Open

We are pleased to present our latest offering of Pi - our March 2022 release! This page helps summarise and familiarise you with the changes we have made, and is supported (where applicable) with useful videos to help explain the changes we have delivered.

Here’s what we’ll cover;

Added

Sub-query will enable users to introduce charts as filter values, this means that charts are run as sub-queries which will help build the data of the main chart.

How does Sub-query work:

• when using an in/not in operator - the first column of the data from the sub-chart is used (this may contain multiple values)

• top/bottom operator - when using a top/ bottom operator, the option to select a chart to filter on will not be available

• single value operator e.g. Like - the first data point (first row of the first column) is used as the filter value

After selecting what you want to filter on and the operator you want to use you will then be able to select from data or a chart when picking the value. The type of charts allowed to be used as sub-query are similar to the options that you can select from when using merged charts/ tables. If a chart can be used as a sub-chart of a merged chart or table, it can be used as sub-query. This means that

• lines, bars, tables are allowed

• pies, special shapes, maps, merged charts/tables and so on can not be used

The ‘Type to filter’ screen has now been split into two sections - Data and Charts. The Data screen is used in the same way as it was previously (please see this page for more information).

New functionality has been added to support multi-select parent filters for most of the Cartesian chart types and data tables. Users will be able to select multiple chart blocks/ table rows and apply these filters as a list to other elements on the same category, the items selected will be identified on the parent chart with highlighting.

In addition to this, users will also be able to select multiple Legend items on a parent chart as a filter. This will filter all other charts/ data tables on the same category and highlight the selected values on the Legend itself.

We have added a new data connection type to the dashboard for SQream, allowing you to connect the dashboard to a SQream database. Configuration options include:

• Ability to enable SSL

• Ability to enable clustering

• Ability to specify a service (‘sqream’ is selected by default)

Open

Session synchronisation can now be enabled through Tomcat clustering. A new section has been added to the configuration tool GUI, which will allow the user to specify if they wish to have session sync turned on with the option to specify both Broadcast and Listening Ports:

If enabled, a number of .xml files will be amended in the Tomcat folder, which will enable session synchronisation. The files which will be rewritten are as follows;

• INSTALLATION_DIR/Dashboard/tomcat/conf/server.xml

• INSTALLATION_DIR/Dashboard/tomcat/conf/context.xml

• INSTALLATION_DIR/Dashboard/tomcat/webapps/pi/WEB-INF/web.xml

• INSTALLATION_DIR/Dashboard/tomcat/webapps/panMISDashboardWebServices/WEB-INF/web.xml

As a part of this feature, a few changes have been made to configuration tool GUI as well, which will now display collapsed Proxy, Session Sync and Advanced options in the tomcat config tab.

New functionality in this release will allow users to make categories scrollable. Users will be able to alter the height of a selected category by choosing from Default, 1.5x or 2x height options. If one of the larger sizes is chosen, a scrollbar will be automatically added to the category. This has been introduced to allow users to add more charts to the selected category without having to reduce their size in order to display them.

The option to change category height will be available when creating new categories or editing existing categories.

We have added a new chart type called ‘Power Ring’.

The Power Ring chart type works in a similar way to a Speedometer. A ring is displayed which corresponds to the total height of all targets that have been added on the Attributes screen in Chart Editor.

The colour displayed on the ring is taken from the target that the data point you’re hovering over is within.

Power Ring currently supports one single dimension and one series. You can also remove the dimension to just display the total of the series data.

Functionality has been implemented that will clean inactive sessions that are older than 72h from the USER_GATEWAY_SESSION table every hour.

When a user tries to change their email address, by clicking on their name under ‘More Options’ at the top-right of the dashboard, they will now be asked to enter their current password as a security check before the changes can be saved.

The Tomcat server (that hosts the core dashboard) was hard-coded to have a total of 15 maximum concurrent connections to the database. This meant that if a user visited a category with 16 charts, the dashboard would load 15 of them concurrently while 1 would be on hold, waiting for a connection to be available.

While the default value remains at 15, this can now be altered via the configuration tool in the typical ways:

• Environment variable: PI_TOMCAT_MAX_TOTAL_DB_CONNECTIONS

• Json file: tomcat.advanced.maximumTotalDatabaseConnections

• Configuration tool

This only really makes a big difference when you have large amounts of concurrent users on a single, non-load-balanced dashboard.

Fixed

When a user tries to reset their password, by the clicking the ‘Forgotten Password’ link on the Login screen:

they will need to supply a username and email address so that the correct user can be matched to the email address if more than one user shares the same email address.

After entering the correct user details, an email will be sent to them with instructions for resetting their password.

Scheduler will no longer display a scroll bar if not needed. Scroll bars will only be displayed in the email section of Schedules when there is too much text in the body of the email to display in the available space.

Free Text Category Objects will work as intended when used with Object Replacement.

​;application=panintelligence_dashboard will now be appended to all JDBC connections to snowflake. This is used by Snowflake to track querying.

A ‘Destroyed view’ error message was being displayed in the Dashboard when a user opened and closed a Category in Dashboard Configuration>Categories. This has now been addressed in this release and the error message will no longer appear.

Resolved a deadlock when dynamically creating a connection to an Oracle database.

Additionally, the supported data connections for Oracle are now split into 3:

• Oracle (Express Edition) - Connect to an Oracle Express Edition database

• Oracle (SID) - Connect to an Oracle database that was set up with SID

• Oracle (Service Name) - Connect to an Oracle database that was set up with a Service Name

An issue where it was possible to access generated language files without authentication if the exact date was guessed has been resolved in this release.

If the target system contains a category with a category object (e.g. Region) and a connection export file contains the same category with 2 category objects (e.g. Region and City), the ‘Region’ category object was being deleted when the connection was imported. This behaviour has been addressed in this dashboard release and the category object will be imported correctly.

When an object had been defined as a Dimension, Character in Dashboard Configuration> Data Connections, where the data contained numeric values and this object was then used on the X-Axis of a chart containing a drill level, users were unable to drill down on the chart. This has been addressed in this dashboard release and drill levels will now be displayed correctly.

When a chart has been added as an iframe and you have a user that only has the permission ‘Can Download PDF’, the chart tools menu will now be displayed with the ‘Can Download PDF’ button when the user views the embedded chart on the iframe.