We are pleased to present our latest offering of pi - our January 24 product release! This page helps summarise the areas of the dashboard we have Added, Changed, or Fixed meaning you can make a quick and informed decision on when to upgrade to the latest release.

Product Release

Added

We now have a new chart type called Drill to API. This allows you to issue an api request when a user drills and have the response handled. While in Beta only some options are available, others will be added in an upcoming release. See HERE for more information.

Previously, when exporting a file it would default to using the Chart Name - the name it is saved under - but would use the Chart Title set in the Chart’s Attributes section if one had been set. Now, it always uses the Chart Name. The part of the filename derived from the Chart Name is also truncated at 100 characters.

We have added “Change language” option to the ‘More Options’ menu in the top right. This will open a modal that allows you to change the Language of the Dashboard. It will also update any language related magic variables such as ‘LANGUAGE’.

Added a new endpoint /pi/health to the dashboard which returns the dashboard’s status as ‘up’ and some information regarding the licence and memory usage for system administrators.

You have to add a system admin token of at least 15 characters into the config tool under security or a new environment variable called PI_SYSTEM_ADMIN_TOKEN under the dashboard in docker.

You provide this as an authorization bearer token header when attempting to access the /pi/health endpoint to be able to access the licence and memory information.

There is now a ClickHouse option available in the Data Connections. ClickHouse Data Source Type connections will be made using the ‘clickhouse-jdbc-0.5.0-all.jar’ that is now shipped alongside other JDBC drivers (tomcat/jdbc_drivers)

Two new options have been added under the ‘Login’ tab to the classes available for Theme level styling. These new options are shown below with the one on the right relating to failed validation in the input fields (e.g. not entering a Username) and the one on the left being error messages that the Dashboard raises after the fields have been validated (e.g. attempting to login with an unknown username)

There have also been a couple of style improvements to this section with the class name now being able to span the entire ‘block’ and all of the properties being indented as opposed to just the first one.

Added a column to the MIS_AUDITS table to track the user’s IP address. The correct address will even be picked up behind a reverse proxy or load balancer using the X-Forwarded-For or X-Real-IP header (in that order of priority) provided that they have been set in the reverse proxy / load balancer config.

Added extra auditing for the following admin actions when using the external API : adding category to user, removing category from user, adding category to role, removing category from role, adding role to user, removing role from user, adding/updating/removing user variables, adding/updating/removing role variables, adding/updating/removing user restrictions, adding/updating/removing role restrictions, adding/updating/removing global variables, making changes to security settings, making changes to server settings.

gold.sql for Dashboard Repository has been brought up to date to include new database changes. A new view v_precanneddates that deals with date formatting has also been added.

Additional messages have been added to localisation (messagesStatic.properties file) , covering different areas of the dashboard, including user access, category access, reporting and scheduling screen, data connections editor and more.

A summary of the main changes can be found below but for a comprehensive guide to what is currently permitted please view the updated documentation page regarding Allowed HTML Tags:

• The ‘mailto’ and ‘tel’ URL protocols have been allowed

• The ‘title’ and ‘aria-label’ attributes have been added and can be applied globally

• The ‘class’ attribute is no longer restricted to specific elements and can be globally applied

• Many table related elements and attributes have been added to the allowed

Changed

Improvement have been made to resolve the dashboard URL when behind a reverse proxy. We made changes of how we resolve the host, protocol and port for the dashboard URL to ensure the consistency when using different dashboard components and authentication methods.

In response to recently publicised Tomcat vulnerabilities we have upgraded Tomcat to 8.5.97.

Previously it was possible to set an expiry date on the user admin despite it not being possible to disable them. It is now no longer possible to do this as the super admin shouldn’t be disabled.

The system will also now force the super admin to be enabled and have no expiration date when editing users through the API. This ensures the super admin is always enabled.

Now, when exporting a chart, all of the export buttons will become temporarily disabled until the export is complete. This is to stop people from repeatedly selecting the export buttons, causing the Renderer service to take on more processing requests/load.

Previously you could not always see the ‘select all’ button on Category Object/Filter multipickers, if the Object name was long.

Fixed

Report headers and footers displayed page numbers and text etc in incorrect positions, with unexpected sizing. This was introduced as a consiquence of a recent security upgrade in the October 2023 release. The positioning and sizing now replicates the information as it did prior to the security fix being introduced.

Special characters are no longer encoded for the exported file name, chart title and subtitle when exporting tables in Excel.

An error message was thrown in the ‘edit SQL’ tab (within the Chart Editor) when 'Edit SQL to build the chart or table' was clicked to display the SQL. A user who has the relevant ‘Can Edit Chart SQL’ permissions is now able to view and amend the SQL even when the chart is in a broken state.

A few places in the Dashboard used the American English spelling for colour, which have been updated

Previously when going to the ‘/version’ endpoint for the Excel Reader, Renderer, Scheduler and PiPredict modules (e.g. http://localhost:9915/version ) the version returned did not correspond correctly with the version of the dashboard in use.

Previously when you created a user with an apostrophe in their username, it would lead to issues with categories loading when the user logged in. This has been fixed so that categories that the user has access to load as expected.

Previously when you tried to log in a disabled user it would redirect you to the “change password” screen. Now, an error message is displayed stating that the user has been disabled and the user is not able to log in.

Previously, the dashboard was not disabling users when they reached their expiry date. This has now been resolved so users that reach their expiry date are automatically disabled and will receive an error message saying so when they attempt to log in.

Updated the list of ciphers used by Tomcat server in order to fix the issue of not being able to use Tomcat HTTPS.

Theme CSS properties that were removed due to sanitisation are no longer saved to the corresponding theme.css file

Fixed an issue when only the admin user was able to see themselves in the user recipients list when scheduling. Now, providing the user has the 'Can be Email Recipient' permission either from User Permission or Role Permission, the user will see themselves in the recipients list and will be able to send emails to themselves.

Previously, if the chart was used in the chart link and if its name was updated, the changes to the name were not reflected in the chart links.

The same applies to the changes made to the names of the categories that are used for the category links. All related category links will be updated with the category name if changed.

Linux paths that contains spaces and/or brackets no longer lead to script failures and the Dashboard failing to start.

Previously when adding a UUID licence in the configuration tool GUI, the GUI would show a status message declaring that the licence was either not there or invalid. This will now state that there is a UUID licence file present.

Previously, the Dashboard would fail to start if there was a directory in the ‘Themes’ folder that the Dashboard installation user did not have permission to read/write - for example, a ‘lost+found’ directory that had been created as part of a filesystem corruption check. Now, these directories are ignored and the Dashboard starts up as expected.

Previously, if you had set a Colour Rule for an Additional Data Object and then added/removed a different Data Object that Colour Rule would have been lost. Now, adding/removing Data Objects other than the one in question won’t affect the Colour Rule.

Resolved an issue where comparisons between data values and user defined Colour Rules for Charts would fail to show measures as equal, if there was a trailing zero in the Colour Rule decimal e.g. 2.50 and 2.5 would not be considered equal.

Previously, entering a decimal value for a Colour Rule using a Decimal Separator other than “.” would cause the colour comparison to fail. Now, providing the Decimal Separator you are trying to use is the one defined in the corresponding Data Object the comparison will work as expected.

Previously, Data Connections could appear valid through the introspection tool despite the current configuration leading to no connection being established. Now, unless a valid connection is able to be established the Data Connection will not appear as valid.

Previously, certain Data Connections such as Athena would, when saved with incorrect details, lead to the Data Connection Editor becoming unresponsive. This was due to it incorrectly validating the connection as active and therefore timing out waiting for the data.

If the chart displays the Warning icon (as per the screenshot below), once clicked, the notifications panel will pop up listing the warnings and alerts associated with this chart. Previously, it displayed the chart info tab by default.

When the system has thousands of users, it can taken longer than expected to open a user when editing of attempting to save. This occurred as there is a permission check to make sure the logged in user is allowed to do so.

The logic has been improved so that it is more performant when it processes such requests. This improves the UI and the API call to save users.

Resolved performance issues for refreshing the dashboard and logging in. This is done by removing unnecessary requests to resolve default category filters for the first category, which was used as a redirect target when the URL is incorrect. This has now been changed to request the data on demand.

Previously, when using variable replacement for the user and password for the data connection, the Excel Reader service would not function as the variables were not replaced. This has been resolved and the correct variable values will be picked up as long as the correct syntax is used i.e. [[USER]].

Previously, when using the Montserrat, Catamaran, Josefin Sans, Red Hat Text, Red Hat Display and Source Code Pro fonts as part of the dashboard, the text would appear very thin and faded. This was due to an issue with the hosted files for the font. This has now been corrected and the fonts will appear correctly.

Previously, even if there was no filter active from a Parent Chart, it would show the ‘reset button’ on the bottom left of the chart. This button will now only appears when a filter originating from the Parent Chart has been applied.

The available-languages.properties file is ISO-8859-1encoded, so extended characters like ê could have issues retaining their UTF-8 presentation. Now, the file has been updated to use the Unicode escape sequence equivalent of \u00EA instead which will not get re-encoded and displays consistently as expected.

Drilling to a Category (from a Full Screen chart) would cause the Dashboard to appear to hang as the ‘Drilled From Chart’ would remain on the screen along with the loading icon until the chart was manually closed.

Previously, you were allowed to deleted themes that were allocated to users. Now, the dashboard blocks you from doing so. It also returns an error if you attempt to do so through the API. You must first un-assign that theme from that user.

Previously, if you were to open an anonymous chart in the same browser session as your main dashboard, it would cause all of charts within the main dashboard to be treated as anonymous charts, removing the ability to edit them. Now, opening an anonymous chart no longer causes the charts in the dashboard to become un-editable.

Previously, when logging out, the page prompting you to log back in would display un-readable text depending on the background colour & theme. Now, the ‘log back in’ text is readable and has a button and background, configurable by the same CSS classes as that within the login screen in the themes.

In a recent upgrade, a bug was introduced where PDF reports were generating an extra blank page at the end. This has been resolved the report PDFs are now of the correct length.

Schema Changes

No changes to report

Known Issues

Windows Installs - Multilingual Users - Pre Upgrade ‘available-languages’ file

Prior to performing an update, ensure that your existing 'available-languages' is backed up, as the existing file will be overwritten by the upgrade process