Change Log

Added the ability to export displayed manifest(s) to csv on the Submitted and Archived tabs, any Filtering applied is reflected in the exported data.  (Ref GEM-391)

 

Tweaked Manifest Submission form as buttons were truncated.  (Ref GEM-392)

Installer for release 4.0.1 contained an old version of wyUpdate.exe that is not compatible with TLS 1.2. If users installed 4.0.1 and TLS 1.0 or 1.1 is disabled on their machine then updates would fail.  (Ref GEM-390)

Code Signed all GeMMA executables and libraries in preparation for a new Windows 11 feature known as Smart App Control which will block installers and applications that are not Code Signed. See Smart App Control for more information.  (Ref GEM-383)

Upgraded targeted framework from .Net 4.0 to 4.8.  (Ref GEM-369)

Offline license activation and deactivation files now contain 'GeMMA' in the respective file names.  (Ref GEM-379)

New controls option added called 'Adjust Whistl Collection Date'.  This option controls the Collection Date value output to the TNT upload file for Whistl and Citipost.  (Ref GEM-380)

Online licensing traffic now goes via proxy server if the Proxy settings are implemented.  (Ref GEM-378)

Users now have the ability to enter Proxy settings on the licensing screen for fresh installs (initial launch).  (Ref GEM-378)

Licensing libraries have been updated to latest version (4.4.4.0).  (Ref GEM-377)

 

Login Details for eMHS and UK Mail were not saved to the database on fresh installs (initial launch), causing users to have to enter the details twice.  (Ref GEM-371)

Whistl and Citipost submissions result in the creation of TNT Uploads files. The Collection Date in the TNT Upload files now reflects the Handover Date set for a submission via the GUI, via the Reschedule Batch option in the GUI or via CMD.  (Ref GEM-376)

Manifest report amended not to show Item Range values when Bags used as the selection criteria.  (Ref GEM-374)

The Application Update tool does not currently support TLS 1.2. Therefore, if TLS 1.0 or 1.1 is disabled, the tool no longer works. This release contains the final change to fully support TLS 1.2.  (Ref GEM-343)

It was found that a large amount of mailing cells being submitted for the same Supply Chain ID and Handover Date caused each submission of a batch to that manifest to get exponentially slower. The submission performance for this scenario has now been optimised. (Ref GEM-367)

The Application Update tool does not currently support TLS 1.2. Therefore, if TLS 1.0 or 1.1 is disabled, the tool no longer works. This release contains some configuration changes that will allow the next release of GeMMA to fully support TLS 1.2.  (Ref GEM-343)

Submitted manifests can now be archived to a new Archive tab to improve performance and responsiveness of the Submitted tab. By default archiving is disabled.  (Ref GEM-360)

 

The Prepare and Submit tabs have been improved for greater performance and responsiveness. (Ref GEM-359)

The startup/launch time for GeMMA has been improved by changing the database spring-clean (vacuum/compact) to run monthly instead of each time GeMMA is launched.  (Ref GEM-358)

Log Files can now be deleted using a Delete logfiles control. By default the deletion of old log files is disabled.  (Ref GEM-361)

Consider enabling the new Archive submitted manifests feature.

Consider enabling the new Delete logfiles control.

The GeMMA generated tnt upload file and bag file now has a ticker value appended to each output file name (e.g. 1234AI1BC-20210204-637479499014992617.tnt and 1234AI1BC-20210204-637479499014992617.bag). This change stops the tnt and bag files being overwritten on subsequent submissions where the SCID and handover date are the same.  (Ref GEM-356)

Improved handling of ERR codes from UKMail.  (Ref GEM-355)

Added future support for Network Access Economy Class Services.  (Ref GEM-354)

Previous release (3.15.5) contained an issue when using Deflate or GZip Compression Methods due to an Obfuscation issue.  (GEM-352)

Both Whistl and Citipost submissions produce a tnt file which contains the eManifest ID. We now amend and recreate the tnt file with an adjusted eManifest ID if the Reschedule Batch option is used.  (Ref GEM-350)

Handover Dates up to 28 days into the future can now be submitted to eMHS.  (Ref GEM-347)

The GeMMA database has been amended to allow for weight-desc to be a maximum of 20 characters.  (Ref GEM-332)

Yesterdays release (3.15.0) caused a bug where a manifest will fail eMHS validation of the Department Id (must be 10 characters long - Response code 29).  (GEM-338)

 Now catering for additional Auto Sales Order Generation (ASOG) fields If supplied in the GeMMA manifest file. Note that Cygnus and SwiftSort applications will be updated soon to cater for these new ASOG fields.  (Ref GEM-282)

 

The GeMMA schema definition has been amended to allow for a weight-desc field of up to 20 characters.  (Ref GEM-332)

 Added additional Command Line Processing options allowing users to confirm eManifests that have been previously submitted via SCID and HandOverDate.  (Ref GEM-327)

Installer executable is now CodeSigned.  (Ref GEM-318)

New GeMMA Icons are now in place to match other Swift Products.  (Ref GEM-322)

When processing via CMD a grace period of 7 days is applied if license cannot be validated online.  (Ref GEM-325)

The Start and End Sequence numbers for the selected manifest are now displayed in the Details tab.  (Ref GEM-321)

Submitted Batches can now be Rescheduled up to a maximum of 10 days from the date of the original submission.  (Ref GEM-314)

Users with a very large amount of SCID's could receive an error when starting GeMMA as the message envelope was too large to fit into the default message size (65k). Changing to a compressed endpoint fixes the issue, however, we felt it necessary to increase the default message size regardless.  (Ref GEM-313)

UKMail Joint Industry Committee (JIC) Compatible.  (Ref GEM-312)

Handover Dates up to 14 days into the future can be submitted to eMHS. Note, this new feature should not be used until 8th January 2018.  (Ref GEM-309)

Licensing migrated to new system managed online. New Product Keys sent to all Client contacts on the 13/12/18 .  (Ref GEM-295)

Joint Industry Committee (JIC) Compatible.  (Ref GEM-310)

ItemID's that went around the clock (ItemID's range from 00000001 .. 99999999) caused selection errors and were unable to be submitted.  (Ref GEM-290)

The Prepare tab would could show incorrect Remaining Items counts.  (Ref GEM-291)

Drag and Drop has been disabled if a child form is open.  (Ref GEM-249)

Citipost manifests output from Cygnus version 3.9.0 are catered for and produce Whistl compatible output files.  (Ref GEM-287)

The submission performance has been improved for submissions which contain selections.  (Ref GEM-292)

After feedback from a number of users we have now reintroduced the ability to set a Handover Date of up to 2 months into the future on the Prepare tab.  (Ref GEM-286)

It was found that the global Handover Date selector would allow a user to select a handover date greater than 2 days in advance.  (Ref GEM-280)

 

The original eMHS web service (Poster Upload) has been replaced with a newer version of the web service (Poster Upload 2). The new web service allows all Participants in a supply chain to submit manifests, access all supply chains and review all supply chain activity.   Note that Deferred Mailings and Automated Sales Order Generation has not been catered for at this time and may be added in the future pending customer feedback.  (Ref GEM-66)

The SAP a/c has been removed from the Details Area.  (Ref GEM-190)

Multi-User mode users are now able to take Ownership of manifests on the Submitted tab. The Owner can then use the Confirm eManifest, Cancel Batch and Reschedule Batch options, if applicable.  (Ref GEM-267)

Command Line Processing has been extended to include eMHS, therefore, all submissions can now be automated. There are 3 new optional parameters and Return Codes have been tweaked.  (Ref GEM-96)

 

During a submission the Owner field is displayed along with other important fields on the Manifest Submission progress form. It was found that a different Owner could be displayed to what was contained in a manifest if a user had a previously submitted a manifest for the same Supply Chain that contained a different Owner. The correct Owner is now displayed.  (Ref GEM-272)

 

The Reschedule Handover Date options have be revised to bring the options inline with the recent Handover Date logic for all Wholesale (Network Access) changes in 3.8.5.   (Ref GEM-269)

The Version of GeMMA is now output to the logs to assist support investigations.  (Ref GEM-263)

A new log file has been created which stores a history of GeMMA versions and when they were first launched to assist support investigations.  (Ref GEM-266)

The archived log files are now output to the main log folder.  (Ref GEM-273)

Help and Application Updates now use https protocol.   (Ref GEM-246)

Continuous Improvement Program has been added. This program captures usage telemetry such as Version in use and Operating System.  (Ref GEM-244)

The Handover Date logic for all Wholesale (Network Access) mailings has been changed in accordance with Royal Mail's documentation (eMHS Implementation Guidelines - 3.5 Timings). Manifests must be confirmed the day before mail is handed over to the Royal Mail, therefore, we have blocked a handover date of today for Network Access mailings.  (Ref GEM-245)

The report icon tooltip for a submitted manifest on the submitted tab now shows the report filename.  (Ref GEM-238)

The right mouse context menu on the Submitted tab has been expanded to include an option to open the report folder via Windows Explorer (Open Report Location).  (Ref GEM-239)

UK Mail exposed a new web service that can be used to validate user credentials. Therefore, our 'creative' approach of achieving validation and service status has been replaced.   (Ref GEM-241)

 

Canceling a submission on the All selected mailing cells are valid; Submit now form or during a submission caused a database synchronisation issue resulting in the cancelled mailing cells being flagged as submitted and therefore ended up being displayed in the Submitted tab rather than the Submit tab.  (Ref GEM-237)

 

Extra validation has been added when importing Whistl mailing cells.  (Ref GEM-242)

TNT upload and bag files produced post submission of a Whistl mailing cell has be improved to now include the service register and contract codes if supplied in the GeMMA mailing cell file. A future release of the PostalSort engine will output these new elements.  (Ref GEM-243)

Right mouse clicking (Post Submission Actions) on batches older than 90 days on the Submitted tab caused an untrapped exception (ErrorMessage: Invalid Manifest ID; ResponseCode:6) due to Royal Mail Servers only retaining 90 days of data. Exception is now handled cleanly and results in no interaction options with the selected batch.  (Ref GEM-236)

eManifests are no longer confirmed at the end of a submission, instead they are left in an Open state allowing users to submit further batches of the same SCID and Handover Date, manually Confirm an eManifest, Reschedule or Cancel Individual Batches. Please see Step 4 - Review Submitted Mailing Cells and Post Submission Actions for more information. (Ref GEM-142)

Removed unnecessary controls from the Submitted tab. (Ref GEM-226)

It was possible to change the Handover Date and for that change not to take effect. (Ref GEM-210)

 

Drag and Drop has been expanded to the entire form rather than just the data grid. (Ref GEM-159)

Revised the manifest xml schema to accommodate outputs from the latest version of the sort engine used in Cygnus 3.6.3 and SwiftSort 1.13.7. (Ref GEM-204)

Multi-User mode allows multiple instances of GeMMA within a networked environment to share the same application resources, repository structure and database; giving all installations a centralised workspace. (Ref GEM-70 and Gem-77)

Added new Show Change log setting option to Settings > Controls (enabled by default) which controls the display of the Change log if an application update is found. (Ref GEM-147)

Added new Change log context menu item to Help menu which opens the Change log.  (Ref GEM-147)

Revised the tab order of all controls within the Settings form. (Ref GEM-155)

Proxy Credentials have been improved to use system defaults if present. (Ref GEM-167)

A new Update Method called Notify has been added which allows the user to be notified of an update giving them the option to apply the update or ignore to be applied at a later date. (Ref GEM-132)

Application Update traffic will now route via a Proxy if defined in the settings. (Ref GEM-138)

The eMHS Controls on in the Settings > Control tab were not saving if the up/down arrows were not used or if the focus wasn't changed after an edit before closing the form. This has now been fixed. (Ref GEM-137)

 

A temporary XML data file used in the creation of the eManifest pdf report is now retained for users to utilise. (Ref GEM-126)

The import schema used to validate manifests imported into GeMMA has been changed to allow for manifest outputs from a future release of the sort engine (3.5.0). (Ref GEM-146)

A new tool has been added allowing users to review Recent Upload Activity in the last 24 hours. NB This tool caters for Royal Mail eMHS submissions only and retrieves the Submission Activity directly from the eMHS web service. (Ref GEM-53)

 

Multiple Instances of GeMMA can no longer be opened. (Ref GEM-129)

The Help documentation held locally has been removed and replaced with an online version. (Ref GEM-100)

Improvements have been made to the automatic recovery from loss of internet connection during a submission. (Ref GEM-135)

Improvements have been made to the cancellation of submitted batches during a submission. (Ref GEM-134)

Item Selections has been expanded to allow Selections to be made by Bag Number. NB this feature is only available with GeMMA Manifests created by the PostalSort engine version 3.5.0 due for release in February 2016. (Ref GEM-114)

It is now possible to route eMHS traffic via Proxy. (Ref GEM-60)

A new Update Method has been added which disables Automatic updates. (Ref GEM-106)

 

An exception occurred when users tried to submit a manifest that had been cancelled during a previous submission. This has now been fixed. (Ref GEM-90)

An exception occurred if a user tried to apply an Application Update with manifests waiting to be submitted on the Submit tab. This has now been fixed. (Ref GEM-91)

Market Reach at Royal Mail requested the ability for GeMMA to submit the Spare4, Spare 6 and Spare 10 fields to eMHS. We have now implemented the submission of all Spare fields (with the exception of Spare 8) if they exist in the GeMMA manifest. Note that this a test on behalf of Market Reach so that Advertising Mail can be analysed more accurately. If you have been requested to test this feature then please contact support for further information. (Ref GEM-117)

The Items Remaining count on the Prepare tab could show misleading information. (Ref GEM-127)

Further efficiencies have been made to the XML Parser for the UK Mail Interim Solution added in 3.5.0 resulting in less memory usage. (Ref GEM-111)

GeMMA will now run as a 64-bit application on 64-bit Operating Systems. (Ref GEM-110)

Efficiencies have been made to the XML Parser for the UK Mail Interim Solution added in 3.5.0 resulting in faster submissions on large manifests. (Ref GEM-108)

An interim solution has been added to facilitate the submission of UK Mail Manifests directly to UK Mail. The solution is accessed via command line only and and should only be used with UK Mail Manifests output from Cygnus 3.3.5 or SwiftSort 1.12.2. See UK Mail Integration Topic for more information. (Ref GEM-55)

Added two compression methods to improve submission throughput and to reduce network traffic; GZIP and DEFLATE. Submission throughput improvement depends on various factors; Amount of items, Upload and Download Bandwidth, Network Traffic, PC Specification and current load on the Royal Mail eMHS servers. (Ref GEM-47)

 

Tests on various hardware and bandwidth speeds shows an increase in submission upload times of around 10 - 50%. Both compression methods offer very similar compression ratios of approximately 66% and therefore submission throughput is very similar, with Deflate ever so slightly ahead.

 

A compression method can be chosen via the eMHS Login Details.

Recovery from loss of internet connection during a submission has been added. Recovery is controlled via the Attempts and Retry Interval settings.

The application configuration file held in the program files folder (C:\Program Files (x86)\SoftwareBureau\Gemma) was being used to store the last imported folder used to import mailing cells. This caused an access issue for installations where the user doesn't have Modify permissions. This is now stored in the database held in the programdata folder (C:\ProgramData\SoftwareBureau\Gemma) therefore conforming to Windows Application Guidelines. (Ref GEM-97)

Licence files will now include the Machine ID. (Ref GEM-98)

Copy Licence to Clipboard adjusted to show Product Name. (Ref GEM-49)

Added a new feature which allows upgrades to be applied locally. (Ref GEM-87)

The error section within the Manifest report is now shown in red. (Ref GEM-88)

Canceling a submission via the forms X control caused the submission to error instead of canceling the submission. The submission is now cancelled cleanly. (Ref GEM-79)

With the introduction of Unsorted into Cygnus and SwiftSort a new element has been added to the GeMMA Mailmark output which will display the Sort Type (Sorted or Unsorted) within the GeMMA UI. (Ref GEM-83)

Mailing Cell Schema Updates. (Ref GEM-55)

Mailing Cell Schema Updates. (Ref GEM-82)

Changed Application Upgrade endpoint to new web server. Old web server decommisioned on the 4th March 2015 therefore users not on 3.1.4 or above will not be able to upgrade. (Ref GEM-80)

Mailing Cell Schema Updates. (Ref GEM-76)

Rebrand TNT to Whistl. (Ref GEM-75)

TNT Integration

TNT has now been fully integrated

GeMMA requires outputs from Cygnus 3.0.0 or SwiftSort 1.10.8

Once an upload to RM has completed GeMMA will produce the TNT Upload and Bags files only.

3 optional fields have been added to Cygnus 3.0.0 for Campaign Reporting and Tracking. These optional fields will be rolled out to SwiftSort in the near future.

Expiry warnings now displayed on the main form

Licences can now be amended via a new tool

Application updates endpoint has been changed from ftp to https

Previous Databases are now upgraded on launch starting from DB version 1.2

Help Form improvements:

Added Licence details (Company, Licence Key and Expiry Date)

Added Email Support button

Set Minimum and Maximum for sizes

Added further endpoints (Live and DR)

Added option allowing user to select endpoint (Test, Auto, Live or DR)    

Removed die by date (Time-Bomb)