Validator with dynamics version 1.11

About Validator with dynamics version 1.11

In November 2019 the Validator feature was updated, and this article will explain what changes were made, as well as what is required to be able to use the added functionality for this feature. 

With the new dynamics version 1.11, the Validator feature for Presentations has now been updated to make it possible to enable Validator without locking slides.

Pre-requisites

• To be able to use this feature, the dynamics version of the template needs to be set to 1.11
• Enable document content updater on the template
• Admin rights on the Templafy tenant, you need to enable the feature for
• Enable Validator in Settings page of your tenant
• Go to yourtenant.templafy.com/admin and locate the Settings page to set supported dynamics version to 1.11
• Require VSTO Library add-in version 5.7.5.1909. Go to Templafy VSTO Add-ins release notes to read release notes of this feature. If you're unsure about which version you're running on, you can check View Templafy Office add-ins version. Updating add-in versions are handled by implementation partners. 

How to enable slides for Validator - from PowerPoint

• Open PowerPoint
• Open Templafy taskpane
• Create a presentation you want to enable Validator for
• Go to Template Designer and click on the Settings tab
• Set dynamics version to 1.11

The presentation now has all the essential configurations applied and can be uploaded to the admin center to set if the slides should be locked or not.  

How to manage Validator - from an Admin perspective

Go to Libraries in the Admin interface of yourtenant.templafy.com and locate Template libraries called Presentations. From here, as an Admin, you can now locate the presentation in question and should be provided with slides that contains two check boxes:

• Enable Validator
• Lock slide (per default, slides are unlocked)

As an Admin, you can manage which of the slides in the presentation should be locked and which that shouldn't. If you leave slides unlocked, Users, who then open the presentation from PowerPoint, are given a choice to edit the unlocked slides. 

Unlocked slides - how it looks for end users in PowerPoint

When an unlocked slide is updated by Validator, the existing slide in the user's presentation is kept, and the updated slide is inserted after the existing slide. This means that an updated slide will not replace the old one, but appear under the slide in the deck giving the end-user the possibility to choose what to keep from the old version.

A notification is added to the existing slide to make it clear that it is outdated. This allows the user to copy changes over to the new slide, if any modifications were made to the new one, and then manually delete the existing slide afterwards.

• Possible to give notifications on updated content in slides that will be editable by end-users
• The updated slide is placed under the old slide
• Only admins can choose which slides should be editable by end-users.

The old slide will be highlighted with an orange outline (as shown in the image below) and a message informing the end-user to move the content they want to keep to the new slide:

Please note: 

The explained functionality in this article only applies if 1) you're running on the required VSTO add-ins version and 2) has dynamics version 1.11 enabled for the template. Validator prior to this version will work as described in the articles Validator and Validator for PowerPoint slides (tech).  

Current limitations:

• Current version of Validator only checks for slides, not whole presentations
• Only works on PC with VSTO add-ins