Beacon has recently upgraded the core infrastructure that the platform runs on. We've moved to cutting edge database technology that means Beacon will not only be more stable, secure, and reliable, but will hugely increase speeds for large datasets, complex filters, and searching. As an added bonus, it also makes the core Beacon code simpler, which means we can ship new features faster.
As with any major technology change, there are some differences in behaviour between 'old' Beacon and our new infrastructure. You also get a few bonus new features as part of our move!
Contents
New features
1. Top search bar for People
The most obvious new feature is a permanent people search bar in the top banner.
You'll be able to both:
Search for people from any page in Beacon
See and reuse recent search terms
See recently viewed People records
You can search using these details:
Name
Email address
Phone number
Record ID
We'll then show any matching records, highlighting the matches so you can quickly spot the person you were after.
If there aren't matches based on the fields above, you can choose to either search more broadly via the People list page (as it will search across more fields, such as 'Address'), or add the person as a new record.
2. Suggested duplicates is now real-time
Searching your database for duplicate People records is a really intense task! Because of that, we previously only checked every 15 minutes, and limited your ability to check again.
We've completely re-engineered the duplicates system and now re-check for a person to be flagged as a duplicate on every new Person creation or change to an existing Person record's details. This means that there's no need to 're-check' and your Suggested duplicates list will always be up to date.
3. Searching and filtering improvements
Searching and filtering are now both much faster, and include additional functionality.
Smarter searches
Searching now includes a variety of improvements to help you find the record that you're after.
Added fuzziness
We've added some flexibility in search results to allow for small differences between your search terms and the matches that get returned.
For example:
Better middle name handling - That search for 'Sarah Parker' didn't find 'Sarah Jessica Parker' before... now it will! Same for shorthand 'bank england' to still find 'Bank of England'.
Ordering matters less - 'borders without doctors' gets you to 'Doctors Without Borders', and muddling 'Protection of Birds Royal Society' finds the correct RSPB entry.
Better accent handling - Searching 'Muller' will find 'Müller' without you needing to figure out how on earth to add an umlaut on your keyboard...
Sorting by relevance
When you search, especially using common terms, you'll often get lots of results to sort through. Now, search automatically orders by relevance so that searching for 'Joe Bloggs' will rank someone with that name above someone with that has that in their notes.Note: Relevance searching is automatic, and custom sorting when searching is no longer supported.
Filter for UK postcode areas, districts, and regions
Trying to filter for parts of postcodes can be really tricky, and often involves multiple fragile filters just to get the results you want. Now, we include additional native options for being able to filter for:
Postcode area (e.g. NW, AB, GL)
Postcode district (e.g. NW1, AB16, GL52)
Region (e.g. Greater London, Scotland, South West)
Note: Postcode area and region filters are based on the postcode area, rather than their physical location. e.g. CH1 6BS would be classed as 'North West' rather than 'Wales'.
4. Creating a related record shows the record you created
As a nice little quality-of-life improvement, when you add a new record from a related record card we'll now show it in a new area at the top of the list, making it easy to immediately access it.
Changes to performance
Naturally, our infrastructure change impacts pretty much everything in Beacon! Here are the biggest changes to performance that you may notice.
Largest improvements
These items are all much faster. The speed differences will be especially noticeable for large datasets.
Rollup and smart field calculations (day-to-day use, not configuration changes)
Gift Aid eligibility checks
Filters (especially complex filters)
Searches
Bulk record deletion
Roles & permissions calculations
Virus scanning of uploaded files
Other improvements
These items will all be faster too!
Loading list pages
Opening records
Creating records
Merging records
Records created from form submissions
Workflow runs
API calls
Changes to behaviour
There are a variety of small behaviour changes that you may notice when using the platform on our new infrastructure. Most of these changes are due to the different technology Beacon now runs on, or to make the system faster and more efficient.
Sortable columns
To make sorting and lists much faster, these columns can no longer be sorted:
Checkbox
URL
File upload
Long text
If the number of records in a list is greater than 100,000 sorting will switch to the default 'Created date' only. Apply filters to reduce the number of results below 100k to access other column sorting.
Date filters for 'Days ago' and 'Days from now'
Previously, these filters unintuitively included results past today's date. e.g. 'Tasks due less than 7 days from now' also included any tasks in the past.
Now, the results will more logically only include dates up to today's date.
Text 'contains' filters
'Contains' filters now require a minimum of 3 characters. 'is', 'is not', 'starts with', and 'ends with' can still be fewer than 3 characters.
Wildcards removed
Percent % and underscore _ wildcards in searches and filters are no longer supported. Postcode filter and search improvements should make most use cases of wildcards not required.
Created date and last modified dates in exports
These core dates previously exported in UTC. They will now export in your account's timezone like other date fields.
Workflow invalid value handling
Workflows that try to set invalid values (e.g. a user that has been deactivated, or a drop-down value that no longer exists) will no longer halt a workflow run. Invalid field values will be skipped to enable the workflow to continue and complete.
Data Warehouse format
Previously, Data Warehouse was structured as a 'view' of your data which you'd need to create an additional table to access. Any customisations to your account structure would also require a request for a manual refresh by the Beacon team.
Data Warehouse has been transitioned to a table that you can point your visualisation, ETL or SQL directly at instead. The table will refresh every 15 minutes, and any account customisations will be pushed through on the next refresh.
Other minor changes
The details below are mostly technical, but included for completeness.
Blank values appear at the END when sorting columns ascending, and START when sorting descending
Point to another record fields can contain a maximum of 1,000 items (though we recommend you create a new record type where you'd regularly store any more than 5 items)
Setting a default value for a field will now complete asynchronously to speed up field creation and editing. Fields will display
Updating...while the value is being setNumber fields can contain a maximum of 9 decimal places
Searching in 'Long text' fields only searches for full word matches. A search for "complete" would not return a record with "completely"
Timeline audit logs for new records now always show checkbox values and default values, and no longer show rollup or smart field values
DataSourceandLatitude/Longitudeare no longer available in the APIAPI format for file upload fields
Files are now hosted on Google Cloud Storage, so URLs will have a different structure
Virus scanning status has changed from
"infected"to"scan_status"Image files include preview image ID and URL:
"preview_id""preview_url"Example response:
Old format
{
"id": "9b9061c5-e393-4872-a619-432b90acc1f3",
"infected": "clean",
"name": "export-payments-1776780699217.csv",
"size": 8815837,
"source": "upload",
"type": "text/csv",
"url": "https://beacon-user-uploads-staging.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/account/....etc"
}New format
{
"id": "31f8a3dc-8f94-4d7a-baad-94b9f00a8197",
"name": "export-payments-1776780699217.csv",
"preview_id": null,
"preview_url": null,
"scan_status": "clean",
"size": 8815837,
"source": "upload",
"type": "text/csv",
"url": "https://storage.googleapis.com/entities-service-files-clean-staging/account/....etc"
}