We had a wonderful February at DNN Sharp and it flew by so quickly, just as every other month does when you're busy building cool stuff.

We’re on fire with the amount of releases this year. Already we told you about DNN Aweber Add-on 1.0, DNN Podio Add-on 1.1, Action Form 3.6 and DNN API Endpoint 1.1.

Our developers are always working hard so today we’re super excited to announce HUGE updates to Action Grid.

After 5 months of some serious blood, sweat and tears shed, Action Grid 2.0 has finally dropped! We’ve all been waiting on the edge of our seats and this makes for a happy Wednesday.

It’s a brand new chapter in the history of Action Grid, and we’d love you to join us (or continue with us :).

Comes With a Stack of Awesome Features

So, what exactly does Action Grid 2.0 bring to the table? Well, I’m glad you asked. Okay, I guess I can tell you what the new features are.

Forms Builder

A very interesting use case which best illustrates the actual use of this functionality is an e-commerce site. For example, you have a table in your database with clothing articles, and you want to sell them. 

You can list all of the products in a grid on which you also have the ability to make the purchase via a form integrated in the grid. You can use an SQL statement to list the products' names, their size and color, then you integrate a form field like text box or number in which the user will set a quantity which he desires to buy. You can also use a form field like image or static text in which you can provide additional info, a picture of the product and a drop down with different types of credit cards from which the user will be able to select prior to his purchase

Support For Other Providers Besides SQL Server

Action Grid 2.0 can trigger other types of databases besides SQL Server. In the Connection String box after defining the data source of the grid, you have the possibility to connect to a different database by providing the name of a connection string from web.config or a connection string (Odbc, SqlClient, Oracle, etc.) and then you can set in the grid on the Connection String field the corresponding name which identifies the string

Popups For All Data Sources

This option is very useful to avoid being redirected to the page where you want to edit or to add new items. Once enabled, the user will remain on the grid page and the editing and adding of the item will be made via the pop up page which can be closed as soon as the action was finished

SQL Data Source Supports Stored Procedures For Filtering

Before Action Grid 2.0 whenever the user used to set in a grid's data source the SQL Query source and used a stored procedure, all the records were correctly displayed on the grid but if the grid fields were set to be filterable, then no value was displayed.

Save Button To Data Source

This feature is useful when a user wants to update all the changes when he access the Change Source option.

[_PageUrl] Token

This token will allow you to display in a grid column, different URLs by simply adding a computed field with it in Template. For example, if you want to display the relative URL of the page you have the grid on, you can put in Template on the computed filed this token: [Url:Relative]

Button Permissions

We’ve implemented the ability to add the users roles on each created Item and Grid button populating the Permissions section per each button with all the roles which were created on the portal. For example, in case of a button with which you execute some actions like Delete from database, in order to avoid removing all the records by all the users who log into the site, you can create a certain role which you'll assign to some users who know best when it's the case to use the button  

Access Query String/post/cookies Using $ Prefixed Token Names

From now on you can use  [$id] instead of [QueryString:id]. For example in a grid's data source you can set as statement: select * from Users where UserID=[$ID=1]

If you’ll access a page with no id in query string, then the -1 id will be taken as default and no value will be returned because there is no user with -1 id

Option To Allow HTML Inside Columns

The most common scenario is to set a link on some grid columns in order to nicely display it.

Ability To Include All Fields In CSV Export

EVOQ and Azure compatibility

There are dozens of fixes that make Action Grid 2.0 the best it’s ever been. Here are a few of them that should make you want to upgrade as soon as possible.

• Fixed import of a grid on older dnn versions (from DNN 734 on DNN 721)
• Fixed item buttons not working when there is no form in the grid
• Fixed location of uninstall sql script
• Fixed Chrome flicker and added dropdown data source
• Fixed Save button not enabled when I change column settings
• Fixed Non-form tokens now available in forms
• Fixed having more that one computed columns
• Fixed evaluating conditions for actions
• Fixed setting raw filters also when buttons are clicked
• Fixed save button from appearing when expanding form
• Fixed import/export and upgraded Lucene to 3.0.4
• Fixed deleting form fields
• Fixed error on page on virtual directory after saving the data source
• Fixed issue with handling of single quotes in item buttons
• Fixed Error in Edit Mode on Action Grid - evoq 8
• Fixed Multiple Database Requests
• Fixed Error importing Action Grid
• Fixed CSV spacing issue;
• Fixed bulk delete action not working for sql based grid
• Fixed bug when trying to filter data from tables not in the DNN default database
• Fixed error when using square brackets in datasource sql query
• Fixed errors thrown when Edit page is set to "open in popup" on a Datasourse Edit action in grid
• Fixed replacing tokens that contain empty tokens;
• Fixed displaying HTML in listing template titles
• Fixed apply connection string when getting filters for sql data source
• Fixed tokenization
• Fixed passing custom fields via grid buttons so they're available in for each action; added logging actions
• Fixed default values in data source sql query
• Fixed serialization issue
• Fixed {} in NULL fields of DbTableDataSource fixed encoding problem with computed fields
• Fixed showing {} instead of empty string for null columns
• Fixed not to include bootstrap js when Include Bootstrap is false; added DnnSharp.Common.dll and DnnSharp.Common.Actions.dll to backup folder;
• Fixed ActionGrid Field Sorting
• Fixed Prevent submission enter key in angrid-search
• Fixed RSA and AES actions to work on new actions interface
• Fix for filter issue and alert message
• Fixed showing correct possible actions for item / grid buttons
• Fixed regex parser to correctly extract the data dictionary using new API
• Fixed buttons to return correct results
• And many more

What are you waiting for?

Download Action Grid 2.0 Now

Interested To Find Out More?

Join us for a free webinar to keep track of what's going on with Action Grid 2.0

During the webinar we will overview new capabilities and major improvements brought by this release. 

Register Now

Please keep in mind that there will be an opportunity to ask questions during the webinar. The recording will be available within a few days after the webinar for those of you that will participate. 

Only limited seats left. See you there!

So, What’s Next?

This awesome features are just the start. We cannot tell you how excited we are about what Action Grid can become in the next months.

Thanks to all our crew who put together this piece of software. We would like to give also a big shout out to all our friends, especially to Richard Sletcher  for going the extra mile to help us make Action Grid better. Guys, thank you! We are deeply humbled by the feedback we got from you.

As always, if you have any questions, comments, or notes, please leave them below. And if you want to comment about how we’ve finally rolled this out, that works too. We won’t hold it against you. :) Either way, thanks for being our customers and being awesome.