Release Notes

Read on for the contents and highlights of each release!

April 7, 2025

YouTube videos with timecodes

Up to this point, video assets in Grove have not been able to handle YouTube URLs that include a prescribed start time for playback. With this release, NPR users may now create video assets using YouTube share links that specify a start time.

Image credit/source duplication warning

Many editors and reporters find that photo Credit and Source information is often duplicative, particularly for Agency/Wire service images whose metadata pre-populates these fields in Grove.

To help make these errors easier to spot, duplication detection for image Credit and Source has been added to Grove. When text is duplicated across these fields, a warning message will appear at the top of the image asset editor prompting the user to double-check Credit/Source text.

Bug Fixes

Story-level Do Not Syndicate is not always translated to CDS when set to 'true' in Grove
Adding a Primary Image to a News Story created from a Blog Post does not update the linked Apple News Article
Migration Bug: Some migrated stories are missing their primary media asset (image, audio, video)

Features and Enhancements

Re-migrate stories with 'Do Not Syndicate' set to 'True' after the setting is added to the News Story content type
Grexus API: Add Pod Channel and Episode Content Types
Transcripts: Missing Date Fields Prevent Sorting by Date
Homepage: Invalid Closed Captions URL causes publish failure

Jan. 1, 2025

Regular migration of new Podcast Episodes published from Seamus

NPR’s Podcast content is still produced and published in Seamus. Consequently, any time a Podcast Episode is to be promoted in a Grove story or added to an aggregation managed in Grove, the episode must first be migrated from Seamus. Up to this point, this has required a request submitted to IT Support.

With this release, we have the ability to routinely migrate new Podcast Episodes and associated audio to Grove on a rolling cadence, without the need to submit ad hoc requests. The Grove team is working out the details of when and how frequently migrations should occur and will kick off the automated process soon!

Ability to paste body content from an external email into Grove and retain links

When a reporter or editor takes draft copy from an external email and pastes it into Grove, any linked text will typically have its links stripped. This was happening due to a feature of NPR’s email clients intended to protect users from bad links sent by outside sources, which deliberately removed hyperlinks from email content.

Now, text pasted from an email received by an NPR user and subsequently pasted into the body of a Grove story will retain linked text, removing the need to re-add hyperlinks to draft content taken from an external email.

Read-only settings for non-Revision views of a News Story

Grove for NPR prescribes the use of Story Revisions, both as a dedicated place to save/review edits between users and as a mechanism to keep a story in-sync with Digital Story Presentations in Nexus. However, many users have found revisions prone to error. It is too easy to work outside of the revision, say in an isolated draft or the live version of a story, especially when collaborating with other reporters/editors.

To reduce incidence of non-revision changes and simplify the editing process, we’ve added settings to Grove which can render Drafts, Live, and past published versions of a story as read-only views that are not editable, making revisions the default place for all reporters and editors to commit their story changes. The Grove team also recognizes that there are situations in which a Live or Draft story must be modified and we’ve accounted for these scenarios as well with an edit override option that can be selectively applied.

Bug fixes

Revisions can be saved with an 'empty' Image as Primary Visual, which can lead to publishing errors
Promos can have duplicate brandings, which causes CDS failures
Prevent content on NPR's Grove site from getting updates from the shim

Features and Enhancements

Migrate Podcast Episodes, Audio, Persons and other assets to Grove on demand when Seamus publishes them
Allow link pasting from emails into Body when emails are external to NPR
Migrate Station Person records sent to Seamus via Ingest
Create push notification preview for breaking news alerts
Create email preview for breaking news alerts
Ability to make News Story history items (Draft, Live, and history items) read-only for NPR user roles
Ability to override read-only 'lock' on News Story history items for NPR user roles
Remove 'Include Image' toggle from the 'External' Breaking News Alert link type
NPR Homepage Add an "Add Module" button to the top of the Content section, so editors can both append and prepend modules

Dec. 16, 2024

Bug Fixes

Text after hyperlinks no longer disappears in certain instances
With header underlines/italics enabled, publishing a story without saving will NOT cause HTML code to appear
Preview links no longer "expire"
For individually Scheduled Revisions, permalinks now reflect the last update date instead of actual published date
Added an input note for SEO title on News Story and Episode pages
Excluded Apple News Articles from the internal promo search

Nov. 11, 2024

Quotation marks

Single and double quotation marks have been standardized to use the straight quote style on published pages. Prior to this change, quotes could be styled as straight or curly and would render accordingly on published story pages. This led to inconsistency between — or even within — stories, particularly in cases where copy was brought into Grove from an external text editor. Now, all quotation marks will be straight on audience-facing pages, regardless of the quote style pasted into Grove or how it appears in the CMS rich text editor. This standardization applies to all rich text fields including Headline, Teaser, Body, and Caption.

Galleries

When a gallery is used as a story’s Primary Visual, users have the option to hide the Title, Description and Caption(s). Two settings are available to control the suppression of these fields for Primary Visual Galleries on published pages:

‘Hide Title and Description?’
‘Hide Caption on Slides?’

Previously, these options were accessible for galleries added to the body of a story only. Now, the option to hide Title, Description, and Captions is possible whether a gallery is used in the body or as the Primary Visual for a story.

Bug Fixes

‘Restored Work in Progress’ message erroneously appears in Grove when a change is made to a story and transitioned directly to ‘Ready to Publish’
'Copy this News Story' and 'Create Content Template' are duplicating story metadata that should not be copied
Migrated content: Primary Visual images for aggregations are missing image crops, so the header image is not displayed in preview or upon republish from Grove

Features and Enhancements

Grove-CDS translation to support subheading (H2/H3) anchor links
Exempt system-generated revisions from 'Recent Revision Banner Expiration' setting so Nexus-linked revisions will always be linked at the top of a story
Migrated content: When Person record Main Owner is not s1, do not add additional NPR branding so that Station and NPR persons can be more easily distinguished in Grove

Sept. 30, 2024

Hide a caption

Users now have the option to hide the caption on an image. Previously, an image caption would display on published stories by default, with no option to suppress it other than to remove the caption from the source image or add an invisible character in-story to "overwrite" the original caption. This is the Grove equivalent of Seamus’ "Do not display as caption; use only as alt text" checkbox.

Now, a toggle labeled Allow Blank Caption? is available below the Caption field for Primary images and images added to the body of a News Story.

Bug Fixes

Body copy placed immediately after a module (e.g. a quote or image) failed to appear in Preview and the published story page: Reported by many users, this defect was frequently impacting text written (or pasted) directly following an image, block quote, or other module in the body of a News Story. Until this fix, the workaround was to hit Enter/Return to add a new line after an image or quote to prevent missing text. Now, Grove Preview and live story pages will accurately render text that follows a module without the need to explicitly add an extra line break between elements.

Note: A similar, but distinct issue where beginning a paragraph with hyperlinked words will result in disappearing text still exists. We are working to address this issue as well and expect it to be resolved in the next release.

Expand User search box in Recent Activity widget
Image promo assets were failing to update upon Save when the user is working in the DSP revision
In cases where a News Story includes a graphic embed not supported by Apple News, the Apple News article should have a fallback link directing readers to the full story.
Body copy placed immediately after a module (e.g. a quote or image) failed to appear in Preview and the published story page.
Can't create a Content Template for the Audio content type
Body copy placed immediately after a module (e.g. a quote or image) failed to appear in Preview and the published story page.

Features and Enhancements

Limit Categories dropdown options based on the selected Franchise
Promo link previews in the body should display the title so it's easier to tell promo links apart
Formatting (e.g. italic, underline) don't work with H2 or H3 headers in Grove
Have ability to clear out image caption in the enhancement (embed and lead)
Add Music Visual Aggregation (enum value "EventMusicAgg") to Series Page Styles dropdown on Series content type
Assign NPR ID to the Live Blog content type on the NPR site
Add 'Live Blog News Story' to NPR Story Layout Styles

Aug. 26, 2024

Revisions changes

Searching for a News Story by NPR ID now returns revisions without being put in quotes.

When searching for News Stories (by setting the Content Type filter to News Story), the Revision status filter is set by default to ensure that results include the revision:

In the sidebar on stories, under Revisions, the top item will always be the Nexus-linked revision. Revisions created by Artemis Service User, Nexus Service User and other automated processes will fall below it.

Byline warning

If a story doesn't have a byline, Grove will scream at you:

Bug Fixes

Move DSP to top of revision list after artemis update
Stories added as ordered items to an agg should have the agg’s collection association
News Story searches by NPR ID should return Revisions
Rich text formatting added to pull quotes are not showing up in preview or the website
Parent and Grandparent sections not automatically saving in revision
Segmented Radio Episode url pattern is not using permalink text when it should
Promo Card brandings for external links are automatically adding NPR branding
Slow query for dynamic lists without filters in CMS

Features and Enhancements

News Story search should have the Revision status checked by default
Show a warning when users forget to add Byline before publishing a Digital Story
Translator: Add Closed Captioning to NPR Video provider
Modify what appears on NPR News Story Styles tab
Add favicons to Grove CMS PROD instance for the browser tab
Change Create button to Send on breaking news alerts
Add Size field to Videos added as Primary Visual
Add Slack delivery option for notifications
Add an exclusion rule for auto-assigning "News" secondary section on DLPs published from Nexus
Translate 'Do Not Syndicate' flag on Responsive Embeds to CDS
Add 'Do Not Syndicate' toggle to Video assets
On Breaking News Tool, increase to 10-second timeout on final "Send/Submit?” button action
Remove NexusId duplication check

Aug. 13, 2024

This release was a Brightspot platform upgrade for Grove. These happen a few times a year.

Bug fix: Inline linked text can now be styled with bold or italics
Bug fix: No more text squishing of links and regular text
Bug fixes: Works in Progress (or “WIPs”) will be created for new stories that haven't been manually saved

July 22, 2024

Revisions changes

Upon the first Save and each Publish of a story, users will be automatically directed to the Nexus-linked Revision where further edits can be made.

This is intended to help users ensure their changes to a story are made in the system-generated Revision that is accessible to other editors and sends updates to Nexus, whether the edits are made pre- or post-publish.

The change in behavior comes with an updated message at the top of the story editor in Grove:

On first Save of a new story, the yellow ‘Saved’ confirmation message at the top will also read: "You have been redirected to the Digital Story Presentation revision."
On Publish of a story, the ‘Published’ confirmation message at the top will also read: "You have been redirected to the Digital Story Presentation revision."

Note: Previously, the ‘Published’ message appeared as a green banner at the top of the story editor. It will now appear in yellow and still serves as confirmation of the Publish event:

Promo image toggle

There is a new toggle to regenerate a story’s image promo assets.

Some users have reported inconsistency in the generation of image promo assets and difficulty in ensuring that the four default promo image crops are in place before publishing. With the addition of this "Refresh All Promo Images" toggle, we hope to alleviate some of these issues.

Switching the toggle to on will generate or refresh a story’s image promo assets right away, without the need to save or reload the story. If all (or a subset) of the image promo assets are cleared out or if the main Promo Image changes, the toggle can be used again to regenerate promo assets.

Bug Fixes

Switch users to the correct "continue editing Digital Story Presentation" revision after first save and publish (see the highlight above)
Embedded Youtube videos will no longer display the headline in the caption
Archiving an NPR story in Grove will now also remove the story from Apple News

Features and Enhancements

When all (or even specific crop) promo image assets have been removed, the Promo Image Override will now auto-generate new crops on save/publish
Twitter embeds that were previously defaulting to a right alignment, will now default to a center alignment
Add Button to automatically generate/refresh the Image Promo Assets (see the highlight above)
A new "Apple News Custom" image crop has been added that will allow users to create a custom crop to use for Apple News

July 1, 2024

Byline searches

First, when searching for a Byline results will be pre-filtered to NPR person records by default. If you need to widen the search to include Station persons from across the Network, you can do so by removing NPR from the Main Owner filter in the left-hand column of the search window.

Second, Main Owner and # of References have been added as default columns in Byline search results. This is intended to help users scan results more easily and choose the correct byline in cases where a person has multiple valid records in the CMS from credits at different Stations, as well as cases where invalid duplicate records exist but have not yet been reconciled.

Permalinks/Publish Dates

News Story permalinks and Publish Date reflect a story’s creation date instead of the actual date of first publication. Now, News Stories created in Grove days in advance will have the correct date of initial publication in both the page URL and displayed as the Publish Date on the page itself.

Do Not Syndicate

A ‘Do Not Syndicate’ setting is available on News Stories, which will prevent a story from being distributed to Grove Stations and signal to other Member Stations not using Grove that an NPR story is not intended for republication.

You’ll find the setting near the bottom of the Main tab of a News Story:

Bug Fixes

Story permalink reflects creation date instead of published date
Exclude the selected Primary Section from also being used as a Secondary Section on a given story
Automatic Image Crop dropdown option should be set to Custom instead of Standard

Features and Enhancements

Add Main Owner, NPR ID and # References to Person Search Results default columns
Add Main Owner filter to Person records search, automatically set to Main Owner value from Sites & Settings
Display image caption in Body, using enhancement caption instead of image asset caption
Segmented Radio Episode's Segment list should display NPR id of the segment before the headline
Add 'Do Not Syndicate' toggle to News Stories

June 17, 2024

Correction titles

Grove users now have the ability to alter the display title for Corrections on a News Story.

Previously, when a correction was added to a story, the box that appeared on the published story page had a fixed label that always displayed "Corrections." In the CMS, corrections have a 'Title' field that is editable, but it did not render on the published page to override the default label.

With this change, the text entered in the corrections 'Title' field will render on the story page. If the title is left blank, the label on the story page will still default to "Corrections." This gives users basic control over the context for story corrections and clarifications while ensuring there is always a title in place in cases where a custom label is not needed.

Promo Link eyebrows

Grove now supports custom eyebrow text/URLs for internal and external type Promo Links.

Promo Links in Grove of the "external" link type allow users to enter eyebrow text and the URL to which the reader will be directed upon clicking the eyebrow.

For internal Promo Links, the eyebrow defaults to the Primary Section of the story that is being promoted.

The eyebrow text can be overridden for internal-type Promos, but the URL cannot be altered. With this enhancement, users have control over the eyebrow text and URL so they can (if desired) override the section page link that is the default destination when a promo eyebrow is clicked. The functionality of the "Eyebrow Text" and "Eyebrow URL" fields is now the same for both internal and external-type Promo Links.

Bug Fixes

NPR Branding isn't being automatically set on Promos in News Stories
Refactor audio translation so audio assets are served to the website correctly and can be rendered on Homepage and Music Section promo cards
Rich Text Modules created as a shared module can't be aligned to the right
Grove-created content is missing for Member Stations who use Organization-based searches to find NPR content

Features and Enhancements

Display user-entered Corrections title on front-end for NPR
Update input note for link text field for image enhancements in the body
Video Promo Cards need to translate the thumbnail image for Video Note: This functional enhancement related to supporting thumbnails in promos that feature video assets was removed from the release. Rescheduled for inclusion in the 07/01 Grove release
Support custom eyebrow text/URLs for internal and external type Promo Links
Detect and block publishing when an incorrect path or other “bad” data is put into Canonical URL field