Notify Cloud - v8.4

Summary

This release delivers a brand new Rich Text Editor across the whole web app, a fuller and more professional PDF export, a deletion activity report for administrators, stronger single sign-on controls, and the first visible stage of Risk Assessment classification.

Alongside these, the release introduces Custom Flags that apply themselves based on what a reporter answers, incident descriptions inside audit forms, and a consolidated home for your reporting settings.

Together, these changes give you better control over how your content looks, clearer evidence of what happened and when, and a Risk Assessment library that is organised the way safety professionals already think.

New Features

1. A brand new Rich Text Editor

We have introduced a Rich Text Editor across the whole of the Notify web app. Every rich text field, in every module, at once.

The new editor brings proper tables, image resizing where the image sits, clean pasting from Word, hyperlinks with readable link text rather than a long URL, and embedded video.

Anyone writing Method Statement or Risk Assessment content can now format it the way it needs to look, rather than working around the limits of the box.

How can the Rich Text Editor be used?

For example, a Health & Safety Manager builds a Method Statement that needs a sequence of work laid out in a table, a photograph of the correct guarding at the right size on the page, and a link to the manufacturer's guidance under a readable label. All three can now be done in the editor itself, without exporting the content elsewhere to format it and bringing it back.

Where a training video is embedded into a Risk Assessment or Method Statement, it appears as a clickable thumbnail in the PDF export.

Please note: Rich Text Editors are designed for creating content within documents rather than as an input in a form. They are not supported on mobile, so we would recommend avoiding their use as a form control in Audits.

2. Improved PDF exports, with an optional full Activity Log 

The PDF export design has been made more consistent, with corrected fonts, table text, footer spacing and colours, and properly sized table titles. Where an answer runs over onto a second page, the question now repeats at the top of that page, so nobody reads a response without knowing what it answers.

Alongside the design work, there is a new tick box next to Export PDF called "Include full activity details". When it is ticked, the Activity Log section of the export shows the old value and the new value of every edited field, and who changed it.

The tick box is off by default, so nothing about your existing exports changes unless you choose it.

How can the full Activity Log export be used?

For example, an organisation is asked to demonstrate exactly what changed on an incident record and when. Rather than raising a request with our support team, the person who needs the document produces it themselves, with every edit, every previous value, every new value and every timestamp included, ready to hand to a regulator, an insurer or a solicitor.

3. Deletion activity report

Company administrators can now download a CSV from My Company Settings listing every record deletion across every module.

Each entry shows the record ID, the date and time, the module and who carried out the deletion. The report is administrator-only.

How can the deletion activity report be used?

For example, a compliance team preparing for an audit is asked to evidence what has been deleted from the system and by whom. The full deletion history is downloadable on demand, in a format that can be handed over directly, without a request to Notify.

4.  Single sign-on that cannot be bypassed 

If your organisation mandates MFA through your own identity provider, Notify now respects it.

Every SSO login stamps the account with the date and the provider it was used with. That stamp blocks the "Forgot your password?" route for those users, so an SSO user cannot set a Notify password and sign in around your identity provider. Our support team can see and clear the stamp from User Management if somebody genuinely stops using SSO.

Notify learns who signs in with SSO from real logins, so there is nothing for you to configure and no list to maintain.

Optional SSO enforcement, per company

Where you are ready to go further, your company can be switched to SSO-only, which refuses password sign-in for your client users outright. Individual users can be exempted, which covers contractors who will never exist in your directory.

Before anything is switched on, we run a readiness report with you that shows exactly who would be affected. Notify supports Microsoft, Okta and OneLogin.

How can SSO enforcement be used?

For example, an organisation working towards Cyber Essentials needs to show that password sign-in cannot be used to bypass its identity provider. With SSO enforcement switched on, password sign-in is refused for your client users, named contractors outside the directory are exempted individually, and changes to a user's sign-in arrangements are written to the audit trail.

5. Risk Assessment classification and filtering 

Every Risk Assessment template can now carry:

• A Type, chosen from a fixed list of around 30 standard assessment types that safety professionals already recognise, including COSHH, Work at Height, Manual Handling, Confined Spaces, Lone Working and DSE
• An optional Category, taken from your own Global List, where the standard types are not specific enough for your operation
• A short Reference code of up to eight characters, which appears on the record and in the browse list

The Risk Assessment browse page has new Type and Category filters, and the CSV export now carries Type, Reference and Category columns.

How can Risk Assessment classification be used?

For example, an organisation with several hundred Risk Assessments needs to find every COSHH assessment in its library. Filtering the list by Type returns them directly, and teams can refer to an assessment as "NRA04" rather than describing it.

Because Incidents, Audits and Actions are already categorised in the same way, this classification lays the groundwork for relating those records to one another in future reporting.

6. Custom Flags that apply themselves 

An option in a Global List can now be linked to a Custom Flag, so that when somebody picks that option whilst reporting an Incident, the flag is applied automatically.

Once a flag is on a record, it stays there until a person removes it. Changing the answer later does not quietly remove the flag, so your reporting does not shift underneath you. The mapping is configured centrally, so your users cannot unpick it.

How can automatic Custom Flags be used?

For example, an organisation uses a Custom Flag to identify incidents that may lead to an insurance claim. Rather than relying on the person reporting the incident to remember to apply it, the flag is mapped to the relevant answer once and applies itself every time that answer is given. The people reporting incidents on site do not need to be compliance experts for the flag to be correct.

Feature Improvements

1. Incident descriptions inside Audit forms 

Where an Audit form includes an Incident Creator table, there is now a Description column at the end showing what was reported. Audit managers can read the substance of each incident without opening them one at a time, and the column carries through to the PDF export.

2. Reporting settings in one place 

Standards and Clauses, and Category for Audits & Inspections, have moved out of the template header into a new Reporting Settings section under Preferences. How they work has not changed, they are simply no longer scattered across the template.

The existing "Type" label has been renamed "Template Type", so that it is not confused with the new Risk Assessment Type.

3.  Consistent Action categories 

Creating a standalone Action previously offered only the top level of the Category list, whilst the Action Creator field offered every level. Both now behave in the same way. This change came directly from a customer ticket.

4.  Attachments on closed records 

Published and closed Incidents, Documents, Method Statements and Risk Assessments were still showing a delete button on their attachments, and it worked. Attachments can no longer be deleted from these records.

Scheduled downtime

We are really looking forward to delivering this version to you. There will be a scheduled period of downtime on the evening of Wednesday 9th August to allow us to introduce these new features into Notify. We will endeavour to keep any disruption to a minimum.