INTRODUCING WORKADVENTURE 1.20

WHAT’S NEW

We are super excited to announce the release of WorkAdventure 1.20.0 🎉

Mark our words, this release is a major one, with a lot of new features and improvements. Here are the highlights:

STATUS MANAGEMENT

We have added a new feature to manage your status in WorkAdventure.
Until now, in order to mark yourself as “busy”, you had to move to a silent zone. Now, you can set your status to “Available”,
“Busy”, “Do not disturb” or “Offline” directly from the profile menu.

You can now set your status to “Available”, “Busy”, “Back in a moment” or “Do not disturb” right from action bar.

If you are a Microsoft Teams user, this new status will soon be synchronized with your Microsoft Teams status. You will be marked as “Busy” in WorkAdventure when you are in a meeting in Microsoft Teams, and the opposite is true: you will be marked as “Busy” in Microsoft Teams when you are in a meeting in WorkAdventure.

UPLOAD YOUR OWN ASSETS

From the very first version, it has always been possible to customize your maps as you wanted, using the Tiled editor. But for simple customization, like adding a logo or a picture, it was a bit complicated.

Today, we are introducing a new feature that allows you to upload your own assets directly from the map editor.

Want to add a logo to your map? Or maybe a poster on the wall? Or a new kind of table? Just fire the map editor, drag’n’drop your image in the “Add your image” section, and it will be available in the asset picker.

NEW WOKAS

Our Wokas have been redesigned! A big thank you to Alizée, our outstanding designer for her amazing work. You will find more diversity in the Wokas, with new outfits, new haircuts with more colors, some bears, and new accessories.

Also, by default, the weapons are now disabled as we are looking for a more peaceful world.

But fear not! If you developed a fusional relationship with your old Woka, or if it is of paramount importance to
frighten your colleagues by harboring a bloody knife, you can enable them back in the Woka menu of the
administration dashboard.

Read more about the new Woka design here (TODO: link)

ADD ACCESS / EDITION RIGHTS TO AREAS

Until now, all the areas in a map were public. It was not possible to restrict the access to some areas to some users. Of course, it was possible to create doors, with special tags to allow opening or closing the door, but there was no definitive way to restrict access to an area.

Now, you can add access rights to an area. If you do so, only people with the right tags will be able to enter the area. Those areas can be configured directly from the map editor.

Even better! You can also delegate the right to edit the content of an area to some users.
Those users will be able to access the map editor and modify the content of the area only.

This can be very useful, for example, to create a “booth” for sponsors of an event. The sponsor can then modify the content of their booth, without being able to modify the rest of the map.

Check the complete documentation

PERSONAL DESKS

You can now declare personal areas in the map editor. Those areas can be claimed by users, and they can be manually assigned by an administrator. When a user enters a personal area, a card with the user’s name and contact info is displayed.

Users can also edit the content of their personal area and put their own assets in it.

Check the complete documentation

NEW WAY TO UPLOAD MAPS

The map-starter-kit has now a `npm run upload` to upload a map to the WorkAdventure map-storage server.

This is a major change regarding the way maps are hosted. You can still host your maps on any server (most of our users are using GitHub pages), but now, you can also host your maps directly on the WorkAdventure servers.

It makes it easier for non-technical users to play with maps as there is no need to master GitHub and the CI actions anymore.

Check the documentation

ALLOWING CUSTOM INTEGRATIONS FROM THE ADMIN

The Admin dashboard now allows you to create custom integrations. Links to those applications can be added to the WorkAdventure admin panel, and be automatically displayed in the WorkAdventure client (in the map editor and in the chat).

To access this new menu, go to your “Admin” dashboard, select your world, and click on the “Applications” menu.

VISUAL “PRESS SPACE” HELPER

A “press space” visual indication is now displayed when you can interact with an object.

INTEGRATION WITH CARDS

Adding the ability to integrate “microlearning cards” in your map.

OTHER IMPROVEMENTS

A bunch of other improvements have been made regarding the scroll speed, the analytics, the design of the visit card and the profile page, the scripting API, etc…

WHAT’S NEXT?

This release was already huge… but wait for the next ones!

The next release will focus on bots. We are getting ready for an open-beta in the coming weeks, with
GPT-4 enable bots, but also bots with custom LLM models, integration with Tock.ai and more!

By the way, if you want to have a look at what bots will look like, check out the video below!

Then, the chat system will get a complete revamp with the integration of Matrix, the open-source decentralized communication platform. It means it will be possible to send messages to users in other WorkAdventure instances, or out of WorkAdventure, to any Matrix client. For instance, if you are not in WorkAdventure, your colleagues will be able to send you a message on your phone, in Element for instance.

And finally, we are planning a complete redesign, and a full Microsoft Teams integration.

The next months are going to be very exciting, stay tuned!