Release 0
2020-02-05
We are proud to release Exago BI v2021.1!
Check out the list of new features and other changes below.
ExpressView Overhaul
The ExpressView Design experience has been completely re-imagined—from a new report layout, new themes and exporting formats to new summary building tools and two new chart types!
The Designer retains its simple drag-and-drop interface but presents data in a new table format that expands from left-to-right and top-to-bottom. Summarizing at the group and report level can be done in as few as two clicks of the mouse. Adding a chart requires just one more click.
New Quick Functions transform data from the data sources with two clicks, without having to write a formula. Formula columns can also work in conjunction with Quick Functions to tailor the analysis of data quickly. A number of Quick Functions are built-in to the application, and administrators may add their own at any time.
New formatting and theming controls empower users to create beautiful, professional looking reports in as few as one or two clicks. These modifications also carry through to exported files (PDF, Excel and RTF formats).
When the Incremental Loading feature is enabled, a link explaining the partial data set is displayed instead of an icon.
A maximum of seven groups may be added to an ExpressView. For existing ExpressView opened in the new Designer, no new groups may be added until less than 7 groups are on the report.
Advanced Reports Overhaul
Like ExpressView, Advanced Reports have been given a fresh new look in both the Report Designer and Report Viewer tools.
The Advanced Report Wizard has been removed. Now, when creating a new report, users will be brought directly to the Report Designer and prompted to add Data Objects (formerly known as Categories). Once users add their Data Objects, they are able to begin designing and building immediately in any order or workflow that suits them.
The design grid has a new look and new interaction points — such as the new Add Section and Select All buttons and cell highlighting when editing formulas in the Formula Bar. The Row, Column and Section menus are easier to access.
Clicking on a row or column header will select all of the cells in that row or column.
A new indicator appears above the Save icon and in the Designer's user interface tab in the Report Designer's toolbar to indicate unsaved changes pending to be saved.
Controls on the toolbar have been rearranged to make them easier to find. The Sorts and Filters icons now have dedicated toolbar icons. To change the Data Objects on the report, use the new Manage Data Objects button in the Data Objects pane. Insert charts, gauges, maps, images and others by using the new consolidated Insert menu.
Fixed an issue where the Font dropdown in the Advanced Report Designer would not open instantly on click.
The Report Tree in the Linked Report dialog is now searchable by the Report Name.
The modules of the Interactive Dock (the left pane in the Report Viewer) work differently — they are easier to access and match the design of the rest of the application. The column headers are always visible at the top of the window and a new Report Viewer Option can turn them off on a report-by-report basis.
A new Open Dock and Close Dock icon appears in the Report Viewer making the Interactive Dock easier to find and open/close
The prompting filter and prompting parameter dialogs have changed with a new look. By default, a simpler prompting filter dialog (officially called the Simple With Operator Filter Execution Window) appears in place of the previous Standard Filter Execution Window. This can be overridden on a report-by-report and system-wide basis.
When the Incremental Loading feature is enabled, a link explaining the partial data set is displayed instead of an icon on the Report Viewer's toolbar.
The Admin Console > General > Feature/UI Settings > Default Designer Font Size has been changed from 8 to 10, to increase text readability and WCAG 2.0 Accessibility standards compliance.
Dashboard Changes
Big changes continue for Dashboards in v2021.1!
By default, a new Admin Console Feature/UI Setting named Automatically Refresh Reports is set to False. This has the effect of preventing changes to tiles in the Dashboard Designer from triggering a complete reload of the data on that tile. By reducing the number of report executions, the Dashboard Designer will feel more responsive and the load on the network and data source servers is reduced. A new Refresh Reminder appears in the tiles and on the toolbar indicating that the tile is due for a refresh to show updated information.
When Automatically Refresh Reports is False, a placeholder image will be displayed when adding a new Existing Report Tile to a Dashboard until the tile is refreshed.
Dashboards with interactive filters can now pull the interactive filter values from the data source, then execute or re-execute their associated reports with those values in the data source. This can lead to considerable performance improvements, in some cases going from a couple of minutes of execution time to under ten seconds. A new setting for Data Objects in the Admin Console allows this behavior to be disabled on a per-object level.
The Suppress Detail Rows checkbox has been removed for the Existing Report tiles with an ExpressView in the Dashboard Designer.
Some styling changes to both the Dashboard Viewer and Dashboard Designer create a more unified appearance across the application
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Visualizations
Added two new chart types available to ExpressView, Advanced Reports and Dashboards: Radar Charts and Stacked Area Charts.
New chart themes are available throughout the application wherever charts may be added to reports. Single series charts will now assign a single color to a series (a.k.a. a group) instead of a value.
Storage Management
The Storage Management Access Flags introduced in v2020.1 have been activated. The flags can be used to give fine grained control over access to themes, templates, folders and reports in the system on a per-user, per-company or per-user class level. Read more about the flags in Storage Management: Introduction.
The Access Flags setting in the Admin Console has been renamed Default Access Permission and has additional controls for affecting access to newly created content.
A new Update Reports button in the Admin Console generates additional metadata stored in the Storage Management database's content table.
The Storage Management Utility, a standalone tool for managing Storage Management database content has been re-written from the beginning and now supports Windows, Linux and Mac OSX. Users can create, modify or delete content items, folders and content access records directly with the utility now. This application is available on the Downloads page of the Support Center.
The IStorageManagement methods have been virtualized, so the entire interface does not need to be re-implemented when only implementing some methods is desired.
Added the -o command line parameter to the LoadReportsToDb Storage Management transitioning utility to set the command timeout
Fixed an issue where the LoadReportsToDb transitioning utility would not read the OwnerID from the intermediate JSON file as expected
Methods for accessing Storage Management have been added to the SOAP Web Service API to support clients utilizing this deprecated API
Fixed an issue the prevented Exago from connecting to a PostgreSQL Storage Management database with the NPGSQL driver on Linux
NotePlease also review the What's New in Version 2021.1 article for more information regarding these features.
Other Changes
- Increased performance of in-memory sorting
- The name Categories has been replaced with Data Objects in all parts of the application that reference the tables, views, functions, stored procedures or custom SQL objects that reports retrieve data from
- DB2 data sources now support converting formula filters and sorts to SQL
- Added Switch() conditionals to the SQL formula translation library in dbconfigs.json so that formulas containing them can be executed in the data source
- Added translations for AND and OR operators with more than two arguments to the SQL formula translation library in dbconfigs.json
- Changes to the Storage Management implementation allow report properties (e.g. data objects/entities) to be retrieved programmatically versus first creating a ReportObject object in the API
- New CrossTab themes are available in the CrossTab Data Designer that match the new chart themes
- The default colors for Charts, GeoCharts, Google Maps, Gauges and Heatmaps have been changed to
#3B5BD2,#4E80F4,#95B3F8,#CAD8FB,#FDD9B2,#FCB467,#FE9001,#F87206. These can be changed in the Admin Console > Feature/UI Settings. - Added XML validation for ExpressView reports executed by Scheduler Services. When an older ExpressView is executed on a newer Scheduler Service, it will be checked and updated if necessary.
- Added a new SourceId property to the Api.Common.ContentMetadata class that can be used to determine if a report being saved is new, being saved again or duplicated
- The REST Web Service API now allows loading reports with their content ID from the Storage Management database
- Improved performance in the Dashboard Designer by removing several extraneous cases where content in visualization tiles would indicate the need for a refresh
- Improved an error message that displays when a language file cannot be found
- Increased vertical padding on the nodes displayed in trees throughout the application (Report Tree, Data Objects pane, the list of folders in the Admin Console's Roles section, etc...
- The AutoSum icon has been disabled by default from the Advanced Report Designer's toolbar. The feature can be turned back on with a new Admin Console Feature/UI Setting named Show Auto Sum Button
- The internal log4net library has been updated to version 2.0.12
- The internal charting library (FusionCharts) has been updated to version 3.15.2
- The Advanced Report Designer's toolbar no longer collapses (hides icons) as screen size reduces. Instead, modules of icons will shift onto new lines keeping all icons visible
- The data type icons at the top of the Data Objects pane on the left side of the user interface have been removed
- The ETL feature has been removed from the product
- The ExpressView Tutorial and ExpressView Hints features have been removed
Issues Fixed
- Fixed an issue in the Dashboard Designer that prevented a report name and folder name from being selected when saving a visualization tile as an Advanced Report
- Fixed an issue with the Admin Console > General > Feature/UI Settings > Update All Application Themes button displaying an error when clicked
- Fixed an issue with the SQL generation for ExpressViews with sorts on a formula field or a field used in a formula
- Fixed an issue when executing a Dashboard containing a prompting parameter with a Parameter Dropdown Object
- Fixed an issue where the Display Value Field of a Parameter Dropdown Object would be applied to a report on a Dashboard if the Parameter Dropdown Object had unique Display Value Field and Value Field settings and the default value was chosen in the Dashboard Viewer
- Fixed an issue where filter dependency did not honor logical grouping with an OR conjunction
- Fixed an issue where changing the name of a report on an existing report tile on a Dashboard was not an Undoable action
- Fixed an issue where an error message would be displayed when accessing Exago cross-origin over HTTP with cookieless sessions turned off
- Fixed an issue where an error message would appear if filtering on a date field originating from an IBM DB2 or IBM Informix Data Object
- Fixed an issue where the New Report menu could flash or blink when the browser's cache is empty
- Fixed an issue where images uploaded to Advanced Report Cells in a Detail section would sometimes fail to load when Exago is hosted in a web farm environment
- Fixed an inconsistency with the name of filter operators across the Standard, Simple With Operator and Simple Without Operator Filter Execution Windows
- Fixed an inconsistency with the spelling of CrossTab used throughout the application
- Corrected the tooltip description of the LoadImage() function to indicate it must be the outermost function in a report cell
- Fixed an issue where the list of parameters on a scheduled report that includes a Custom SQL Parameter Dropdown Object would be empty when called with the REST Web Service API