What's New in Highlighter
Stay informed about the latest features, enhancements, and improvements to the Highlighter platform.
Box-Select and Bulk Delete in the Assessment Editor
Release Date: July 2026
The assessment editor now supports selecting many items at once and deleting everything else in a couple of clicks.
What Changed
- One selection, one panel: files, annotations, and entities share a single selection, summarised in the same Selected Items panel used in the Operations Dashboard.
- Select and Pan tools: with the Select tool active, drag out a box on the canvas to select the annotations it touches, replacing the current selection; hold Shift while starting the drag to add to it instead. Panning the canvas is now the separate Pan tool (the default).
- Right-click menu: right-clicking the canvas opens a context menu with two bulk actions, also available from the Edit menu:
- Delete Other Annotations keeps only the selected annotations.
- Delete Other Entities keeps every annotation belonging to the same entities as the selection.
Both actions ask for confirmation and are undone by a single Ctrl+Z, and nothing is permanently removed until the assessment is submitted. See Working in the Assessment Editor for details.
Deletions also now protect entity-level values: when a deletion would remove every annotation holding a stable attribute value while its entity survives, the confirmation lists each at-risk value so you can keep it by moving it onto a surviving annotation of your choice.
Shadow Entities in the Assessment Editor
Release Date: June 2026
Assessment steps can now hide entities that aren't relevant to the task at hand, letting assessors focus while still keeping useful inferences from earlier stages.
What's New
- Administrators can enable Shadow Entities on a human assessment step and add Key Attribute rules that define which carried-over entities stay visible. Entities matching no rule are shadowed (hidden on the canvas, and left out of the entities list and timeline).
- Assessors can hover to reveal a shadowed entity and click to promote its whole entity back into the active set. To shadow an entity, press Shift + S, use the shadow button in the attribute editor header, or use the shadow button on an entity in the entities panel — each shadows the whole entity, and manual shadowing works on any step.
- Shadowed entities are not saved on submit unless promoted, so they do not carry forward to later stages.
See Human Assessment Steps and Work With Shadow Entities.
Stable Attributes in the Assessment Editor
Release Date: June 2026
Attributes that change only slowly can now be modelled as stable, so Highlighter treats readings that disagree within a short window as conflicts to resolve rather than as real change.
What's New
- An entity attribute can be given a stability window. Within that window, a stable attribute holds a single value, and conflicting readings are resolved to one value.
- In the assessment editor, a stable attribute is edited once for the whole entity (across all of its views), always shows the entity's effective value, and marks values set on another view with a "jump to it" link.
- Stable attributes can be left empty while working; required ones are enforced across the entity at submit time.
See Stable Attributes and Edit Stable Attributes.
Taxon Group Import/Export Performance
Release Date: November 2025
Recent enhancements have significantly improved the speed and efficiency of taxon group imports and exports.
What Changed
The import and export processes have been optimized to use bulk database operations instead of processing records individually. This architectural improvement results in:
- Faster Import Times: Large taxon groups import up to 10x faster
- Reduced Server Load: More efficient use of database resources
- Better Reliability: Improved error handling and transaction management
- Enhanced Testing: Comprehensive round-trip validation ensures data integrity
Technical Details
The optimization includes:
- Bulk Data Operations: CSV parsing and data collection happens outside database transactions for better performance
- Efficient Database Queries: Records are created and updated in batches rather than one-by-one
- Optimized Lookups: Entity attributes, object classes, and enums are fetched in bulk with indexed lookups
- Transaction Optimization: Database locks are minimized while maintaining data consistency
What This Means for You
These improvements are transparent to users - you don't need to change how you work with taxon groups. You'll simply experience:
- Faster imports when uploading large taxonomy files
- Quicker exports when backing up or sharing taxonomies
- More responsive workflow taxonomy management
- Improved reliability for large-scale taxonomy operations
The same CSV format and workflow remain unchanged, ensuring backward compatibility with existing taxonomy files.
Enhanced Contributor Workflow Management
Release Date: November 19, 2025
We've significantly improved how contributors are assigned and work across different workflow steps, providing a more unified and reliable experience.
What's New
Workflow managers can now manage all types of workflow steps using a consistent interface:
- Data source
- Human assessment
- Machine assessment
- Filter
This consolidation makes it easier to manage the setup of workflows without having to learn multiple interfaces.
We've also enhanced the technical infrastructure for assigning contributors to workflow steps.
Getting Started
To take advantage of these improvements:
- Review Your Workflows: Existing workflows continue to work without changes
- Assign Contributors: Use the enhanced assignment interface for new or existing steps
- Learn More: See our new Assigning Contributors to Workflow Steps documentation
Stay Updated
For ongoing updates and announcements:
- Check this page regularly for new feature releases
- Subscribe to Highlighter platform updates
- Contact support for questions about new features