch of the new web app.
General questions about the new web app
The new DRACOON web app is the successor to the current DRACOON web app. It is a completely new product and has been in development for more than 18 months. The new web app is expected to replace the current web app in mid-December on the DRACOON cloud.
Time has come for a new DRACOON web app!
Web technologies have evolved dramatically over the last few years, e.g. through continuous innovations in HTML5. Today, web browsers offer technical possibilities unthinkable just a few years ago. Web applications taking advantage of those new web technologies are no longer inferior to classic desktop applications. Modern frameworks such as Angular offer a powerful basis for design and development of enormously powerful and user-friendly web applications, which can be equally used on mobile devices as well as on traditional computers.
Therefore, in 2018, we started creating a new web app from scratch: a completely new solution without any of the existing limitations, built from the ground up and using the latest web technologies.
Our goals:
- Faster overall performance
- Smoother user experience in general by converting many blocking operations into background processes (e.g. uploads in the background, no more delays when displaying long lists)
- Responsive design (the new web app can be fully used on mobile devices)
- More clarity, modern appearance, and higher usability (UX), e.g. by following Google's Material Design principles
- Easier expandability with new features through a new architecture with stronger modularity; this should also simplify the testing of newly developed features in the future and ensure the best possible quality of new releases.
Of course, the new web app will also offer new features that are not yet available in the current web app.
Examples of new features:
- File comments (to discuss files with your team, for example)
- Profile pictures for users
- Upload of entire folder structures using drag and drop
- Upload queue with separate display of completed and failed uploads
- Shared files can be replaced by a new version of the file while preserving the share link.
- When uploading files to encrypted data rooms, it is no longer required to manually create file keys for other users (now happens automatically in the background)
With very few exceptions, the new web app offers all the features of the previous web app (and of course much more that was not possible before).
After we redesigned the entire web app and put all existing features to the test, we did not include the following features in the new web app anymore:
- Dashboard: The dashboard was helpful at most when using DRACOON the very first time, but was later often perceived as superfluous and even annoying, especially for regular users (non-administrators). The statistics displayed on the dashboard can now be found in the Reporting Tool.
- News & Downloads: This area has been removed because it has not been used by most end users and because outdated information was displayed in many environments (e.g. download links to old client versions). News & Downloads about DRACOON are now available—always up-to-date—on the DRACOON support page (support.dracoon.com), which can be reached via the Help command, for example.
- Start data room for users: Due to the changed rights concept since version 4 of DRACOON, this setting no longer made sense. In the future, users will be able to determine which data room to open first after signing in themselves.
- "Notify" button: You could use this button in the previous web app to inform other users of the data room about certain files. This feature will be replaced in the future by an automatic notification feature, e.g. for file changes, which will make manual notifications obsolete. However, the new notification model is not yet included in this first version of the new web app and will be released in a later version.
- Mandatory password when sharing files classified as "Confidential": The behavior when sharing files classified as "Confidential" has been aligned with that of the other DRACOON clients: Sharing such files in the new web app is also possible without password protection by default (of course a password protection can still be specified if required, but it is no longer mandatory).
Yes, the new web app can also be customized through branding. The new web app uses the new DRACOON Branding, which allows you to define the branding for the web app yourself. For example, you can specify the company logo, colors, and links to the privacy statement or imprint on your own, without having to contact the DRACOON team as with the previous branding.
If your DRACOON environment runs on the DRACOON cloud, you should now prepare a branding for the new web app and store it using the DRACOON Branding web application so that your branding will be available to your users at launch of the new web app. Enter your regular DRACOON address in the browser and add /branding to the address to access the branding configuration for your environment.
We recommend a modern browser like Google Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, or Safari for the new web app.
Internet Explorer 11 is still supported, but we do no longer recommend using it.
Internet Explorer 11 development was discontinued more than 5 years ago; since then, the browser only gets security updates. In the last 5 years, web technologies have evolved enormously, and Internet Explorer 11 has fallen behind. Even its JavaScript engine can no longer compete with those of modern browsers, resulting in slower performance of web applications such as the DRACOON web app.
Also, one new feature of the new web app—the upload of entire folder structures via drag and drop—is not available with Internet Explorer because the necessary technical requirements are not present in Internet Explorer.
Yes, the new web app is available for testing as a current beta version. If your DRACOON environment runs on the DRACOON cloud, you can even test the beta version with your existing data. More information about the beta version can be found at Public beta of the new DRACOON web app
For DRACOON cloud users:
What you should do before the switch to the new web app
The new web app is expected to be installed on the DRACOON cloud in mid-December. The old web app will then no longer be available. Your users will therefore automatically get the new web app after the switch if they enter the address of your DRACOON environment in their browser. Please carry out the following steps until the 10th of December to ensure that your users will experience a smooth transition to the new web app:
- Provide a branding for the new web app (not relevant for "Team Cloud" customers).
- Read about the changes to existing features in the new web app so you can help your users with any questions they may have after the transition.
- Familiarize yourself with the new web app by trying out the beta version.
For more information about these topics, see the information below.
1. Provide a branding for the new web app
If your previous web app had its own branding—e.g. if your company logo was displayed in the web app—it cannot be automatically transferred to the new web app. Therefore, you must provide new branding resources for the new web app so that your users can continue to see your custom logo, for example, instead of the default DRACOON logo after the switch to the new web app.
For the previous web app, your branding had to be set up by the DRACOON team—for the new web app you can now do this yourself. The DRACOON Branding web application is available for this purpose. It allows you to define the following items for the branding of the new web app (of course not all of them have to be defined):
- company logo
- background image for the login page
- base color and accent color (The existing base color from your previous branding will be automatically transferred into the branding of the new web app before the switch).
- links to imprint, privacy policy, and support page
- text for terms of use
Please note that the company logo and background image are now required in a higher resolution than before so that they look great on modern 4K monitors. As a result, you probably cannot reuse the original image files from your previous branding and you may have to request them from your marketing division, for example.
Instructions: How to provide a branding for the new DRACOON web app
2. Changes in the new web app
When we rebuilt the new web app from scratch, we wanted to take the opportunity to also redesign the user interface—with the goal of significantly simplifying it. Therefore, some elements in the new web app now have different names and can be found in a different place than before. The following table gives you an overview of the changes:
| Changed element | Change in the new web app |
|---|---|
| Icon for data rooms | Data rooms are now identified by a folder icon sporting a DRACOON logo: |
| Name for shares |
|
| Location of the list of all existing shares | The list of all existing shares can now be found in the left side pane under Links. |
| Location of the number of existing shares of a file | The number of existing shares of a file is now displayed in the right side pane after selecting the file. Example: |
| Location of the expiration date of a file | The expiration date of a file is now displayed in the right side pane after selecting the file. |
| Location to specify the number of items displayed per page | This setting can now be found in the user account. To change it, click your profile picture at the top right, click Manage profile, and then click View. |
| Location of the File preview command (for images) | The file preview (now called detail view) is now displayed after clicking a file name and now fills the entire browser window. Clicking a file name no longer downloads a file, but always opens the detail view. |
Location of enlarged thumbnail (previously displayed when pointing to a thumbnail of images and PDF files) |
The enlarged thumbnail for images and PDF files is now displayed at the bottom of the right sidebar (after selecting the file). |
| Location of the Edit file command (rename, change classification or expiration date, for example) | After selecting a file, its file name, classification, expiration date, and annotation are displayed in the right side pane and can be changed there directly. |
| Location of the Download Zip command | If multiple files are selected, a bundled zip download is automatically initiated after clicking Download in the right side pane. |
| Location of the Create new folder command | The New folder command can be found in the right sidebar—but only if no file is currently selected. If a file is selected, first remove the check mark in front of the file to make the New folder command visible. |
| Location of the recycle bin and previous file versions | At the right of the path navigation bar, click the three-dots button, and a menu will appear that contains the Recycle bin command at the bottom: |
| Location of the Connect as drive command | At the right of the path navigation bar, click the three-dots button, and a menu will appear that contains the Copy WebDAV path command. |
| Location of the Show permissions command (with which a user of a data room can look up all other users in the room and their permissions.) | At the right of the path navigation bar, click the three-dots button, and a menu will appear that contains the Permissions command. |
| Location of the Manage data rooms command | At the right of the path navigation bar, click the three-dots button, and a menu will appear that contains the Display all data rooms command. The list of managed data rooms is no longer a separate one, but part of the regular room/folder/file list. If you have enabled Display all data rooms, those data rooms that you are only allowed to manage but cannot use yourself are displayed as part of the general room/folder/file list—but dimmed to distinguish them from your regular, usable rooms. |
| Location of user management | User management can now be found in the left side pane under Settings. |
| Location of assigning user permissions to a data room |
In the new web app, user permissions for a data room are only assigned from within the room (which was already possible before), but no longer in user management (after all, changing room permissions is the task of the room administrator, not the general user manager).
|
| Location of assigning user roles (e.g. the "Auditor" role) |
|
| Location of group management | Group management can now be found in the left side pane under Settings > Groups. |
| Location of the system log | The system log has been removed from the new web app because it already is available in the Reporting Tool (reporting.dracoon.com). |
| Location of displaying used user accounts, total occupied storage space, and total number of all rooms/folders/files (previously on the Dashboard) | The numbers of already consumed user accounts and occupied storage space are now displayed at the bottom of the left side pane after clicking Settings: The total number of files, folders, and data rooms is displayed in the Reporting Tool (reporting.dracoon.com). |
| Location of the system settings | In the left side pane, click Settings. The former system settings sections are now listed for instant access in the left side pane under Configuration: |
3. Familiarize yourself with the new web app by trying out the beta version
To familiarize yourself with the new web app, you should try the beta version that we provide, if you have not already done so. As a user of the DRACOON cloud, you can even access your existing DRACOON data with the beta version and try the new web app under real conditions.
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