We have recently changed how to subscribe to receive announcements such as this one, which are usually announcing a new release of one of the PointFire products.

To subscribe, click on https://community.icefire.ca/ then click on "Subscribe" in the left column, enter your email address and click "Submit".  But that's not all: you should look for a confirmation email at that address and follow the instruction to confirm.  If you do not get this confirmation email, please contact sales@icefire.ca

We are now removing unconfirmed email addresses from the subscription list, since we have started receiving spam subscription requests and because privacy requires it.  We remove unconfirmed addresses that are on gmail, yahoo, and the like, and may contact you if we are not sure whether an unconfirmed email is legitimate.

Note that this announcement list is different from the newsletter.  The newsletter gives you advance information of what we're working on and useful tips, about 4 times a year.  You can subscribe to the newsletter here.  You are not automatically subscribed to either list by contacting us for other reasons or by purchasing a license.

This is a recommended update release for PointFire 365 for SharePoint Online, part of Office 365. 

This release add significant new functionality and corrects a number of issues in previous version.

New and Changed Features

• PowerShell scripts to install and activate PointFire on many sites at once
• In lists/libraries that support publishing, when using Manage Variations, user now has the option of saving the items as either draft or published.
• When adding multilingual functionality to a list/library, option to mark all existing items as being the current language.
• When removing multilingual functionality from a list/library, confirmation that this will delete language columns and their data.
• The ability to localize modern webpart titles has been removed. It will return in a later release.
• Support for mega-menu localization

Resolved Issues

• Performance improvement - displaying language menu in modern mode
• Performance improvement - Dramatic improvements, particularly in modern mode
• Performance improvements - language toggle
• Language selection dropdown in menu not displaying correctly on some pages until page is re-loaded
• Modern webpart localization was sometimes not working
• Blog webpart did not show "Display this webpart in" menu option
• Blog site templates, posts and categories were not being filtered by language.
• UI improvements in PointFire 365 - better detection of current state, and interface changed to highlight recommended next steps
• Better license detection in the case of multiple licenses one of which is expired
• Trouble translating list column names when there are several untranslated column names in the same list
• Double page refresh for language-specific pages that require filtering of list views
• Language selection for modern webparts does not appear under some circumstances
• Issues with apps installed on the site collection app site rather than the tenant app site
• In some cases, changing language on classic list view with no filtering did not reload the page.
• Other minor bug fixes and performance improvements.

PointFire makes SharePoint truly multilingual and lets your users collaborate in their language.  Two different users going to the same page on the same site will each see it almost entirely in their language, both UI and content, without using Variations.

To get your copy, go to http://community.icefire.ca/index.php?/Knowledgebase/List/Index/1/pointfire-installation-packages and log in or create an account.

The fully-featured trial version can be downloaded for free and can be used for development and testing, with some pre-sale support.

We thank everyone in many countries who provided feedback on the previous releases for their valuable input.

PointFire 365 v2.2 reproduces the most important functionality of PointFire 2016 in the cloud.

This release corrects certain issues.  If you received an interim release from IceFire support for testing, it must be updated with this release.  This release is a bug fix release, with minor functionality changes.  It is recommended that you update if you have encountered the issues that are discussed.

Documentation is available here.  

The next update release is expected in June 2019.

Release Notes – December 17, 2018

Deploying PointFire 2016

It is recommended that you run the installation on the server where Central Administration is located. Once PointFire 2016 is installed on the target server you can deploy the feature by running the PFConfiguration tool:

Start ->PointFire 2016 ->PFConfig

Note: If you experience issues running the configuration tool from the shortcut, you can navigate to the PointFire directory and run PFConfig or one of the installation scripts directly.

C:\Program Files\IceFire\PointFire2016

⦁ PFConfig.exe – PointFire Deployment Manager
⦁ InstallPointFire.ps1 - to install PointFire using PowerShell.
⦁ UpgradePointFire.ps1 - Upgrade PointFire using PowerShell.
⦁ RemovePointFire.ps1 - To retract the solution using PowerShell

Note: Deploying using the scripts requires additional configuration steps. Please see the install guide for detailed information.
Updating PointFire 2016 
If you are updating an existing PointFire 2016 deployment, launch the PointFire Deployment Manager and follow through the upgrade process, or retract then re-deploy PointFire, or navigate to the installation directory to run the upgrade script.
Note: If configuration keys in the web.config files have been edited manually after PFConfig initially set them, using PFConfig to update the PointFire may erase or overwrite some of those keys. For safety, note the values of the keys currently in web.config prior to updating.

Upgrading from PointFire 2013

If you are upgrading from a PointFire 2013 deployment, please consult the PointFire 2013 v1.0 to 2016 v1.0 Upgrade Guide.

New Features

• none

Resolved Issues

• A webpart page with 2 list view web parts are connected and being filtered from Query String filter web part goes blank on language change.
• Content on a list view page containing tab characters and zero-width-space character loads blank
• Sometimes impossible to modify (or create) a view from a list view web part.
• Sometimes impossible to delete an item from a document library using the list item menu (not ribbon)"
• Some content of a list column when included in list view renders empty on change of language. Occurs when using third party product "Infowise" with specific content but may occur without it.
• A list containing specific content from Infowise and which has pagination, does not change page.
• Ribbon disappears from a Calendar list in French site when clicking "Parcourir"
• PointFire menus present in Site Settings gear icon and in user menu are sometimes not collapsed on first login
• Items in custom refiners on search results page are not translated.  Improved, not complete fix yet.

Documentation
Documentation for PointFire 2016 is available to be downloaded from the following links:

PointFire 2016 Installation Guide: 
http://community.icefire.ca/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/134/0/pointfire-2016-documentation

PointFire 2016 Administrators Guide:

http://community.icefire.ca/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/134/0/pointfire-2016-documentation

PointFire 2016 Users Guide: 

http://community.icefire.ca/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/134/0/pointfire-2016-documentation

PointFire 2013 v1.0 to 2016 v1.0 Upgrade Guide: 

http://community.icefire.ca/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/134/0/pointfire-2016-documentation

Support
We recommend that you, or whoever you designate for support, register an account on the support site http://community.icefire.ca/index.php?/Base/UserRegistration/Register . Support can be obtained by clicking on New Ticket on the site after you login or by sending an e-mail to icefire@wssplus.ca

At last, we now combine the benefits of PointFire Translator and PointFire Power Translator in a single interface.

PointFire Translator, available from Microsoft's App Source, is an app that is integrated into PointFire lists and libraries, which can translate certain document types as well as most classic pages, list items, and all their text metadata.  Before the current release, it relied on SharePoint's Machine Translation Service, with lower speed and lower quality.  This beta release uses PointFire Power Translator instead, if it is installed on the workstation, with vastly superior translation quality, greater speed, and a wider range of of document types, including modern pages.

The new beta version of PointFire Power Translator has web interfaces, in addition to its command line interfaces, which can be used to integrate with PointFire Translator's handy user interface integrated with SharePoint lists and libraries.

PointFire Power Translator can translate individual items or entire libraries or lists in SharePoint Online.  It handles modern pages as well as classic ones.  It also handles several other file types.  It differs from PointFire Translator in several respects

• It is command line, using CMD or PowerShell, not a SharePoint add-in
• It uses the Microsoft Cognitive Services Translator Text API, not the now-deprecated SharePoint Translator Service
• It requires a Translator Text API key
• It defaults to using the latest neural network translation models, but can use a variety of machine translation engines, including ones that you train using your own documents.
• It can already use the new "translator parity" neural translation models released by Microsoft a few days ago
• It can already use the Translator Hub method of training machine translation models on your own documents.
• The final release will use the new Custom Translator feature of training neural machine translation on your own documents also released a few days ago.
• It translates modern pages and many modern webparts, including Hero webparts
• It translates Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF files, among others
• It can translate entire libraries and lists
• It is not free, and neither is the translation engine
• It is much faster and the accuracy of translation is much greater.

If you are using PointFire Translator, we recommend that you plan to migrate in the next year, since it relies on an API that has been partly deprecated.

Many thanks to the beta testers who helped us get the product to this state.

Installation files available here http://community.icefire.ca/index.php?/Knowledgebase/List/Index/1/pointfire-installation-packages

For more information, contact sales@icefire.ca

This is a recommended update release for PointFire 365 for SharePoint Online, part of Office 365. 

This release add significant new functionality and corrects a number of issues in version 2.2.0.0 - 2.2.0.6.

New and Changed Features

• In version 2.2.0.0, the file names of the two apps have been changed to make installation simpler. See installation manual for instructions when upgrading from an earlier version.
• Faster language change for users that have "Edit personal user information" permission
• Improved installation and detection of tenant license
• Improvements to PowerShell installation and upgrade scripts to install both classic and modern apps
• Improvements to PowerShell script to activate the app, asks fewer questions
• Improvements to generated script for allowing custom script if it is not currently allowed
• Modern webpart titles can now be localized using the Multilingual Translations list

Resolved Issues

• Text with ampersand not working in Chinese Traditional
• Fixed issues with incomplete UI translation
• Fix for Translation of Navigation does not update after change of translations
• When new version is activated, less likely to use cached older versions.
• Language change menu no longer appeared on some pages due to rollout of new SharePoint libraries.
• Other issues related to rollout of new SharePoint libraries.

PointFire makes SharePoint truly multilingual and lets your users collaborate in their language.  Two different users going to the same page on the same site will each see it almost entirely in their language, both UI and content, without using Variations.  And when used in combination with PointFire 2016, the hybrid cloud is here!

To get your copy, go to http://community.icefire.ca/index.php?/Knowledgebase/List/Index/1/pointfire-installation-packages and log in or create an account.

The fully-featured trial version can be downloaded for free and can be used for development and testing, with some pre-sale support.

We thank everyone in many countries who provided feedback on the previous releases for their valuable input.

PointFire 365 v2.2 reproduces the most important functionality of PointFire 2016 in the cloud.

Late in the day on November 9 2018 (yesterday), the SharePoint Online platform started rolling out a minor change to its JavaScript libraries. One of the side-effects was that PointFire 365's language change menu option stopped appearing in personal menus on most Modern pages. If you have encountered that issue, then this emergency release will resolve it. The testing of this release has not been as extensive as for usual releases. In a few days, PointFire 365 v2.2.1.0 will be released, which will include this fix and some other functionality and fixes.

To get your copy, go to http://community.icefire.ca/index.php?/Knowledgebase/List/Index/1/pointfire-installation-packages and log in or create an account.