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Administrators interested in learning more about solution updates.

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We're excited to introduce our latest release – one that makes your reports richer and faster to build. Eight new ready-made report blocks cover the content audit and risk reports need most. You can now brand reports with your own logos from a new Assets library, and report on exactly what each audit covered with the audit's Scope. Alongside this, you can upload audit reports written outside the product, choose your own inactivity timeout, request reviews in bulk, and see list guidance right where you need it.

The article outlines the new features and improvements in the Ideagen Audit and Risk Management v2.8 release, available from 22 October 2026.

Version 2.8.1

Fixes

This hotfix release fixes for a permissions error:

• Permissions: Fixed an issue where users could perform actions in one instance (for example, Production) using permissions granted by a group they belong to in another instance of the same tenant (for example, Training or UAT).

Version 2.8.0

Features

Eight new ready-made report blocks

Building a report from scratch takes time, so the Report Designer's Blocks toolbox now offers eight more blocks. Each one drops in with its data, layout, and sorting already set up, so the content you've recorded flows straight into your report.

For audit reports:

Overdue Action Table: lists every open action that has passed its due date, most overdue first, with owner, due date and colour-coded priority. It's ideal for follow-up reporting.

Findings by Severity Summary: groups your findings under each severity band, most serious first, so readers see the biggest issues straight away.

Findings by Problem Summary: presents each problem with its linked findings grouped beneath it, so your report tells the story of systemic themes rather than a flat list. This block appears when Problems are switched on in your system settings.

For risk and register reports:

Risk Table: lists every risk in a register with its type, owner, and inherent, residual, and target rating bands, sorted with your highest-rated risks first.

Risk Assessment Summary: shows a risk's inherent, residual, and target assessments side by side. It gives the before-and-after-mitigation view that boards and committees expect.

Risk Control Summary and Control Summary: list each risk with the controls that mitigate it, to demonstrate control coverage.

Control Assessment Table: compares each control's latest actual assessment against its target, to show whether controls are working as intended.

Risk Assurance Table and Control Assurance Table: present the latest assurance on a risk or control, with its owner, who completed it and when, and its colour-coded outcome.

Each block follows your system settings, so residual and target assessments stay hidden if you've switched them off. Block names also follow your own terminology. The control-focused blocks are offered when you're working within a control data block in your report.

Brand your reports with your own images

Your logos and images can now appear in your reports. A new Image element in the Report Designer lets you place an image anywhere in the body of a report page. You choose it from your organisation's library, set its alignment and size, and it appears in both your Word and PDF output.

Images come from the new Assets screen in Administration: one central place for your organisation's logos and other reusable files. Drag and drop to upload, archive assets you no longer need, and keep everything consistent across every template. Anyone who builds report templates can pick from the full library. Uploading and managing assets is controlled by four new permissions, so you decide who can create, edit, archive, and delete them. If an image is later removed, your reports still generate, with a clear note where the image used to be.

Report on your audit scope

Your audit's Scope can now flow straight into reports and queries. The locations and processes an audit covers, along with their audit ratings, risk banding, and scores, are now available as a data source for audit report templates. Your report always states exactly what the audit covered, with no retyping and no risk of drifting out of step with the record.

New Scope data sources start with location, process, and audit rating, sorted by location. You can filter out excluded scope items so they never appear in your report. Scope is also available as a sub-query beneath audits in the Query Designer, ready for your own extracts and analysis.

Upload your own audit reports

Audit reports written outside the product now have a proper home. The Audit Reports register has the same familiar drag-and-drop upload area as attachments, so you can add a finished report straight into the register alongside the ones you generate. Preview, Download, Set as Primary, and Delete all work exactly as they do for generated reports. The primary report banner now shows the correct icon for the file type, whether that's a PDF, an image, or an Office document.

If an upload doesn't finish, for example because the tab was closed partway through, it no longer appears in your list as though it were complete. It's shown separately as a failed upload that you can tidy away.

Choose your own inactivity timeout

Previously, the product always signed users out after 15 minutes of inactivity. This was too short for long-form work and, for some organisations, didn't align with their security policy. Administrators can now choose the period that suits them: go to System Settings and, in the Authorization section, select an Inactivity timeout of 15, 30, 60, 90, or 120 minutes.

Users still receive a warning and a minute to respond before being signed out, and activity in any tab keeps every tab alive. Your timeout remains at 15 minutes until you choose to change it, and changes are recorded in your audit trail like every other system setting.

Request reviews in bulk

You can now use Request Review as a bulk action on the Audit Execution, Methodology, Findings, and Problems grids. Select the items you want reviewed, choose a due date and a reviewer once, and a review is requested for every item in one go — there's no need to open each record in turn. The due date is suggested automatically based on your audit type's review period, and you'll be told clearly if any items couldn't be sent for review, along with the reason why.

List guidance on every record

The guidance your administrators write for list values, such as what "Major" severity means compared with "Moderate", was previously only visible while creating or editing a record. Now, an info icon sits beside list fields on saved records too. Select it to see every value in the list with its description, so you can interpret a record correctly without asking anyone. It covers severity, resolution, priority, category, test result, and risk line fields across actions, findings, problems, incidents, audit tests, and risks.

Administrators can also now mark which test results mean a test has failed, using a new Indicates a failed test option in Lists. This records the meaning of each result now; it doesn't change how tests behave today.

A clearer pre-opening checklist

The checklist shown on a draft audit's home page has been redesigned to be compact and easy to scan. Details, Key Dates, Scope, and Team each have their own panel showing status at a glance: Done, Needs attention, or Worth a review. Each panel includes a summary of what needs doing, guidance on why it matters, and a link straight to the right place. Summary counts at the top show how ready your audit is before you open it.

The Key Dates grid now shows the day of the week alongside each date, for example, "Thursday 30 Oct 2025", so you can plan around working days at a glance.

Filter, find, and see more

Filter risks by perspective, source and effect. Risk Perspective, Risk Source, and Risk Effect are now available as filters on the risk register, in Views, and in the Query Designer. Risk Perspective is also available for audit risks and on assessment history. A risk with several values is found when you filter by any one of them, making it easy to see, for example, every risk with a particular perspective across all your locations.

See where audit content came from. Library columns are now available for audit objectives, audit risks, audit controls, and audit tests, and the Library Test column is back for tests. You can see at a glance which items were drawn from your library.

Smarter date filters. Date range filters now let you choose equal to, before, after, on or before, or on or after, and show a single, simpler calendar. A quick Past option on the action Due Date filter finds overdue actions in one click.

More detail where it matters. Heat map summary cards now show which matrix you're looking at when a card holds more than one, and hovering over a cell shows its rating. Query results now show the time each result was created as well as the date. Custom field settings show the maximum length of each text field type, so administrators can plan how fields will be used.

Behind the Scenes

We've introduced a shared caching layer that cuts down repeated work behind the scenes, such as looking up users, permissions, and custom field settings. It reduces load across the platform and helps keep pages responsive as your data grows.

Fixes

This release includes a number of fixes covering reliability and accuracy across the product:

• Reporting and queries: Fixed relative date filters such as "Today" or "Last 7 days" failing on date-only fields. Fixed stray asterisks appearing in generated action tables. Fixed duplicated color options when formatting report tables.
• Audits and assessments: Fixed a save error, and a page that stayed on loading, when adding a control assessment without an assessment method. The option to add one is now hidden until a method is set. Fixed status icons on the Audit Execution grid appearing off-center.
• Configuration: Fixed being unable to save a masthead layout with no fields. Fixed an unnecessary alert after saving a new custom list. Fixed the Incident Report Type field showing incident type guidance instead of its own. Fixed URL fields accepting badly formed web addresses. Fixed misaligned color swatches in the color picker.
• Audit trail: Fixed an unexpected error when sorting the audit trail on sites with older, incomplete history entries.
• Notifications: Fixed tagged users occasionally not receiving notification emails when several people were tagged.
• Views: Fixed the Library column being unavailable for audit objective, audit risk, audit control, and audit test Views, and restored the Library Test column for tests.