17 Nov Improving Omniscope UI and UX

Steam is emerging from the Visokio labs – we’re busy adding a range of new features, enabling you to work better, smarter and achieve more with Omniscope… We’d love to share the news and let you know about the stuff you can test in the latest build…

App tour

Firstly – we wanted to revisit and improve the user experience – whether the user is an experienced analyst or a total novice. The app is more welcoming and offers help to discover the features, while at the same time facilitates a more intuitive interaction with different interfaces.

We’re rolling out the red carpet – our new users will appreciate an application tour popup – a dismissible sequence of hints to guide them through the basics on the Welcome screen, in the workflow app and on the report pages. Not a paperclip in sight!

Improved workflow building UX

The busy workflow builders will notice the new responsive magnetic auto-connection between the workflow blocks, when adding a new block or moving existing blocks around,

The whole blocks‘ palette can be kept open and pinned to the left, as a collapsible panel, to facilitate faster model building.

Add a new data source to an Omniscope workflow in two seconds: drag and drop a source file directly onto the workflow, or drop it onto a File block options screen to upload it to Omniscope.

Dealing with date patterns has gotten easier with the date format dropdowns in the Field Organiser and Report field settings, where the user can search for a pattern or enter a new one to the list.  

Smooth creation of beautiful reports

Once all your charts are in place – why not give your dataviz a quick makeover?
When optimising the report layout for consumption on different device sizes, you can leverage multiple settings to create the best layout(s) for your report:

• You can use the Free-form layout to position, resize, align and layer charts, filters and objects on the page.
• The Multi page option is there when you need multiple scrollable pages in the same tab. The best choice for producing reports that look like documents.
• Regarding the page sizing behaviour you can choose whether your dashboard will keep fixed size and ratio or to adapt and auto stretch to the screen size.

Free form layout

The perfect view proportions are achieved easily in the ‘Free form’ layout with the new snap views feature.  (Select it from the Layout toolbar menu).

It is a user-friendly way to manipulate the charts on the page and create pixel-perfect dashboards by using chart sizing guide lines, while displaying both pixel count and the chart size as a % of the tab width. 

Colours, fonts, borders, templates

The Report styles section now allows you to pick from a list of pre-configured style presets. You can also create your own presets and share them with colleagues as new Report styles (in XML format). The settings packed in these presets are data default colours, custom fonts, report background colours, elegant borders and spacing, as well as button and logo colours. 

Projects page banner

Even the report list page got a bit of a makeover, with the ability to add banners with text, images, gifs and links using Markdown syntax.
Simply add a banner.md file to the projects folder. You will be able to add instructions or display a welcome message for the report consumers when they find themselves facing a long report list…
Read more

App translations

For our users in Asia we’ve improved “Simplified Chinese” translation, so they can interact with the translated menus and application components. We also support custom translations – read more here and let us know if you need help to implement. More info here.

Test and comment – let us know what you think!