New Features and Enhancements
The 2022 June release includes a lot of improvements of existing functionalities, such as % format in charts, deleting cell commentary and functional enhancements with better error handling.
Most importantly it provides a major new feature - Notifications.
Notifications introduces brand new way users can communicate with each other, which will have a great impact on successful collaboration through Planning Analytics applications.
Notifications can be linked directly with users' reports, and are integrated with existing Annotations functionality. Notifications can also allow users to track executed processes and their status and can be used to create tasks (To-Do lists).
Another major enhancement is the option to create views or widgets using a full MDX statement.
Notifications is the major new feature in this release. In the application, the notifications window or pannel is toggled by the Bell icon located in the application header. The Bell icon also has an indicator showing the number of new or unread notifications.
Clicking on the icon will open special new window with 4 foldable sections (drawers) available for each user:
- Public
- Message
- Process
- To-Do List
The drawer header for each section also includes a count of the number of notifications of that type.
Each type offers its own unique capabilities, encourages collaboration and simplifies navigation to and review of reports.
In situations when you wish to communicate with all users at once, doing so is possible with the Public option.
Public message can be sent only from the notification window. To do so select the + icon and change the notification type to Public.
Handy addition available only for this type of notification is the ability to specify a date range during which message is displayed. Date range can be defined using the calendar feature.
Reply and Visit Link options are supported for this notification type as well.
Note: Consumers cannot create public notifications. This option is only available to members of the UX Power User and UX Administrator groups.
This feature, as well as other types of notifications, encourages users to cooperate, exchange information and share details. All in all, it should make the work on applications with interactive workflows much more efficient.
The Notifications feature provides two different means of sending messages, each with its own characteristics:
1.2.1. Sending a message from a cell
When a user wants to draw attention to a particular value in a certain view the best way is to send a message directly referencing that cell.
In the table context menu the user gets a new option: Notifications. After selecting it a popup will open where those parameters can be configured:
- Notification Type
- User to whom the message should be delivered
- Type (information, warning, etc.)
- Content, i.e. the Header and Message
- Cell Reference, which is auto populated with the cell value
- Condition, when enabled the user will be presented with a new set of options that allow to specify certain conditions, that may make it easier for the recipient of the message to review the case.
NOTE:
By default all messages added from cell level will include link to the page from where the message originated. Please check Visit Link section to read more about this functionality.
1.2.2. Sending Message through Notifications window
When a cell reference is not the main priority, users can send messages directly from notification window.
After opening it, use the + icon to launch the new message creation dialog. The main differences from the previous option will be the lack of Cell Reference & Condition and the configurable option to add a Link to the current screen.
1.2.3. Visit Link
In both scenarios, the message recipient can visit the report from where the message originated using the Visit Link option. Select it from the list of options available after clicking 3 dots icon (visible next to the notification).
That functionality greatly facilitates the communication between users and ability to verify data efficiently.
If the message was sent from the cell level the view will be loaded with the original global filters settings.
1.2.4. Reply
To further improve communication, each user can reply to a message sent to them by selecting Reply from the list of options available after clicking 3 dots icon (visible next to the notification).
NOTE:
Posting Messages directly interacts with the already available Comments (Cell Annotations) feature. As such, when a user adds a new message from within a cell, it will be marked with a red triangle and its preview will be visible in the Cell Commentary popup. The text from the notification body is also automatically added as a cell annotation.
With the help of the processes drawer in the notifications pannel, keeping track of running TI processes has never been easier. Users can monitor running processes and their status changes. On top of that, an option to review process information is also available.
For any TI process run from Apliqo UX, the process window can be closed and the process will continue to run in the background and users can continue their work. A change of the process status will be indicated by a new notification and a sound signal.
To benefit from this functionality, additional advanced option Enable Drawer was added for three TI Process Status Notifications:
- Running
- Success
- Failed
When enabled the user will be informed via a new notification about the process status in the processes drawer.
Note: There is currently no way to distinguish "failed" status between major errors (e.g. process aborted or rolled back without comitting any changes) versus minor errors (error log created but work was still performed). This is due to a limitation in the API.
When another process is started, new notification will be signaled by a numeric icon (depending on the number of unread messages) next to the bell icon. The list of processes updates and new content added in the notification window will be highlighted by bold font.
To check the process details, click the 3 dots icon and select Process Info from the list.
A new popup will open, where the process status will be indicated by the respective icon and the defined parameters will be visible below.
To-Do lists can be created for personal reference but also for other users of the application.
Comparable to Messages, new task can be added directly from a cell level to include more necessary details or from the notification window using + icon.
Each new task will be added in the To-Do List section. Reply and Visit Link options are supported for this notification type as well.
This release also includes a minor change to the existing Annotations feature.
To improve organization, new Delete button has been added in the Cell Commentary popup window. Any user can delete their own comments, but only an administrator has the permission to manage all posted messages.
Note: In order for the delete comment feature to work the following entries must be added to the allowedRestPaths in the settings.json file.
{
"path": "/Annotations.*",
"method": "GET"
},
{
"path": "/Annotations(.*)",
"method": "DELETE"
}
One of the highlights of this release is the newly added option to create views using full mdx statements. With this functionality, users can create reports faster, more easily include custom columns and calculations, and still benefit from the placeholder functionality.
Full MDX statements can be added using cube settings popup. After turning on Full MDX option, new textbox will be provided to input query.
Dimensions can be left undefined, configured to set the dimensions Attributes or used to incorporate dynamic filter selection with the help of UX placeholders.
Changes introduced in 2022 June version significantly improve the use of % formatting in charts.
To facilitate adding percentage formatting in charts, a new option has been added to the advanced options GUI: Chart Show Percentage.
Enabling the option will result in % format and recalculated values to be displayed in data labels, tooltips as well as y- axis. No further configuration is required.
NOTE: Option is available for most chart types.
The 2022 June release brings also a small improvement to the presentation of data labels in Pie Chart.
Even without enabling Chart Show Percentage option, labels and tooltips will by default display the proper percentage value for each element.
Another improvement in this version is the new advanced option (Tool Bar Hidden when Printing) which, when enabled, allows the user to export any given page to PDF without a visible filterbar.
The last enhancement in 2022 June version includes improved functions and error handling.
- In the grid widget '1' shown on the screenshot below, following function was used: =IF(AND(C1<>0,D1=0), "Yes", "No"). Previously it did not return proper results, but in this version it will work as expected.
- In the second example the function =IF(C1=0,0,D1/C1) was used which returned an error when dividing by 0, that has been corrected in the newest release.
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