Orchard Core updatesAllow the use of the site's time zone in workflow timer activitiesThe CRON pattern in a workflow timer activity was always based on UTC. This change introduces an option to use the site's time zone setting instead. The change is optional to prevent unintended behavior in existing workflows. Let's see it in action!

What does the Lombiq eInvoice Validator do?The Lombiq eInvoice Validator checks if the given XML is valid against the latest release of EN 16931 artifacts (v1.3.14.1 as of writing this), directly from the official eInvoicing-EN16931 repository. We currently support UBL 2.1 and CII (D16B) eInvoice validation.

Orchard Core updatesAdd GraphQL support for querying content items by status from the Content Picker FieldThis change allows content items from a Content Picker Field to be retrieved based on their status, not only the published versions, as before.

Orchard Core updatesPreload site settings on tenant activationThis change addresses potential issues caused by retrieving site settings in a synchronous-over-asynchronous manner. We can mitigate these problems by preloading the site settings when a tenant is activated. The preloading process is asynchronous, and since the site settings are cached in memory, subsequent access remains non-blocking.

Orchard Core updatesProvide a complete JSON recipe in the documentation and improve the Content Fields documentationLast week, you could see a demo about the Orchard Core AI Agent Module. The Orchard Core AI Agent feature extends the functionality of the AI Services feature by enabling intelligent agents to perform tasks on your Orchard Core site. For example, it can email an existing user on our site. It can also enable/disable features if you tell it to. You can create a tenant using a given name if the Tenants feature is enabled. The AI also uses data from the Orchard Core Documentation. If the sample codes are invalid or missing something, the AI cannot perform the requested operations properly. This change aims to improve the documentation so that AI can use it more efficiently. For example, the Recipes page now has several new additions. A new Key Properties table is added; the table, which lists the recipe helpers (these helpers allow dynamic expressions inside recipe values using a special syntax), is now extended, and a whole new example recipe snippet is available for creating fields, and so on. This change is helping the AI and also assisting developers in better understanding how to work with Orchard Core.

Germany requires support to some extent for EN 16931 from January 2025. And other EU countries will follow them soon. Under the EU’s VAT in the Digital Age (ViDA) initiative, structure eInvoicing will be mandatory for cross-border B2B transactions from 2030.

Orchard Core updatesNew page_title_add_segment Liquid tagThis newly added tag is similar to the existing page_title tag, but doesn't render it. It allows changing the page title from any Liquid view, similar to accessing the RazorPage.Title property in Razor.

Orchard Core updatesNew Filters in FluidThere are two new Liquid filters in Shopify that convert a string into a hash. The hmac_sha1 filter converts a string into an SHA-1 hash using a hash message authentication code (HMAC), and the hmac_sha256 filter converts a string into an SHA-256 hash using a hash message authentication code (HMAC).