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Brief Connect v2.5.3 Release Notes

Release date - 19th March, 2026

Package version: 2.5.3

This release builds on v2.5.2 with notification enhancements, streamlined record creation, improved accessibility, and a broad set of fixes for dashboard behaviour, document handling, exports, and deployment resilience.

New features

Customisable email subject lines

Administrators can now customise the subject line for most email notifications directly from the Admin Panel. Subject templates support tokens such as {RecordId}, {RecordTitle}, and {TaskName}, making it easier to standardise messaging and highlight important actions.

If no custom subject is configured, Brief Connect continues to use the default system-generated subject line.

For setup details, see Managing Notification Templates in Brief Connect.

Changes and improvements

  • Improved SharePoint group ownership sync

Group membership updates now handle additional owners more reliably instead of skipping them during synchronisation.

  • Accessibility improvements across the interface

This release improves colour contrast, restores clearer keyboard focus indicators, improves screen reader support for controls and decorative imagery, and provides better guidance when disabled submit buttons cannot yet be used.

  • More resilient deployment behaviour

Deployment flows now handle environments without a provisioned Web API app more gracefully.

Bug fixes

  • Fixed PDF Pack and snapshot handling after signed document changes

PDF Packs and snapshots now correctly handle signed-document replacement and removal scenarios.

  • Fixed repeated results in dashboard pagination for table storage environments

Dashboard paging no longer repeats the same first set of records across later pages for customers running Brief Connect v2.5.2 on the SharePoint/table storage path.

  • Fixed incorrect dashboard statistics in SharePoint search mode

Dashboard cards now calculate counts more accurately when the SharePoint search path is in use.

  • Fixed missing data in CSV exports

CSV exports now populate core record fields more reliably.

  • Fixed orphaned SharePoint folders after failed record creation

Rollback behaviour now cleans up incomplete SharePoint folders more reliably when record creation fails.

  • Fixed metadata parsing and user validation edge cases

Resolved issues that could cause metadata parsing exceptions and user validation failures when invalid SharePoint user references were present.

  • Fixed issue with notifications for Group owners/members

Users with notifications configured to 'Only my tasks' will now correctly receive notifications for tasks assigned to a Group they are a owner/member of

Upgrade instructions (from v2.5.2)

The following instructions apply to environments already running Brief Connect v2.5.2.

Note

If you are upgrading from a version earlier than v2.5.2, please refer to the Brief Connect team for specific release notes for additional pre-deployment steps (including pipeline setup and environment variable updates).

Manual pre-deployment steps

Review release pipeline variables

It's important to apply any changes to pipeline variables before a release is created, because every release creates a snapshot of pipeline variables at the moment of creation. The only way to redeploy the application with updated variables is by creating a new release.

  1. Go to Azure DevOps, open your Brief Connect project
  2. In the left panel navigation, go to Pipelines → Library → Variable groups
  3. Review variables for all environments included in this release and update values where required
  4. Save any changes

Create a new release

  1. Go to Azure DevOps, open your Brief Connect project, go to Pipelines → Releases
  2. Find the Deploy Brief Connect Application release pipeline and click on it to open
  3. If there is no release with version 2.5.3, click Create Release
  4. Set the Package Version variable to 2.5.3
  5. Add a description (optional)
  6. Click Create
  7. The release v2.5.3 (n) will be created and available in the list of releases after you refresh the page

Pipeline deployment steps

  1. Deploy release v2.5.3 (n) (where (n) is the latest number available) from the Deploy Brief Connect Application release pipeline in Azure DevOps to the target environment

Manual post-deployment steps

Clear the server cache

Role required: Brief Connect Administrator

  1. Log into the target Brief Connect environment as the Brief Connect Admin user
  2. Open the Admin Panel (https://[WEB_APP_URL]/#/adminPanel)
  3. Open the browser's Developer Tools, go to the Console tab, and run the command:
window.clearCache();
  1. After successful execution, you should see the message: Cache cleared. Server Result: true

Smoke tests

We recommend following our basic testing guide after this release: Basic testing of Brief Connect

Release-specific tests for v2.5.3

Dashboard and search:

  • Open Dashboard > My records with enough records to show more than one page, move to later pages, and confirm each page shows the next set of records rather than repeating the first page
  • Apply a dashboard filter that returns more than one page of results and confirm the Results count matches the number of results shown.

Documents and exports:

  • Open a record's Documents tab, upload one file to Primary documents and one to Attachments, and confirm both uploads complete successfully
  • On a record with a signed replacement document, generate or open a PDF Pack and confirm the signed version is used instead of the original
  • Remove the signed replacement, confirm the live record falls back to the original document, confirm a new PDF Pack excludes the removed signed copy, and confirm the related snapshot still preserves the earlier signed state
  • Export records to CSV including fields such as Date Received, Related Records, and Signature Required, and confirm those columns are populated with the expected values

Notifications:

  • As an administrator, update the subject template for a supported email notification, save the change, reload the page, and confirm the updated subject is retained
  • Trigger that notification and confirm the received email uses the configured subject line, while unchanged templates continue to use a valid default subject