Release notes of items completed between Alpana v3.2.3.3 and 2020 R1
Alpana Update File Dependency has been upgraded from v1.0.2.1 to 1.1.0.2
Alpana Real Time Data has been upgraded from v1.0.2.1 to 1.1.0.2
Introduction
Version 2020 R1 is the first big release of the year and includes many new features and bugfixes.
As usual, the application is updated to the latest web technologies (Angular 9, .NET Core 3.1), with the latest security features and patches.
New versioning :
After version v3.2.3.3, and since Alpana version 2020 R1, a new versioning scheme is used.
The internal version number for 2020 R1 is 3.3.0.25.
See upgrading for more information.
Upgrade Instructions
To upgrade your installation, please see the generic upgrading chapter.
In addition, this version has specific instructions listed below.
Alpana Server
New Pre-Requisite
Alpana Server now requires to install a new version of .Net Core v3.1 Runtime & Hosting Bundle.
See Server Pre-Requisites for more information.
Previous versions of .Net Core may be uninstalled safely if they are not used by other software.
License upgrade
Important : This is a new major version, so it requires a valid support contract to upgrade, and you must ask for a new license Activation to your support.
Upgrading Schedules
Following a change in the scheduling engine, existing Schedules need to be upgraded manually.
You will have to manually Disable/Enable each Schedule to upgrade it, or to Edit and save it.
In addition :
- “Minutes” will lose the “seconds” details
- “Hourly” will lose the “seconds” details
- “Daily” will lose the “seconds” details
- “Weekly” will lose the “seconds” details
- “Monthly” will lose the “seconds” details
- “Advanced CRON expressions” are replaced by a compatible expression
Enabling Runtime Connections
Following upgrade, to enable the new Runtime Connections feature on a tenant :
- activate the Runtime Connections license feature at the Host level
- add the Runtime Connections license feature to the desired tenants
- add the Runtime Connections permission to the Admin Role of the tenant, and to all desired Users and Roles
Alpana Designer
New Pre-Requisites
Alpana Designer now requires to install .Net Core v3.1 Runtime & Hosting Bundle.
See Designer Pre-Requisites for more information.
Dashboards
Special characters
Following an improvement on the management of international characters, some dashboards need to be upgraded manually.
If your dashboards configuration (headers, descriptions, etc, but not data) contain special characters, such as symbols m³ or non-English characters é or money symbols €, upon upgrade they will be displayed as question mark ?.
To solve this, just open the dashboard in Alpana Designer, and save again.
Main Features
New Features : Paginated PDF Exports, Mobile configuration and Layout Management
A new concept has been introduced in each Dashboard : Layouts.
You can now display the same Dashboard in many display conditions, and control exactly how it will be displayed, for example :
- on a desktop web browser
- on a big screen
- in a PDF report
- on a mobile device
- inside InTouch OMI
- embedded in another website
- …
In all cases, you just re-use the same existing configuration (Widgets, Data Sources, etc) from the same Dashboard, and just change the layout :
- display/hide the Widget on some layouts
- move/resize content to view better
- change the theme to fit the embedding context
In particular, the PDF exports can now have a fully configurable Header and Footer, pagination and paper size.
The Designer has been improved for such tasks, with a new interface for zooming the canvas, viewing PDF page limits, hiding/displaying widgets, …
New PDF export behaviors have also been implemented to handle widgets with hidden data (example : Grid with pagination)
As another consequence, the Mobile layout can now be manually configured to display exactly as desired.
New Feature : Runtime Connections
Alpana now allows to create and host simple data tables.
See Runtime Connections on Alpana Server to create and manage those new objects.
Users can use interactive input forms inside dashboards to input data.
See the new Input Grid widget to add this possibility to Dashboards.
Developers can read this data to display it in a Dashboard.
See the new Alpana Runtime Connection type to use it in a Data Source.
New Connection : Insight
Alpana now includes a native Connection to Aveva Insight
It allows to connect to Aveva Cloud Operations to get historical data from Insight.
Connection improvements : Web
The “Web connector”: Web connector now allows to connect to more API types, including Ampla.
New Widget : Linear Gauge
KPI’s can now be displayed on a scale with the new Linear Gauge Widget type.
The previous “Gauge” Widget was renamed to Circular Gauge
New Widget : Sparkline
You can now display a KPI along with its history on a mini-trend with high/low limits, thanks to the new Sparkline Widget type.
New Widget : Banner
You can now display value cards on a scrolling banner similar to stock exchange websites, thanks to the new Banner Widget type.
New Widget : Gantt
You can now display scheduling and timeline data on the new Gantt Widget type.
New Widget : Energy Rating
You can now display regulatory environmental and energy performance data on the new Energy Rating Widget type.
New Widget : Tree View
You can now select filter values from tree-like hierarchical data thanks to the new Tree View filter Widget type.
Widget improvements
Card re-vamp
The Card has been completely overhauled to allow more configurability of the KPI display.
In addition, the Card can now display a sparkline to add historical insight to the single-value display.
This works particularly well with the new aggregation type called “Last”.
Chart improvement
The Spline Type option for Spline chart types now includes a “Monotonic” option that doesn’t overshoot (it doesn’t go over or under the actual values).
Range Navigator improvement
There is now a new option for the value display of the Range Navigator : Axis Interval Type
Designer improvements
New aggregation function : Last
The Last Value aggregation function now allows developers to easily display the single last value of a field.
This responds to the common requirement to “only see the value” in a Widget, despite having many values in a Data Source, and the general need for aggregation.
Parameter binding
The Parameter editor has been improved to display all uses of a Parameter, including in Expression, Stored Procedures, Filters, and Widget specific behaviors.
This allows to have a central location for analyzing more complex Parameter behaviors.
The automatic creation and binding of Parameters has also been improved, in order to give a more pleasant developer experience.
Similarly, Parameter deletion has been made easier.
Border configuration for Widgets
Now all Widgets types can have a configurable Border.
Performance
Designer error logs are now paged and will not have performance issues with very large files.
New query configuration : Distinct
All Widgets now have a now query configuration option : distinct.
This is enabled by default as it represents the most common case.
However, if you want to display repeated values from your data, you can now disable this.
Server improvements
LDAP integration
Previously, only integration with ADFS was possible.
Now, administrators can configure their Tenant to accept connection from Active Directory users, by simply configuring an AD server and admin user credentials.
AD users who connect will automatically have their Alpana account created with default Roles.
New Background Jobs management
Long-running tasks are now managed by a Background Jobs manager : manual dashboard exports, manual data import from files, etc
Results are communicated through the Notifications.
This allows a better handling of simultaneous exports
Concurrent login
Administrators can now choose to prevent users from connecting simultaneously from multiple browsers.
Category move
Dashboard Sub-Categories can now be moved to become a Root Category thanks to a dedicated control.
Changes in Guest permissions
The Guest default Server Role now has a new default behavior : by default, it has no access, and will only have access to content if explicitly granted.
Performance
Miscellaneous internal optimizations have lead to general performance improvements in page loading.
Known Issues and Incompatibilities
- The SQLite Connection was only used for internal tasks, and has been dropped from Alpana. If you need this connector, please contact your support.
- Excel formulas are not run in XLSX format
- The Range Navigator in “auto” mode may sometime display incorrect intervals.
- The “Candle” Chart when configured with more than 15 values of “split into same chart” will show the other items as black
- There are some issues with visual feedback when selecting from a chart as master widget
- On an upgraded installation, a message for an “internal error” may be displayed upon connecting, with no functional issue. If this impacts you, please contact support to apply a simple fix.
Solved Issues
The following are the main bugs that were fixed between Alpana v3.2.3.3 and v3.3.0.25 :
- ALP-I2159 – Grid paging broken with Historian query
- ALP-I2195 – Designer crash when removing a field from Grid with KPI
- ALP-I2155 – Scheduling : Data conditions never met
- ALP-I2179 – Parameter placeholder not replaced correctly in published Widget
- ALP-I2123 – Designer doesn’t allow to access changes in parameters of stored procedures
- ALP-I2145 – Expression deleted silently in specific workflow
- ALP-I2147 – Range Navigator may not display all dates
- ALP-I2210 – Server : Installation fails with some password characters
- ALP-I2252 – Grid conditional formatting causes error when bound to Parameter
- ALP-I2178 – Embed link of Widget pinned to Homepage is incorrect
- ALP-I2259 – “no data” in some cases when loading saved View
- ALP-I2175 – Schedule : logical condition’s Filter radiobutton resets automatically
- ALP-I2174 – Schedule : Targets User unbound when Editing
- ALP-I2248 – Schedule configuration : watcher field is not remembered correctly
- ALP-I2265 – error when exporting Host Change Logs to Excel in some cases
- ALP-I2172 – Comments : cannot see the presence of widget comments
- ALP-I2176 – Widget comment thread copied in Main
- ALP-I2180 – Cannot connect specific Excel XLS file : IQ_UnableToUpdateBuffer
- ALP-I2158 – date formatting HH:mm:ss.fff doesn’t show milliseconds
- ALP-I2164 – Designer : cannot see full tagnames when editting connection
- ALP-I2328 – Host admin : incorrect results when filtering Users list by Permission
- ALP-I2144 – Unwanted automatic Parameter links
- ALP-I2157 – Grid selection maintained incorrectly across paging
- ALP-I2109 – Treemap : default selection UI feedback incorrect
- ALP-I2153 – incorrect configuration which shows “No data” in Designer only
- ALP-I2150 – Server login page blocks when login failed
- ALP-I2314 – Euro “€” label rendered as question mark “?” in Chrome
- ALP-I2156 – Layout shaking a lot on certain dashboards with certain window sizes
- ALP-I2161 – Server : dashboard list “blinks” with specific workflow
- ALP-I2167 – Pin Widget disabled on published Widget
- ALP-I2169 – Disabled Link button on pinned dashboard
- ALP-I2154 – Default series name inconsistent
- ALP-I2258 – URL Parameter causes incorrect behavior in Views
- ALP-I2297 – inconsistent Parameter reset with URL Parameter
- ALP-I2319 – Chart : cannot edit legend when multiple measures but no split
- ALP-I2282 – Designer : cannot Publish to overwrite existing Widget
- ALP-I2028 – Column chart X axis labels display issue with long strings
- ALP-I2146 – Range Navigator doesn’t update selection when mouse is released outside
- ALP-I2165 – Grid maintains a visual selection even when not master
- ALP-I2303 – Chart : autoscale slightly wrong in some cases
- ALP-I2151 – Chart allows incorrect Y axis configuration and shows error
- ALP-I2293 – Data Source page : default pagination incorrect
- ALP-I2177 – User gets notified of own comments
- ALP-I2327 – silent error when importing incorrect users from Excel
- ALP-I2312 – Historian : random error “The ConnectionString property has not been initialized.”
- ALP-I2171 – Designer : Logs dialog very slow to open when many logs
- ALP-I2322 – Treemap tooltip shows all decimals
- ALP-I2163 – glitch when cancelling out of Rename Homepage dialog
- ALP-I2162 – Dashboard loses Favourite status when updated
- ALP-I2168 – Designer : setting Autorefresh doesn’t make the project “dirty”
- ALP-I2192 – Designer : state is not dirty when background color changed
- ALP-I2160 – incorrect error message when adding wrong user to chat
- ALP-I2092 – Range Navigator : clicking year has a different display after refresh
- ALP-I2149 – Parameter Editor UI : button overflows
- ALP-I2271 – Designer : Configuring Multi-Items Viewport doesn’t set project to dirty
In addition, many fixes were made to advanced Widget configurations.
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