Fresco Platform Update – Version 1.5.6 (27 July 2026)

This release extends the Embed component with Microsoft Forms and two kinds of Figshare embeds. It also makes Local Navigation, Media Gallery and rich-text editing clearer, speeds up editing on pages containing many Cards, and improves migration and content-management reliability.

• Embed component extended
  • Editors can now add content from the following approved services, where the relevant service has been enabled for their site:
    • Microsoft Forms, supporting questionnaires and surveys
    • Figshare iFrames, supporting embedding individual Figshare items

    • Figshare Web Gallery buttons and search bar available, taking it out of Beta  

       

• Local Navigation refinements
  • Editors can choose whether to display a title above a Local Navigation component
  • The title uses the name configured for the menu by default, but editors can provide a different title for an individual component where needed
  • Menu titles are presented as second-level headings, providing a consistent and accessible page structure

  • Child links in unrelated branches of the menu now remain collapsed. Visitors see the current page, its sibling pages, and its children without the navigation becoming unnecessarily long

     

• More usable Media Gallery editing
  • Media Gallery items are now displayed as a vertical list in the editing pane rather than a compact grid
  • Each item has a clearer thumbnail, title, order number, remove control and drag handle
  • Editors can reorder items by dragging them or by changing their order number. The displayed order updates immediately

  • This change affects the editing interface only; it does not alter how existing Media Galleries appear to visitors

     

• Clearer rich-text editing
  • The technical text-format selector has been removed from Text components, including Text components used within Cards and Banners. Editors no longer risk changing the underlying format inadvertently
  • Existing content and formatting are retained

  • Editors can now apply a preformatted code-block text style 

     

• Search media by filename
  • The media management screen now includes a filename filter
  • This makes it easier to locate an image when its filename is known, even where several images use the same or similar alternative text

• Figshare Web Gallery embeds

  • Figshare Web Gallery buttons are no longer blank and search bar can be used. 

     

• Faster editing on pages with many Cards
  • Changes made to pages containing a large number of Cards now appear in the live preview more promptly

  • Editing performance should remain more consistent as the number of Cards on a page increases

     

• Reusable Content
  • Editors can no longer add Reusable Content as a component when creating a new Reusable Content. Removing the ability to nest Reusable Content reduces the risk of confusion 

  • Re-running a migration no longer creates additional copies of the same Reusable Content

     

• Migration reliability
  • Migrated images without captions no longer display an empty caption bar. Images with genuine captions continue to retain their caption text

  • The automated migration pipeline can now run successfully again after an issue temporarily prevented information from being passed between stages

     

• Site Owner management
  • When a Site Administrator attempts to delete the current Site Owner, Fresco now explains that a new Site Owner must be assigned first, rather than displaying an unrelated administrator-role message

• SharePoint embeds no longer display due to changes Microsoft has introduced which makes it unsupportable. It will be removed from the whitelist in a future release. Suggested workaround is to add a static image and add a link to SharePoint

• Platform maintenance and supporting work

  • This release includes security hardening and platform maintenance. Technical details relating to security updates have intentionally been omitted
  • It also includes internal access-management work, automated-test maintenance and regression testing to confirm that existing Symplectic publication displays continue to work with forthcoming service changes

Sprint: W5 - Sprint 6

Product Backlog Items: 124898, 124906, 125941, 119244, 108840, 112811, 93436, 94623, 116081, 127469, 128344, 128195, 128262, 94764, 112899, 128705, 119248, 129254 

Bugs: 129254, 129159, 128403, 128384, 116673, 125094, 126669, 128660, 94262, 128042, 128043, 128382, 128734, 127093