Overview

This article describes the contents of the version 8464 SnapHire product release.  This version is available for general release from the 8th of August 2017.  This article includes:

Version 8463 incorporated into this release

This general release incorporates the changes that were included in the limited release of version 8463.


Trademe job board posting enhancement for branding

In this version we have added an enhancement to the Post to Trademe screen for automated job board postings from SnapHire to the Trademe website (via the 'Posted to job boards widget' on the job details page).  Now you can select different branding options (banners and logos) for your job posting on Trademe while posting directly from SnapHire.

  • If your organization has only one branding option configured on your Trademe account, no additional configuration is required in SnapHire.  
  • If you have more than one branding option configured on your Trademe account, please contact Support as they will need the Trademe BannerIDs and LogoIDs to add this configuration for you.

The branding question has a new layout:

If you select 'Yes', the Banner and Logo sub questions will appear for you to make your selections (or go with the default if your organization only has one branding option):


New sign up behavior for job seekers using identity provider apps

If using SnapHire with the Talent App Store enabled, there are new behaviors when job seekers register (sign up) using an identity provider app.


Sign up button is removed

Prior to this version of SnapHire, there was both a 'Sign in' and 'Sign up' button available on the careers site - these buttons originally took the user to different destinations when using the 'Sign in with Email' app.  Since the new version of the 'Sign in with Email' app released on the 24th of July 2017, the Sign up button is redundant (as both buttons launch the app with both the sign in and sign up panels displayed).  From this version of SnapHire, only the Sign in button will appear on the careers site.


When registering using the 'Sign in with Email' app

If a job seeker registers using the Sign in with Email app, as soon as they have completed the sign up process (i.e. clicked on the 'Verify email address' link within the email they received) they will be taken to the first tab of the SnapHire registration wizard.  Only the email address is populated at this point as nothing else is known.  If the job seeker does not provide their first and last name, every time they sign in they will be automatically taken to the first tab of the registration wizard to encourage them to provide this.  Prior to this version they were taken to a 'Thank you for signing up' page and asked to click on the 'Edit my details' button to enter the SnapHire registration wizard.


When registering using another 'Sign in with XX' app

If a job seeker registers using credentials from a third party (e.g. Google, Facebook, LinkedIn etc) as soon as they have signed in, their account is created and they will be taken to the first tab of the SnapHire registration wizard.  Some information (e.g. their first / last name) may be populated in the wizard depending on the information available from the third party.  Prior to this version they were taken to a 'Thank you for signing up' page and asked to click on the 'Edit my details' button to enter the SnapHire registration wizard.


'Email to Friend' spammer prevention

Some organizations had reported fake bounce-back emails being sent from their email address.  These emails were created by malicious bots (software application that runs automated tasks) using the 'Email to Friend' button which appears on SnapHire job advertisements.  The bot would create a fake bounce-back email address and then send about 1000 emails to friends using the fake email address as the "from" account.  In this version we have introduced a new security mechanism to deter this type of bot behavior.


Removal of 'Private' marking for job seekers whose registration is 'incomplete'

Until this version, if using SnapHire with the Talent App Store enabled and the Sign in with Email app installed, the private job seeker marking was also used to indicate job seekers who had a registration pending and the related status 'incomplete' flag set (the registration pending status was when the job seeker had provided their email address via Sign in with Email but had not yet set their password - this set a TAS specific 'incomplete' flag in the database).


The Sign in with Email app has changed and the registration pending process no longer applies - job seekers signing up provide their email address and password in the same step.  


Upon upgrade to SnapHire version 8464, any job seeker who is in the status of registration pending (i.e. those job seekers who have the TAS specific 'incomplete' flag set) will have the private marking removed. It is important that this process is carried out as users (e.g. Recruiters) will not be able to see these job seeker profiles while the private marking remains unless they have been granted the permission 'Manage private job seekers'.


Depending on the configuration of the SnapHire site, the upgrade will do one of the following:

  1. If the SnapHire site does not have the Talent App Store enabled:  No action will be taken.
  2. If the SnapHire site has the Talent App Store enabled, and configuration allows job seekers to mark themselves as private:  Any job seeker who is currently marked as private and who has the 'incomplete' registration pending flag set, will be set to visible (i.e. not private).
  3. If the SnapHire site has the Talent App Store enabled, and configuration does not allow job seekers to mark themselves as private:  Any job seeker who is currently marked as private will be set to visible (i.e. not private).

 

New data fields to capture more information about applications from apps

In this version we have added two new data fields in order to capture information about the app that was used to submit an application.  These new fields are called 'Application app name' and 'Application app code' and are populated when a job seeker submits an application where the application method is an app.


Later this information is used to obtain the appropriate logo (from your tenant in the Talent App Store) to display when reviewing application data in the job seeker details.  The 'Application app' field shows the logo obtained.  For example:


TIPS:

  • Applications received prior to the upgrade to v8464 will not have these data fields answered so no logo will appear.
  • If the application app has been uninstalled from your tenant for any reason, the logo will not be available so the 'Application app name' information will show instead of the logo.
  • If the bucket view has been amended to incorporate them, the 'Application app name' and 'Application app code' can be seen. If added to the bucket view, these columns are sortable.


Fix for timezone update for 'Date of birth' registration question

In this version we have made a change to the standard SnapHire registration question for date of birth and the way it is retrieved from the database.  When saving a date of birth to the database, SnapHire was checking the timezone of the user and correctly translating the date of birth into UTC time.  However, when retrieving the UTC date of birth from the database later, SnapHire was obtaining the correct date but not adding back the required timezone for the user. This has now been updated to ensure that timezone is also incorporated when retrieving from the database.


Fix for number of search results for job and job seeker searches

In this version we have fixed the issue that was being experienced by users (e.g. Recruiter) when performing job searches (Jobs tab \ Refine this search) or job seeker searches (Seekers tab \ Refine this search).  The issue was that the default number of results to be shown set by the user (via their account tab) was being ignored, and the SnapHire default of 30 was being used.  In this version, if a user has set their own default number of results via their Account tab, it is used when performing job or job seeker searches. 


Fix for issue experienced by job seekers discarding draft applications

On some careers sites, when job seekers attempted to discard a draft application, they were seeing an error message 'this form is not multi-part'.  This has now been resolved.


Fix for issue experienced by agency users attempting to sign in via the careers site

In this version we have fixed an issue where some agency users could not sign in via the careers site.  This has now been resolved, and agency users with valid accounts can sign in using the 'Agency sign in' button on the careers site.


Fix for issue experienced by job seekers searching for jobs on the careers site

In this version we have fixed an issue where job seekers could not search for jobs using the keyword feature. This has now been resolved.


Administration changes

In this release we've also made some administration changes.  These changes won't impact you directly, but we thought you might like to know about them just the same:

  • Apache Tomcat software - In this version we have made some changes to the Tomcat software where it will detect bots / crawlers using user-agent matching and direct them to one global session for better memory and tracker usage/performance.
  • TAS handling errors:  We had an issue where error pages were being generated because the Talent App Store experienced a problem.  In this version we have changed the way TAS handles problems - now if TAS experiences a problem, the error is caught and no outputs will show to users and the SnapHire site will continue to work as expected.
  • TAS time-out setting:  In this version we have added a default time-out for all Talent App Store API calls.  Without a default setting, there was the potential for API calls which did not have a time-out set, to hang for a long time if TAS did not respond.
  • Apache Wicket stack trace fix:  Wicket is a component based web application framework that we use as part of our Java programming.  When a job seeker is editing their details or applying for a job, there is a large amount of Wicket stack trace, which is no required, being included in our site logs.  In this version we have made changes to ensure this type of Wicket stack trace is not included in our site logs.
  • Tracker app filter:  Tracker is an app which provides source analytics by allowing all your apps to track the behavior and sharing habits of your candidates.  In this version we have changed the SnapHire filter for Tracker to ensure that using Tracker does not put undue load on the SnapHire site, which could potentially cause performance issues.
  • Moving of job description safe markup to the cloud:  In this version we have moved the job description safe markup file from Joblio to AWSS3 server (cloud). This file contains the markup rules for job description text (e.g. if the advert text in the Description tab of the job wizard does not meet the rules, then the '(incomplete)' label appears after the job title in job list view).  There should be no visible change to clients.  Please note that the incomplete label may also appear in job list view if other mandatory information has not been provided, but that is not related to this file.
  • Correction of Wicket snippet caching:  In this version we have updated the timing of snippet caching when using snippets from other sites.  Previously the snippet would only be saved once, then after that first copy expired the snippet would be reloaded every time it was required by a page access. This was causing performance issues.  In this version we save the snippet each time it is reloaded.