Release Overview

Welcome to FOIAXpress PAL v11.7.0, our spring release for 2024. Several exciting enhancements have arrived for PAL, including:

• A revised Recommended Documents interface during request intake

• Enhanced abilities for PAL Custom Fields

• Increased usability for the PAL User Action Log

• Migrated PAL SAML Configuration tools into PAL Configuration

• Enabled PIV for MFA for PAL Configuration login

We’ve also issued several bug fixes in this latest release, including fixes for customer-reported issues around request processing, application administration, document management, and reports.

2. Reading Room Intake Recommendations

We’ve made some improvements to our Related Documents feature in the PAL Reading Room. This feature is designed to show a requester any existing materials that match to their request description before they submit their request. This feature is intended to reduce the volume of incoming requests by leveraging the content you already have in your reading room.

On the Related Documents screen, users are presented with a list of matching documents to download and review, and must respond to a prompt asking whether they would like to proceed with their request or discard it.  

Actions taken on the Related Documents screen, including which documents were downloaded, and whether they discarded or proceeded with their Request, are included in the User Action Log.

To enhance the effectiveness of this feature, we’ve now enabled it by default. However, you can easily switch this feature off if desired.  

3. PAL Administration Updates

3.1 PAL Custom Field Functionality Enhancements

We’ve enhanced the functionality of PAL custom fields, including both the ability to attach files directly to these fields, and increasing the character limit on these fields to 2000 characters.

3.2 PAL User Action Log

ID# 63109

In addition to capturing User Actions regarding PAL Reading Room suggested documents, we’ve also updated the User Action Log interface for enhanced clarity. Changes include:  

• Changed the title of "Requester Login Date Range" to simply "Date Range"

• Changed the "For the Year" label to "For the Calendar Year"  ▪ Remove the note at the bottom of the screen.

• “Year to date” changed to “From Year to Current Date”

3.3 PAL SAML Configuration

We’ve added a SAML SSO option to the Authentication Configuration page within PAL

Configuration, allowing administrators to enable SAML SSO directly from PAL Configuration. Simply select the SAML SOO radio button under Authentication Options to show the configuration fields:

This screen contains all fields previously found in the separate SAML Configuration application, including the SAML Field Mapping configuration:

Note that to configure the SAML SSO from PAL Configuration, the PAL configuration application must have permission to the PAL application folder with full control. If this is not  User Interface Updates

applicable, the legacy PAL SAML Configuration tool is still available to configure SAML SSO for PAL.

Additionally, a query string is no longer required in the assertion URL for IAL2 Proof of Identity. Existing configurations will not be impacted by this change.

3.4 PAL Config MFA Using PIV

ID# 70107

For organizations using Forms authentication to access PAL Configuration, we now offer multifactor authentication using a PIV card. MFA via PIV works by validating the subject of the user's certificate against a pre-configured value.  

You can enable PIV based authentication from the Security Configuration screen (Administration > Security Configuration). Under the MFA Type for PAL Admin Login dropdown, select PIV:  

To link each user to the PIV, we added a new Certificate Subject field to the Edit User screen called. Use this field to populate PIV Subject values for your users. This field is only available if the application is configured to use Forms authentication.

NOTE: PIV based MFA is only supported for Windows Server 2016, but we’re continuing to test in additional configurations to expand availability of this feature.

4. Bug Fixes

We’ve corrected numerous bugs and issues in v11.7.0, as outlined in the following sections.