build Archives - Visokio https://visokio.com/tag/build/ Developers of Omniscope - Business Intelligence software for data processing, analytics and reporting Wed, 05 May 2021 13:56:20 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://i0.wp.com/visokio.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/favicon-visokio.png?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 build Archives - Visokio https://visokio.com/tag/build/ 32 32 157333698 Omniscope ROCK build – 2021.1 https://visokio.com/2021/04/15/omniscope-rock-build-2021-1/ https://visokio.com/2021/04/15/omniscope-rock-build-2021-1/#respond Thu, 15 Apr 2021 22:40:03 +0000 https://visokio.com/?p=17897 Remember those days when you’re packing for a holiday and you keep adding ‘just one more thing’, until you can no longer close the suitcase? That’s exactly what happened with this edition of our Rock build, so we hope you’ll appreciate all the new features...

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Remember those days when you’re packing for a holiday and you keep adding ‘just one more thing’, until you can no longer close the suitcase? That’s exactly what happened with this edition of our Rock build, so we hope you’ll appreciate all the new features arriving in this pack! 

Download the latest rock build here.

Explore mode

Surf your reports in the new Explore mode – interact with data and chart configuration simultaneously and enjoy the immediate effects. Try all four modes on the main toolbar: Explore (for free-form data discovery), Design (for authoring pixel-perfect dashboards), Present (preview the report as your users would see it) and Focus (zoom into a single view, with drag-and-drop fields, measures and dimensions).

We’ve also comprehensively reorganised view options into meaningful sections  such as “Measure axis”, “Lines”, “Bars”, “Markers”, with a cog menu that lets you search everything. 

Improved Authentication – OpenID Connect

Check out the improved authentication methods – support for session-based authentication using OpenID Connect identity providers (Google, Azure, Keycloak, Okta, Auth0) – suite of configurations supporting flexible security models, role-based authentication managed at the provider, identity management and tracking, account switching, single-sign on (SSO), session expiry and refresh, multi-tenant hosting.

The Admin and Scheduler parts of the app are now part of the same authentication scope, with new permissions available at the root level to control access to them.

New “super-groups”, let you define a server-wide or folder-wide configuration of (e.g.) administrator accounts, which cannot be overridden in subfolders. Existing server deployments will find that the admin credentials have automatically been migrated to an equivalent super-group.

Documentation, as usual, available on our Help Center Solutions section.

Publishing on steroids

Publishing 1 report with 100 variants? No worries – we’ve got your back. Report Generator block will automate creation of reports from a template, including the custom tabs/filters driven by a data configuration (different from the multitenant system).

Give your report viewer more than just a variant – add a Refresh Data button, enabling them to retrieve the latest information at any time. 

Integrate email into your reporting process – either for email data harvesting using the new Email block including the ability to download attachments, or to send out data-triggered alerts (from Validation block) and new report links (via Email output).

Filter, drill down and share your data exploration

Share insights by using the new “Sharable link” option, while preserving the exact tab and filter states. Or build links with customised filters yourself, using our scheme to specify filters. Use the new Filters button to hide and show your dashboard’s filters. Show view menus reveals a menu per view, to access data export and maximise controls.

We brought new blocks and the tools to build your own

Meet the new blocks in town: Storage – use it as an input or output, sharing the data by table name across projects. Previously experimental, this has now graduated. It also now lets you write data in “append mode”, such that every time you refresh it, the input data is appended to instead of replacing the existing data. Project Metadata block: extract metadata about blocks, outputs, schema, reports, tabs, data sources from a project, to facilitate “configuration as data” automation workflows.  Spring clean any workflow with new “Clean-up data” action and delete data not used by reports – available as in the workflow app menu, as a scheduler task, and also automatically in the background for older projects. 

Previously experimental, the Custom block lets you create reusable blocks from your own Python or R code, and share them with your team, or publish them on our Github community blocks repository.  Now supporting R 4.x, with an option to select an R version.

Misc

  • The File Output block now has an Append option when writing to IOD files.
  • New formula functions SUBSET_UNIQUECOUNT, TEXTVALUE and INTROUND available in reports.
  • You can add Reference Lines to Bar and Line views, and have better control over multiple axes.
  • The Bar view lets you configure a custom sort measure, supporting formulas.
  • The Workflow API has a new Lambda Workflow Execution endpoint, allowing you to spawn and execute parameterised clones of workflows.
  • The Omniscope Setup Console makes setting up a headless Linux server a breeze, with guided licence activation, configuration of the “external web server”, and setup of an admin account. With a silent mode for fully automated deployments. See the Linux Installation help article.
  • Omniscope now by default runs with restricted filesystem access when running as an external web server (Team license and up). Your workflows and blocks can no longer access files outside the sharing folder by default. You can revert to the old behaviour in environments where this is not a security concern, using “Allow using files outside Sharing Folder” in Admin, web server settings.
  • We’ve renamed the launch scripts on Linux to avoid confusion. The old scripts remain until 2021.2, when they’ll be removed.
  • We’ve updated the version of Java that Omniscope runs on and bundles – now Java 11. This requires some configuration changes to custom deployment scripts and Windows Service configurations; see advisory.
  • After frankly years of suffering as developers, following Microsoft’s lead and schedule, we are finally dropping support for Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge Legacy. 2021.1 is the last version to support these browsers, with a warning displayed. 2021.2 will fully drop support. The latest versions of Chrome or new Edge are recommended.
  • Memory: some improvements to efficiency, and new diagnostics for use in production servers.
  • And as always, a huge number of minor enhancements, fixes, stability and diagnostic improvements. See the full changelog for details.

 

WHAT’S NEXT? YOUR FEATURES!

As always, we’d love to hear what you want added to Omniscope. Please contact us to get access and join the discussion at our public Trello board!

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Omniscope ROCK build – 2020.3 https://visokio.com/2020/10/04/omniscope-rock-build-2020-3/ https://visokio.com/2020/10/04/omniscope-rock-build-2020-3/#respond Sun, 04 Oct 2020 16:30:12 +0000 https://visokio.com/?p=17377 Another quarter, another rock. We’re pleased to announce the latest quarterly Omniscope production-ready “rock” build. The Visokio development cycle marches onwards and upwards, despite these unprecedented times! Download the latest rock build here. NOTABLE NEW FEATURES: Easily break down your data, with Hierarchies Hierarchies let you...

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Another quarter, another rock. We’re pleased to announce the latest quarterly Omniscope production-ready “rock” build. The Visokio development cycle marches onwards and upwards, despite these unprecedented times!

Download the latest rock build here.

NOTABLE NEW FEATURES:

Easily break down your data, with Hierarchies

Hierarchies let you group and collapse/expand your data by successive levels of detail. Date and number fields have implicit hierarchies (year, quarter, month…), and you can define your own custom hierarchies (product category, sub-category…). When you drag on fields which are part of a hierarchy, a +/- button inside the “pill” lets you easily add/remove further levels. And within your dashboard, +/- buttons let users expand and collapse for themselves.

Recycle, Reuse – save time with Bookmarks

With Bookmarks, Omniscope now lets you easily save a block configuration for reuse elsewhere within the same Omniscope installation. Let’s say you’ve configured the perfect Field Organiser block, entered some tricky connection details or SQL query in a Database source block, developed a Custom block using your own handwritten Python or R, or finished a Report block that needs to become a company dashboard template. Bookmark it, and reuse it from the Add Block menu on another project, available to other users (if it’s a shared server).

Data Table block – edit/snapshot the data in the workflow or report

This new block represents an editable and persistent store of data (it’s simply a table of data, hence the name), large or small. You can put data into it (“refreshing” from the input, if connected, as a persistent snapshot of the incoming data), pull data out of it (by connecting blocks downstream), consume directly as live data in the report (no need to execute), and edit it (in the workflow, directly in your reports, and via APIs, if permissioned and enabled, with immediate effect). See introduction and use with workflow execution API.

Salesforce input and output blocks

We’ve added Salesforce source and output blocks, so you can now consume tables from Salesforce in your Omniscope workflows, enrich and correct the data, then publish back.

Categorical axis in Scatter

You can now create scatter views using categorical (text) fields as either axis.

 

And more…

As usual, tons of lesser features and fixes have been added since the previous rock build, including:

  • Workflow APIs now let you execute and set parameter values
  • Much improved performance with large (e.g. 200+ block) workflows
  • Deployment on Windows and Linux VMs from all major clouds (MS Azure, GCE, AWS EC2) fully supported (see advisory)
  • Easily consume JSON data from REST endpoints using the new “JSON HTTP API” block
  • Send emails with data attached using the new Email Output block, and automate sending such emails with batch publishing actions using the Batch Output block.
  • Perform better automatic checks on your data, and consume problem metadata, using the latest enhancements to the Validate Data block.
  • Improved robustness of Storage Block, and workflow execution in general, in high concurrency servers.

 

Community blocks

Over the same time period, a number of notable new community blocks have been shared on our Github repository. These are open-source add-ons which use open APIs within Omniscope to add functionality, and can be found within the Add Block menu:

  • Sharepoint Online Downloader block
  • ForEach block
  • Etherscan block
  • SFTP Downloader block
  • Report to PDF batch output block
  • Web Image PDF output block

 

Advisory notes

Any Omniscope cloud installation (on Microsoft Azure Compute, Google Compute Engine or Amazon EC2) must be deactivated/reactivated before/after upgrading to 2020.3See details.

 

What’s next? Your features!

We’re busy developing OpenID Connect integration for better identity and authentication management, expanded formulas, drill-down, dashboard filters as URL parameters, and smarter defaults for filters.

But we’d love to hear what you want added to Omniscope. Please contact us to get access and join the discussion at our new public Trello board!

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Omniscope ROCK build – 2020.2 https://visokio.com/2020/06/01/omniscope-rock-build-2020-2/ https://visokio.com/2020/06/01/omniscope-rock-build-2020-2/#respond Mon, 01 Jun 2020 17:32:55 +0000 https://visokio.com/?p=17250 We’re pleased to announce the latest quarterly “rock” build of Omniscope, version 2020.2 b20956. A rock build marks the end of a development phase (2020.2) with a build that has passed extended manual and automated testing and is suitable for production deployments. Download the latest...

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We’re pleased to announce the latest quarterly “rock” build of Omniscope, version 2020.2 b20956. A rock build marks the end of a development phase (2020.2) with a build that has passed extended manual and automated testing and is suitable for production deployments.

Download the latest rock build here.

NOTABLE NEW FEATURES:

New Map view in production

This ROCK brings a production-ready version of the new Map view, as introduced experimentally in 2020.1. You can now blend GeoJSON, Shapefiles and KML files with report data, and create multiple layers of points, lines and area fills on top of customisable base maps.

We’ve replaced the previous Map and Choropleth views; existing reports will automatically be migrated to the new Map view with identical appearance. All missing functionality has been added: selection, data export, colour keys, clustering, zoom modes, bundled GeoJSON files.

 

Working Copies of projects

Working Copies let you maintain separate but linked “master” and “development” copies of projects (workflow, reports and local execution data), to easily but safely control updates to your production dashboards with a click. You can keep both files on the same server, or for total isolation, use separate production and development servers or a production server and multiple local desktop installations. More….

 

Formula measures

These let you plot dynamically calculated values in views such as the Bar and Pivot, using simple expressions in Omniscope’s Excel-like formula syntax. In this HR data example, by department, we’re showing the average age of women compared to the average age for all sexes:

 

Copy/paste within Reports

It’s now much easier to reuse parts of your dashboard and save time with repetitive configuration. Report tabs, styles, views and fields can now be copied to the clipboard and pasted into another report – which can be in a different project, or even on a different Omniscope installation. The target will need a compatible data schema and the same installed Omniscope version. More…

 

Publishing

Editing and workflow API in reports

In addition to the query and custom view APIs, Omniscope 2020.2 brings a new Workflow Execution REST API, allowing custom views or 3rd parties to programmatically trigger and monitor execution of part or all of the workflow, typically used to update the data in the report when required.

We’ve shared a community custom view which demonstrates the new API – you can use this in your dashboards using “Workflow Execution” in Add View menu, or view the source on GitHub when developing your own custom view. Documentation.

This is part of an expansion of editing functionality within Omniscope which you’ll see more of in 2020.3. See the blog post.

Enhancements to Multi-tenant reports

Last ROCK saw the introduction of multi-tenant reports, where a single report can become multiple variants for different data subsets based on the visiting user. This ROCK, we’ve added “Scenario” URL fragments, where a portion of the visiting URL can be used to influence the report variant. Documentation.

You might use this if you have your own authentication framework outside of Omniscope, or to automate generation of PDFs for each variant, as seen here using the community custom block “Report to PDF batch output”.

Smoother dashboard data refresh

We’ve improved the experience in reports/dashboards, when a data refresh happens. Omniscope now preserves the existing dashboard and its previous data while a refresh/execution is ongoing, and swap-in the new data only when ready, with a brief and unobtrusive update.

We’re also now preserving the per-session filters of read-only visitors, when a data refresh arrives.

 

Other improvements

Turbo-charged performance

This ROCK includes significant performance improvements to Omniscope Evo. General server-side performance has been improved many times over, and we’ve reduced I/O overhead on production servers.

Better automation with Scheduler

  • A new “retry” task configuration option, letting you retry a specified number of times if a task fails.
  • Importing tasks using drag and drop, making it easier to backup or migrate scheduler task configurations.
  • A new log file “service_scheduler_task_log.csv”, well structured in CSV format, with a row per task execution, with data including start time, end time, outcome etc., making it much easier to monitor and analyse scheduled tasks using Omniscope itself.

 

Report views/visualisations

  • Custom markers in Scatter/Line
  • Improved menus for adding and changing measures and groupings.
  • More responsive filter/variable sliders
  • De/normalise split axis in Bar/Line/Area
  • Cascading option in Line
  • Configurable “Other” in Bar
  • Logarithmic axis in Line/Scatter
  • Connect markers in Scatter
  • Expand/collapse all in Filters
  • Cell alignment in Table

 

Workflow

  • Option to select fields to retrieve in Database Source block, and to limit or disable preview data.
  • Option to specify custom HTTP headers in the File block when accessing a URL, e.g. to specify an auth token.
  • Append block improved performance

 

Advisory notes

Omniscope Classic users

Omniscope Classic’s Map view has been updated to use modern MapBox styles, ensuring maps continue to be displayed correctly after MapBox remove support for their classic styles in future. If you’re using Omniscope Classic, or are running an Omniscope server hosting legacy “Mobile” web versions of Classic IOK reports, you are strongly advised to install this update.

Mac users

From 2020.2 onwards, we’re providing the Mac version as a TGZ file rather than DMG; after installing (downloading and extracting to Applications), you will need to manually trust the application in the OS X system preferences.

 

WHAT’S NEXT?

As usual we’re already busy working on 2020.3. Look forward to richer data editing capabilities within your reports, bookmarks in the workflow, a new Exploring mode, wider cloud deployment options, more intelligent defaults in your reports and views, and much more!

As usual, please let us know your feedback at support@visokio.com. Stay safe!

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Omniscope ROCK build – 2020.1 https://visokio.com/2020/02/11/omniscope-rock-build-2020-1/ https://visokio.com/2020/02/11/omniscope-rock-build-2020-1/#respond Tue, 11 Feb 2020 21:46:58 +0000 https://visokio.com/?p=17090 The latest quarterly “rock” build of Omniscope, version 2020.1 b20848 is out now! A rock build marks the end of a development phase (2020.1) with a build that has passed extended manual and automated testing and is suitable for production deployments. Download the latest rock build here....

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The latest quarterly “rock” build of Omniscope, version 2020.1 b20848 is out now!
A rock build marks the end of a development phase (2020.1) with a build that has passed extended manual and automated testing and is suitable for production deployments.

Download the latest rock build here.

Notable new features:

New report user experience

The interface for designing reports in Omniscope Evo has been significantly improved. We’ve removed the right sidebar in design mode to give more space to the report itself. In the left sidebar, Views tab, browse Omniscope’s rich array of “views” (charts, tables, visualisations etc.) and add to the current page by dragging or clicking:

The Data tab shows the fields in a selected report data source, and lets you customise their formatting:

And if a view in the report is selected, you can drag and drop these fields into the view to configure the view’s axes and data-driven styling:

The Settings tab, without a view selected, shows page-level settings. Here, Image is expanded, showing how I’ve configured an image to blend over the report, as introduced in 2019.3:

But if you have a view selected, the Settings tab shows view-specific settings. Here, I’m searching for “title” within all the options for the selected Bar view. This also shows how the primary controls for the selected view are now attached directly around the view, which helps understand how they relate to the selected view and its axes:

When focusing/zooming into a single view, a thumbnail appears at the bottom of the sidebar, letting you see where the view sits within the report. You can click on the thumbnail to pick another view. It’s another way to explore your data, with more space given to each view:

And if you have a larger screen and still want the right sidebar, the pin button lets you bring it back:

Undo in reports

We’re a little embarrassed it took us so long, but you can now undo your configuration edits within a report. Delete a view or change a setting by mistake? It’s one click to bring it back:

Drag and drop files

We’ve made it easier to work with files in Omniscope Evo. You can drag and drop files onto the welcome page, and upload them individually or in a group:

When you upload a data file (CSV, XLSX etc.), you’ll be offered to create a project for it…

… immediately showing the data within:

Sort and search files

In the Welcome page file list, you can now sort

… and search (within the subtree of files, providing they have the same security scope):

You can also bookmark the page URL, to be able to revisit the same “query” in future.

Project attachments

Within a report, you can attach files to the project. Attachments are part of the project, and are copied and exported/imported with the project. For example, the new Map view lets you attach GeoJSON files:

The Image and Content views, and report image setting, also let you attach image files this way. See the previous example (further above) of a lighthouse image attachment.

Community blocks, and the new custom block

A while back, we introduced community blocks: a Github repository of blocks developed independently of the Omniscope release cycle. These are a lightweight way for both Visokio and 3rd party developers to provide workflow blocks that provide niche or missing functionality on-the-fly without needing a new Omniscope update, using Python or R code. We use these ourselves as part of our bespoke solutions, and to prototype new functionality; it’s also a way for our partners and clients to share their efforts. As an end user, you can use these blocks just like core blocks (though not to the same high standard), using the Add Block menu:

For example, here I’ve added the Interval join community block (also see demo of this block), which lets you join two datasets by matching each left record by whether its date/number is within an interval defined by two right date/number fields. The block provides some options to the end user:

But if you open the Design tab, you’ll see how it was built (in R), and can customise or adapt if desired:

To code from scratch, find the Custom block in the Add Block menu (currently experimental). We support Python and R coding languages (this may expand in future), and provide automatic package dependency management. Here’s the Design tab of a blank new custom block, which by default passes data through, ready to start coding:

If you have developed a reusable Custom block and want to share with others or keep for future use elsewhere, you can export as a zip file…

… and import into another project using the Add Block menu:

If you want to publish it on our Github repository, submit a pull request there, or instead simply export as a zip and send it to support@visokio.com.

Multi-tenant reports

This ROCK introduces the ability to tailor reports dynamically to the visiting user. We expect this functionality to expand in future, but currently you are able to restrict which rows/records the user sees based upon their authenticated user name or group name.

This allows you to create one report with one master dataset, then let only Client A see Client A’s records, Client B see Client B’s records, and Administrators see all records, for example. Data seen in the report is automatically filtered server-side on the fly, securely.

This simple demo shows it working:

Here, the 2nd input contains a record for each “scenario”. This is used to configure the restrictions when accessing the report externally on its Sharing URL. Note that multi-tenant reports use data-driven configuration, so although the example above uses a Text Input block to provide this configuration, you can scale to much more complex configurations by querying an external database of users and using a chain of blocks as needed. For example:

In report sharing settings, a Multi-tenant configuration section lets you choose this input:

And that’s it. When “sally” logs in, she sees records where the “department” field has value “sales”, an so forth. With one central configuration for the report and data source. For full docs, see here.

Experimental Map 2 (layers) view

We’re in the process of greatly expanding our mapping functionality in Omniscope Evo, with the goal to replace the existing Map and Choropleth views with a single, simple yet powerful, multi-layered new Map view:

This new Map 2 (layers) view is now available in experimental form, meaning you can explore it and use it with the caveats that: we may change it in breaking ways in future versions, it has some missing key functionality, and may have some minor instabilities. Ultimately, likely in the next quarterly ROCK, it will appear as the only “Map” view, replacing existing Map and Choropleth.

The new view lets you add multiple layers in the view configuration. Each layer will be composed on the same map, with data coming from report data or from an attached or externally referenced GeoJSON, ESRI Shapefile (SHP) or Google Earth KML file. You can also add geo-located images and videos, with other map layer types coming soon:

For example here’s a choropleth (region-fill) of part of the UK, provided using an attached GeoJSON file, live-joined to report data using a match between attributes in the GeoJSON and the report data, coloured to show aggregate metrics, with raw points of record data overlaid on top. The default base map (from Mapbox) has been turned off in this case: 

For further reading, see our Knowledge Base article Using the Map view.

Misc

Some other minor changes:

  • We’ve added an administrative section to let you change the server’s language (used by default on clients, unless they’ve configured a different language) and data locale (how numbers and dates are formatted).
  • The Filters view lets you customise the text style of the filter device headers and content.
  • For advanced use, you can now deploy multiple Omniscope server instances on the same host, for workflow execution without reporting. See guide.
  • The ElasticSearch connector now lets you choose which fields to import, which can improve performance.

For a more detailed list, see the changelog.


What’s next?    

Development of the next version (2020.2) is well under way with the first builds available soon. Some features to look forward to, many of which will appear in 2020.2:

“Create working copy + publish” methodology

If, for example, you have a production server, and a dev/test server or local desktop installations, you’ll have an easier way to work safely, by creating “working copies” of a master project, playing to your heart’s content without affecting the master, and publishing back only when ready, with a simple user experience throughout.

Custom block

We will build upon this recently added block to let you work directly within your IDE (e.g. Jupyter, R Studio) to code and debug your scripts, whether building blocks for use in a workflow, or doing ad-hoc data science needing to invoke Omniscope programmatically.

The new Map view

We’ll continue developing the experimental new Map view to wholly replace the existing Map and Choropleth views, including additional new functionality such as point-to-point/spider plots, raster tiles, vector tiles with configurable sub-layers, and micro charts/pie overlays.

Further Report and View configuration UX improvements

We’ll be adding a new Exploring mode, for when you’re exploring new data in Omniscope, looking for insights, rather than fine-tuning a beautiful dashboard. It will allow you to explore and configure in one flat experience, without needing to select views or switch modes.

We’ll also be restructuring and improving the view options, to make them much more logical and easier to navigate, and consistent across different types of view.

We’ll be implementing much more intelligent defaults for reports, views and filters, so there’s less clicking needed to discover your data, visualise with colour, or create reports.

And more:

  • Adding missing options such as field selection to the database source, and pre/post sql to the database output.
  • A series of community Custom blocks which demonstrate how to connect Omniscope to popular data science / analytics libraries to leverage their capabilities and share with your non-data-scientist colleagues.
  • Better UX in the Admin and Scheduler apps, to make it easier to navigate and manage complex configurations.
  • Better collaboration features in projects: in-page chat, and version history.

As usual, please let us know your feedback at support@visokio.com. Have fun!

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Omniscope ROCK build – 2019.3 https://visokio.com/2019/10/30/omniscope-rock-build-2019-3/ https://visokio.com/2019/10/30/omniscope-rock-build-2019-3/#respond Wed, 30 Oct 2019 16:25:22 +0000 https://visokio.com/?p=16948 We’re pleased to announce the latest quarterly “rock” build of Omniscope, version 2019.3 b20709. A rock build marks the end of a development phase (2019.3) with a build that has passed extended manual and automated testing and is suitable for production deployments. Download the latest rock build...

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We’re pleased to announce the latest quarterly “rock” build of Omniscope, version 2019.3 b20709. A rock build marks the end of a development phase (2019.3) with a build that has passed extended manual and automated testing and is suitable for production deployments.

Download the latest rock build here.

Notable new features:

Summary charts in Tables

The Table view can now show summary charts, “micro views” in the table header which instantly tell you at-a-glance info about the top unique values or number/date distribution of the field:

You can switch between none, header charts, and overlay charts, using the top-left chart icon. In reports, these are hidden by default. In the workflow block dialog’s “Data” tab (shown above), these are shown by default.

Misc. improvements to the Workflow

Key shortcuts Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Shift+Z have been added for undo/redo, respectively.

The toolbar is much cleaner and simpler; you can now duplicate and delete selected blocks directly from the toolbar:

The “Batch append folder” and “Append files” now support JSON and XML files, and the “File” block now has automatic configuration for importing data from XML files. The “Elasticsearch” block now supports Public Key Authentication (PKI).

Misc. improvements to Reports and views/visualisations

Report tabs now support a Tab background/overlay image, allowing eye-catching dashboards:

You can also use the Image view to place images, optionally linked, easily within your dashboard.

The Bar view now lets you configure a “dual axis” view with 2 parallel/interleaved measures on different left/right scales:

The Bar, Line, Area and related views now let you choose to hide null values, have better automatic histograms for integer fields, and show a “continuous” axis for number/date fields, supporting cleaner split-axis labels:

Stacked bars have much better default/automatic stack labels; you can also use the “Reverse” option in the Bar view to invert Y axis, useful for cases where you want to show an implicitly negative measure:

The Content view lets you insert “micro-charts”, a set of views optimised for a small size, within the text of the Content view. You can, for example, create your own table layouts combining formulas and “sparklines” or mini pie charts:

The Table, Chart and Details views have a much improved field picker, letting you easily select and deselect fields individually or all at once.

The Scatter view has a new “Trend line” option, for unclustered points.

The Sankey view for relational data has been much improved, though remains experimental until we add support for other data formats/models.

The Pivot view lets you select (sub-)total cells, and exports data in the same column/row/cell structure as displayed, in CSV format.

Filters now allow you to show “Choice” filter types as a drop-down, to save space, and to configure “sort by frequency”; you can also configure a “single choice” option which shows a ‘radio’ single-select list of values.


Parameters

Parameters are a hugely powerful and versatile addition to support centralised administration and automated publishing. A parameter is a reusable named value that can be defined in a project, or server-wide in Admin:

(Project parameters in workflow)

(Server-wide parameters in Admin)

(Using a parameter)

Your workflow can refer to these parameters in place of literal values for most block options. For example, you might want to parameterise the Database block’s “host” setting, allowing you to centrally reconfigure all database blocks for a replacement database server.

You can also use the Scheduler tasks “Edit project parameters” and “Edit app-wide parameters” to automate changing of parameter values, e.g. to execute a workflow with a different client’s data:


Language translation

Omniscope Evo now supports translation into arbitrary languages, with near-complete translations bundled with Omniscope for French (thanks to Magali Colin of Avizua) and Italian (shown below), and the ability to add your own custom translations for other languages.

The server default language is configured in Admin; users can override this in their browser using the language ‘flag’ icon in the app. New projects capture the language settings of the user at the time they are created; workflow execution respects the project’s language where blocks produce warnings or errors, for example; reports respect the user’s language if different to the project’s.


Other changes

The welcome page now has a language option (flag icon) and navigation sidebar:

The default app font has changed throughout from Roboto to Lato, a more modern and crisp font with better legibility (of course you can configure a font of your choice in report settings).

The Scheduler “Reconfigure block” task can now automate edits to most kinds of workflow blocks e.g. File, Append, etc.

For a more detailed list, see the changelog.

What’s next?

Development of the next version (2019.4) is well under way with the first builds already available. Download the latest daily build here. Some features to look forward to, many of which will appear in 2019.4:

Custom Script block

This new block, which replaces the existing Python and R blocks, with better performance, and allows you to create reusable blocks with your own set of options, which can be shared with your users via import/export, shared repositories, and Github. It will let you work productively with your own IDE as you develop the block, or use Omniscope as a “slave” for data sources and data visualisation, when doing (e.g.) Python-centric data science. The 2019.3 rock, above, includes an early, experimental and incomplete version of this.

A new Map view

Supporting multiple base maps and data-driven layers from different data sources, including Choropleth, area fills, polygons/polylines, point-to-point/spider plots, markers, raster tiles, images, vector tiles with configurable sub-layers, micro charts/pie overlays, geojson, shapefiles, high-performance / larger data volumes…

Undo/redo in Reports

Common mistakes such as deleting a view will be reversible in a click, tap or keystroke.

Multi-tenant reports

Data-driven configurations to dynamically create user-specific tailored experiences of a report, with different row/column subsets of the data, different tabs, different branding, …

Better Report configuration user experience (UX)

Using the Report to explore your data or build dashboards will become more fluid and intuitive.

View options will be better presented, and easier to navigate and understand.

Better support for creating, administering and understanding your report’s saved/named queries.

More intelligent data-driven defaults for reports, views and filters.

Better automatic data colour palettes.

Device-specific dashboard previews.

Parallel and push-based execution

A more powerful workflow execution engine, making better use of parallelism and allowing editing workflows while they are executing. Push-based execution, and streaming continuous event-based data.

And much more…

Search & sort files on the welcome page.

Formula measures in Bar, Line etc. views.

More ways to copy/paste various settings within and between projects.

Project and Report commenting and history.

Bookmarks, for saving and reusing blocks and groups of blocks in the workflow.

As usual, please let us know your feedback at support@visokio.com. Enjoy!

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