Kollaborate Server 3.9.2 - Dec 31 2024

Important: The Docker image is configured to convert the current database to your MariaDB version automatically. As such, we would recommend backing up the database before upgrading to any version as you may be unable to downgrade otherwise. You can download the current database as a .sql file from the Tools section of the Admin Area. We recommend doing this before copying the newer version's files over.

Changes:

• Files - Support for deleting the base version of a version stack
• Comment Importing - Added the ability to specify the encoding of the marker list when importing. This can resolve some issues when importing Avid marker lists with non-English characters, but for most use-cases the default of UTF-8 is sufficient
• Player - Changed next / previous file shortcuts in the player to Shift + N / Shift + P
• Uploads - Added a navigation breadcrumb to the Upload page so you can easily go back to where you were before
• Share - Links now show the full link title when hovering over them on the Share page
• Files - Fixed an issue where renaming a file in a version stack would incorrectly show it as Version 1
• Files - Fixed an issue where audio uploads could hang
• Trash - Fixed an issue where files deleted from archived projects could not be removed
• UI - Fixed an issue where certain accented characters may not display correctly
• UI - Fixed an issue where the Share and History pages might not render correctly
• Config - Fixed an issue where database passwords with semicolons in them would not be saved correctly
• Fixed an issue that could cause the mail queue to hang
• Fixed an issue where cookies wouldn't be set when viewing the Adobe panel in Premiere 25.x
• Web Hooks - Fixed an issue where Kollaborate could not communicate with a script if the web server changed the case of the header key
• General bug fixes, tweaks and optimizations

We’ve become aware that Kollaborate’s existing architecture makes certain features hard to deliver, so after considering all available options we recently embarked on a Rust rewrite of the backend.

The benefits of rewriting in Rust are improved performance, increased reliability, greater efficiency / better use of resources,
and much greater control of the overall experience. We have focused so far on areas where a lot of data was being processed, such as delivering media files and thumbnails, as well as downloading a folder as a zip file, and have seen noticeable performance increases.

Some of the features the new backend will eventually enable are a public API (for self-hosting), background file transfers, and WebDAV support, among many others. For self-hosted customers, it will also eventually offer simpler licensing and an openly-accessible trial version. We have also laid the groundwork for a lot of features that we will enable once we are less reliant on the old backend. We’re still working on rewriting backend parts in Rust, but when we’re ready to start converting user-facing areas of the site we will be conducting a big UI overhaul.

This project will take a long time to complete, but we’ve structured it in such a way that the old and new backends can run concurrently and we can switch features over to the new version as and when they become available. We will be releasing a preview version soon for self-hosted customers and will be rolling it out to the cloud in the next couple of months.

Kollaborate is an essential cloud workflow platform that allows you to share files with clients and team members while integrating with Digital Rebellion apps and services. Kollaborate Server allows you to host the platform in-house on your own servers and storage. To find out more, see the Kollaborate Server overview or register for the free cloud trial (Server trials are available on request).

Kollaborate Encoder 1.8.1 - Oct 16 2024

• The Docker image now uses Ubuntu 24.04 and ffmpeg 7.1
• Added num_threads configuration option to limit the number of threads encoding will consume (0 = the number of cores in your system)
• Fixed an issue where custom encoding parameters would not be received from Kollaborate Server
• Minor bug fixes, tweaks and optimizations

Kollaborate Server 3.9.1 - Oct 16 2024

Important: The Docker image is configured to convert the current database to your MariaDB version automatically. As such, we would recommend backing up the database before upgrading to any version as you may be unable to downgrade otherwise. You can download the current database as a .sql file from the Tools section of the Admin Area. We recommend doing this before copying the newer version's files over.

Changes:

• Admin - Support for adding announcement banners to the top of certain pages or a one-time full-page announcement upon next login
• Player - Shows a dropdown on player page to switch between creating a new shared link and showing existing links to this file
• Templates - Tags and color coding are now preserved when importing from a template
• Dashboard - Overhauled page styling and made it display better on mobile devices
• SSO - Kollaborate now sends X-Forwarded-For headers for better compatibility with certain SAML providers
• Admin Dashboard - Added a progress spinner when clearing out deleted projects and files
• Fixed an issue where the user's last login time was incorrect, making features that depend on this operate incorrectly
• Admin - Fixed an issue where SSO couldn't be switched on
• Admin - Fixed an issue on the SSO page where entering any invalid information would reset all fields to empty
• File Browser - Fixed some instances where the file browser was rendering incorrectly
• Fixed an issue where it wouldn't redirect to a login page if the user's session expired in some instances
• Encoding - Fixed an issue where custom encoding settings might not be sent to the encoder (please also update Kollaborate Encoder to 1.8.1)
• Player - Changed an assumption when downloading proxies that only one proxy would exist for a given frame size
• Synced Sessions - Fixed an issue that could prevent new sessions being created
• Files - Fixed an issue that could prevent filtering by unviewed files
• MFA - Added some time leeway when entering MFA code
• Synced Sessions - Fixed an issue where session user list would show garbled participant names
• Synced Sessions - Fixed an issue that could prevent users joining a session
• Admin Dashboard - Fixed an issue where it would show files and projects that had already been marked for deletion as still in the trash
• Admin Dashboard - Fixed an issue where it would run out of memory if trying to delete large projects with thousands of files
• Admin Dashboard - Fixed an issue where deleting trashed files would not clear out deleted files in other users' private storage areas
• Player - Fixed an issue where the option to view earlier revisions' comments did not appear
• Player - Fixed an issue where choosing the Print option when exporting comments did nothing
• Player - Fixed an issue where selecting another revision's comment view wouldn't disable the comment text field
• Player - Fixed the player changing size when pausing in full screen on macOS
• Comment Importing - Better support for Avid marker lists exported from recent versions of Avid
• Comment Importing - Fixed an issue where the comment author's name may not be read correctly from Avid marker lists
• Tags - Fixed an issue where moving a file between projects could cause tags from other files to point to the new project
• File Browser - Fixed an issue where it would not be possible to select files inside departments
• Share - Fixed an issue where filtering by links to a folder and then clicking on the folder name would produce an error
• Global Search - Ignore archived projects when searching
• UI - Fixed an issue where comment areas could be too small
• Comment Exporting - Fixed an issue where duplicate comments could appear when combining comments with the same timecode
• Tasks - Fixed crash when sorting by task creator
• Tasks - Fixed sorting by due date not working as expected
• General bug fixes, tweaks and optimizations

Kollaborate Server 3.9.1 is now out, which is mainly a bug fix release but has some small new features.

Announcements

You can now add banners to the top of pages to communicate information to users. This could be information like tutorials or details about scheduled maintenance. You can add site-wide banners or just add them to specific pages. Banners support HTML input so you can add styling and URLs to banners.

Additionally, you can choose to add a full-page announcement to users upon their next login. This will show a page that they need to click past to get to the Projects page. This page will only appear once for users.

Announcements can be accessed from the Tools page in the Admin Area.

Share Dropdown

Clicking Share under the player now gives you a choice between sharing a new link or viewing existing links to a file, instead of creating a new link immediately.

The remaining changes are bug fixes and the full list of changes can be viewed here after logging in. There is also a corresponding Kollaborate Encoder 1.8.1 update that is required for compatibility with this Kollaborate Server version.

Kollaborate is an essential cloud workflow platform that allows you to share files with clients and team members while integrating with Digital Rebellion apps and services. Kollaborate Server allows you to host the platform in-house on your own servers and storage. To find out more, see the Kollaborate Server overview or register for the free cloud trial (Server trials are available on request).

Kollaborate Server 3.9 - Sep 9 2024

Important: The Docker image is configured to convert the current database to your MariaDB version automatically. As such, we would recommend backing up the database before upgrading to any version as you may be unable to downgrade otherwise. You can download the current database as a .sql file from the Tools section of the Admin Area. We recommend doing this before copying the newer version's files over.

Note: Due to the need to build caches, the upgrader may take a while to run if you have a large number of projects and/or a large number of files.

Changes:

• File Tags - Add tags to files to add additional context. Clicking a tag shows you all other files with that tag. Tags can be searched and both File and Upload Workflows can be used to automatically add tags to a file
• Global Search - Search for files across all projects at once
• Comment Tagging - Users can be tagged in comments by pressing the @ key, and there is a new alert sent when a user is tagged
• Files - There is now an optional "Last Comment" table column that can be sorted, and a new filter for files with unviewed comments (i.e. new comments since you last viewed it)
• Files - Support for adding a Duration column to the Files page for sorting by duration, as well as making it available as a parameter in the Advanced Search dialog
• Overhauled the File Browser for improved performance when dealing with very large projects
• Admin - Added a new Rebuild Caches tool
• Player - Added a button to change hold timecode to the current playback position
• Player - Hold is now reset if the user has only whitespace in the comment field
• Files - Allow filenames to span two lines if no status is set on the file
• Comments - Show link users when a comment is marked as "to-do" or "done"
• Uploaded AVIF images are now correctly recognized as images instead of generic files
• Saved Searches - Editing a saved search no longer requires you to do a Save As under the same name - now just click the Update button
• Projects - Project admins can now edit project tags
• Docker - Improved proxy performance
• Docker - Updated to Ubuntu 24.04
• UI - Overhauled multiple interface controls, most notably checkboxes, which now behave more consistently
• UI - Navigation links can now have sublinks for more easily locating important pages
• Alerts - Added a new alert when a file is uploaded to a File Request link
• Encoding - If more than one proxy type is set up and the workflow is set to remove the original file, the original file is removed only for the first proxy
• Sharing - Show name of link instead of original folder name to link recipients
• Sharing - Shared links are now removed when a file is moved between projects
• Player - Filters and searches are taken into account when showing the Next / Previous buttons
• UI - Show total storage space for all projects the user can access in the page footer (before this amount was project-relative)
• Sharing - Show search bar on folder links
• Permissions - Update terminology to clarify that the "access" permission corresponds to viewing others' files
• Uploads - Fixed an issue that was preventing uploads with matching filenames from automatically being placed in version stacks
• Uploads - Fixed thumbnail stretching on email alerts for file request links
• Player - Fixed an issue where video may be pillarboxed on wide displays
• Projects - Fixed an issue where deleting a project and then creating one with the same name would say the project still exists
• Sharing - Fixed an issue where Quick Share settings may not save when Quick Share is initiated from the player page
• Files - Fixed an issue where moving an empty folder might inadvertently move additional files
• Files - Fixed an issue where deleting a department with only an empty folder inside could delete additional files
• Encoding - Fixed an issue where encoding profile might not be sent to encoder
• Uploads - Bitrate now specifies Mbits instead of Mb, for clarity
• Uploads - Fixed filesize / bitrate being the wrong way around
• Files - Fixed an issue where making a change that causes a version stack item to update would incorrectly collapse the stack
• Trash - Fixed an issue where trash size would not be automatically updated when clearing out the trash automatically
• Tasks - Fixed an issue where editing or deleting a task could show an error
• Various UI tweaks and improvements
• General bug fixes, tweaks and optimizations

A new major version of our self-hosted Kollaborate Server software is here, with many new features. Our goal in this update was expanding productivity by adding features that allow you to find what you're looking for faster.

File Tags

Add tags to files to give them new context. Click on a tag to view all other files with this tag.

Tags are also integrated with Workflows. You can have an Upload Workflow automatically add tags to a file if it meets certain criteria (e.g. adding a "vfx" tag if certain terms appear in its filename). File Workflows can add tags that can disappear when the file is assigned a different workflow, which is great for adding context-specific tags.

There are additional filters added to the Files page for viewing files with or without tags, which is useful for finding untagged files when you're tagging your entire project.

We've been testing this feature internally for a while and I can't overstate just how much of a game-changer file tags have been for my own projects.

Global Search

Need to find a file but don't know which project it's in? Global Search allows you to locate files in all projects you can access.

Comment Tagging

Team members can now tag other users in comments to get their attention and there is a new option in notification settings for managing mention alerts.

View by Last Comment

There is an optional Last Comment column that can be added to the Files page, allowing you to sort by the date of the most recent comment. There is also a filter on the Files page for files with unread comments (i.e. comments added since you last viewed the file). This filter is extremely useful for quickly catching up to activity on a large project.

New File Browser

We've created a new file browser which greatly improves performance over the old one, especially for very large projects.

Search and Sort by Duration

Advanced searches can now take into account the duration of a file, and a new Duration column can optionally be added to the Files table for sorting by duration.

Update Hold Timecode

When typing during playback, the comment area will "hold" the current timecode position. You can now move the playhead elsewhere, click the button next to the timecode and have it update to the new position.

Many more changes

Other changes include:

• Admin - Added a new Rebuild Caches tool
• Player - Hold is now reset if the user has only whitespace in the comment field
• Files - Allow filenames to span two lines if no status is set on the file
• Comments - Show link users when a comment is marked as "to-do" or "done"
• Uploaded AVIF images are now correctly recognized as images instead of generic files
• Saved Searches - Editing a saved search no longer requires you to do a Save As under the same name - now just click the Update button
• Projects - Project admins can now edit project tags
• Docker - Improved proxy performance
• Docker - Updated to Ubuntu 24.04
• UI - Overhauled multiple interface controls, most notably checkboxes, which now behave more consistently
• UI - Navigation links can now have sublinks for more easily locating important pages
• Alerts - Added a new alert when a file is uploaded to a File Request link
• Encoding - If more than one proxy type is set up and the workflow is set to remove the original file, the original file is removed only for the first proxy
• Sharing - Show name of link instead of original folder name to link recipients
• Sharing - Shared links are now removed when a file is moved between projects
• Player - Filters and searches are taken into account when showing the Next / Previous buttons
• UI - Show total storage space for all projects the user can access in the page footer (before this amount was project-relative)
• Sharing - Show search bar on folder links
• Permissions - Update terminology to clarify that the "access" permission corresponds to viewing others' files
• Uploads - Fixed an issue that was preventing uploads with matching filenames from automatically being placed in version stacks
• Uploads - Fixed thumbnail stretching on email alerts for file request links
• Player - Fixed an issue where video may be pillarboxed on wide displays
• Projects - Fixed an issue where deleting a project and then creating one with the same name would say the project still exists
• Sharing - Fixed an issue where Quick Share settings may not save when Quick Share is initiated from the player page
• Files - Fixed an issue where moving an empty folder might inadvertently move additional files
• Files - Fixed an issue where deleting a department with only an empty folder inside could delete additional files
• Encoding - Fixed an issue where encoding profile might not be sent to encoder
• Uploads - Bitrate now specifies Mbits instead of Mb, for clarity
• Uploads - Fixed filesize / bitrate being the wrong way around
• Files - Fixed an issue where making a change that causes a version stack item to update would incorrectly collapse the stack
• Trash - Fixed an issue where trash size would not be automatically updated when clearing out the trash automatically
• Tasks - Fixed an issue where editing or deleting a task could show an error
• Various UI tweaks and improvements
• General bug fixes, tweaks and optimizations

Kollaborate is an essential cloud workflow platform that allows you to share files with clients and team members while integrating with Digital Rebellion apps and services. Kollaborate Server allows you to host the platform in-house on your own servers and storage. To find out more, see the Kollaborate Server overview or register for the free cloud trial (Server trials are available on request).

Kollaborate Server 3.8.1 - Jul 19 2024

Important: The Docker image is configured to convert the current database to your MariaDB version automatically. As such, we would recommend backing up the database before upgrading to any version as you may be unable to downgrade otherwise. You can download the current database as a .sql file from the Tools section of the Admin Area. We recommend doing this before copying the newer version's files over.

Changes:

• Docker - Removed the dependency on imagemagick.org, which has been experiencing a multi-day outage that has been preventing the "docker-compose build" command from completing
• Docker - Fixed an issue that could prevent php.ini changes from taking effect
• Files - Searching from the search box now performs a title search across the entire project. To search other fields or just the current folder, please use an Advanced Search
• Fixed an issue that could prevent the new high quality thumbnail feature from activating correctly
• Files - Fixed a crash when viewing a shared folder link
• Files - Fixed an issue where the item count in the page footer could show the wrong number of items
• Player - Fixed long file titles extending into the comment box
• Minor bug fixes, tweaks and optimizations

Kollaborate Encoder 1.8 - Jul 5 2024

Changes:

• Support for customizable encoding profiles (configure this in the Admin Area of the webserver)
• Support for larger hoverscrub thumbnails
• Fixed an issue where combining multiple audio channels could cause peaking
• Minor bug fixes, tweaks and optimizations

Kollaborate Server 3.8 - Jul 5 2024

Important: The Docker image is configured to convert the current database to your MariaDB version automatically. As such, we would recommend backing up the database before upgrading to any version as you may be unable to downgrade otherwise. You can download the current database as a .sql file from the Tools section of the Admin Area. We recommend doing this before copying the newer version's files over.

Major New Features:

• Single-Sign On (Preview) - You can now have authentication handled by a third-party SAML provider. This can be enabled from the Configure page of the Admin Area. If you enter the wrong details and end up locked out, delete config/sso_config.php to disable SSO.
• UI refresh - darker color scheme, new fonts, new icons, layout improvements.
• Higher quality thumbnails and better handling of non-16:9 thumbnail sizes
• Redesigned login flow
• New permissions - modifying other users' files and modifying other users' comments. This allows you to modify others' assets without needing to be an admin
• Saved Searches - Save an advanced search to apply it as a file filter. (Note that while you can apply a filter that searches the entire project, in most cases you will want it to only apply to the current folder.)
• Template Projects - Create a template project with folders, saved searches, departments, users, tasks and workflows. These can be applied when creating a new project
• Custom Encoding Profiles - Change the frame size, bitrate, etc of the videos created by Kollaborate Encoder. (Requires Kollaborate Encoder 1.8.) This can be edited from the Admin Area of the webserver. Note that while you can create multiple proxies of different frame sizes, this is of limited utility right now because you can't switch between them in the player. We plan to offer more features to enable this in future.

Other Changes:

• In-progress uploads are now stored on the storage volume instead of inside the webserver container. This solves issues if the webserver has limited storage space, with the added bonus of making the finishing stage much faster
• Admin - Overhauled the UI of the Tools page
• History is now shown in the project navigation bar to increase accessibility of this feature
• Upgrader - Database tables / columns that already exist are now ignored. This can solve issues where you may have ended up with a partial upgrade
• Admin - Added the ability to hide the Help link at the bottom of the page
• Player - Improved JKL key behavior to be more in line with NLEs
• Files - New filters: Uploaded by Me and Uploaded by Others
• Files - Only allow those with file modification permissions to manually set a file's workflow
• Custom file permissions feature has been removed. Please use departments to manage file access
• File rename events are now stored in history
• File move events for each individual file are stored in history when moving a folder
• History - Better support for accented user names
• Player - Original file extension is shown in the Metadata pane
• Files - Added the ability to import comments, metadata and captions by right-clicking a file on the Files page
• Upload Workflows - Fixed an issue where workflows set to the project root wouldn't apply inside departments
• Files - Fixed an issue where renaming a file and leaving the name unchanged would show an alert that the file already exists
• Files - Fixed an issue where it may exit file renaming unexpectedly if you rename immediately after uploading
• API - Fixed an issue where special characters in a folder name could cause duplicate folders to be created
• API - Fixed a crash when special characters exist in file title
• Advanced Search - Fixed an issue where "has versions" parameter wouldn't return results
• Files - Fixed an issue where version count wouldn't update when combining a new version
• Projects - Fixed controls overlapping long project descriptions
• Tasks - Fixed an issue where history description could be garbled
• Files - Upload speed is now shown in Mb/s
• Many small fixes and tweaks

We've just released Kollaborate Server 3.8, a major update to our self-hosted workflow and collaboration platform.

Single-Sign On (Preview)

Kollaborate Server now supports Single-Sign On (SSO), allowing enterprise users to have logins handled by a third-party authentication provider. When logging in with the identity provider, Kollaborate will link the login to any user accounts that already exist with that email address or otherwise create the account transparently in the background.

In order to facilitate this we have completely redesigned the login page. It is now simpler, more consistent and more reliable.

UI Refresh

We've changed the UI theme to be darker and added new icons and fonts. There are far too many changes to document, but some include relocating the user dropdown to the sidebar, new interface controls, and improvements to the layout of the player page.

Higher-quality thumbnails

Thumbnail images are now displayed at a higher resolution. In order to facilitate this we've completely redesigned how we display thumbnails, resulting in numerous improvements including more consistent handling of non-16:9 frame sizes.

To convert your existing thumbnails, use the option to regenerate thumbnails for all files in the Tools page of the Admin Area.

New permissions

We've added two new user permissions: modifying others' files and modifying others' comments. This allows users to interact with others' assets without needing to be an admin.

Saved Searches

Advanced Searches can be saved and will appear as filters on the Files page.

(Note that we recommend saved searches are limited to the current folder in most cases. Searching the entire project should only be used for specific use-cases because it can be confusing to users when the filter is applied while navigating into subfolders.)

Template Projects

Create template projects that can be used to copy settings when creating new projects. The data that can be stored in a template are folder structures, saved searches, departments, team, tasks and workflows.

Custom Encoding Profiles

The encoding settings used by Kollaborate Encoder can be modified, allowing you to change bitrate, frame size and other settings. This requires Kollaborate Encoder 1.8 and can be set from the Admin Area of the webserver.

Note that while you can have Kollaborate Encoder create multiple proxies of different frame sizes, that is of limited utility right now because there is no way to switch between them and Kollaborate will always just play the highest-quality proxy. This will be more useful with features we are planning in future.

Other Changes:

• In-progress uploads are now stored on the storage volume instead of inside the webserver container. This solves issues if the webserver has limited storage space, with the added bonus of making the finishing stage much faster
• Admin - Overhauled the UI of the Tools page
• History is now shown in the project navigation bar to increase accessibility of this feature
• Upgrader - Database tables / columns that already exist are now ignored. This can solve issues where you may have ended up with a partial upgrade
• Admin - Added the ability to hide the Help link at the bottom of the page
• Player - Improved JKL key behavior to be more in line with NLEs
• Files - New filters: Uploaded by Me and Uploaded by Others
• Files - Only allow those with file modification permissions to manually set a file's workflow
• Custom file permissions feature has been removed. Please use departments to manage file access
• File rename events are now stored in history
• File move events for each individual file are stored in history when moving a folder
• History - Better support for accented user names
• Player - Original file extension is shown in the Metadata pane
• Files - Added the ability to import comments, metadata and captions by right-clicking a file on the Files page
• Upload Workflows - Fixed an issue where workflows set to the project root wouldn't apply inside departments
• Files - Fixed an issue where renaming a file and leaving the name unchanged would show an alert that the file already exists
• Files - Fixed an issue where it may exit file renaming unexpectedly if you rename immediately after uploading
• API - Fixed an issue where special characters in a folder name could cause duplicate folders to be created
• API - Fixed a crash when special characters exist in file title
• Advanced Search - Fixed an issue where "has versions" parameter wouldn't return results
• Files - Fixed an issue where version count wouldn't update when combining a new version
• Projects - Fixed controls overlapping long project descriptions
• Tasks - Fixed an issue where history description could be garbled
• Files - Upload speed is now shown in Mb/s
• Many small fixes and tweaks

Kollaborate is an essential cloud workflow platform that allows you to share files with clients and team members while integrating with Digital Rebellion apps and services. Kollaborate Server allows you to host the platform in-house on your own servers and storage. To find out more, see the Kollaborate Server overview or register for the free cloud trial (Server trials are available on request).

Pro Maintenance Tools 2.4.4 - May 27 2024

• Plugin Manager - More user-friendly error messages if notarizing a plugin installer fails
• Updated Crash Analyzer definitions
• Minor bug fixes, tweaks and optimizations