Board 11.3 : Initial thoughts

Julien CARDON

Hello all,

After one week with BOARD 11.3 here are our initial thoughts


What I like - For ADMINS
- Data management : With Board APIs we can now share data with other softwares like an intranet portal
- Reduce administration time : We are now able to sort members freely in entities. It will save us a lof of time! Another good reasons to move on Board 11 if you are using previous versions
- Data model management : With Impact Analysis, we will reduce potential unwanted regressions when making changes on data models, really great!
- Excel add-in can now connect through Web proxy and SAML2 so no need to open port 9700, required by many network security teams
- All the bug fixes !!

What I like - For END USERS
- Limitations removed on VERTICAL dataview : We can now resize columns and setup a drill (only in design mode)
- Map Customization : Ability to have our own images / background
- Map Improvement : We can now define what we want to see in each zoom-in levels
- Tree view : Nice to display financial figures!

No opinion
- GANTT chart : Nice but seems to be very specific
- Full text search : Our users are not really using that feature
- Autosizing of drill down / anywhere popup : Our users don't like it because most of the time they have to enlarge manually column size of entity members in drill anywhere. As a consequence, the drill popup size is now too small to display the whole dataview and they have to click again to enlarge it


Issues / Bugs we are facing on 11.3
No major issue during the upgrade, our previous screens are still working fine, however :
- Tree nodes : First levels items are totally black ?
- SAML2 through Excel add-in & Web proxy : Need to add key lastdnsname in the appsettings file
- SAML2 authentication in WEB was no longer working but was fixed by adding a / at the end of the url in the saml2 config file
- Impact analysis  : Does not work on some (big?) data models : Error is "Cannot read 'test.bcps' (Cannot access file )"
- Data reader : we have to tick "disable record counting" & "disable table sampling" otherwise it produce error in SQL_Error log


Our most wished improvements for the incoming versions
- Screen : Unable to display on a screen at the same time a chart per month and a table values from the last month selected without having to use a procedure (option missing on the time function : last month / period)
- Drill anywhere : Ease of readings when drilling from a chart : Cannot resize column for entity members / no autosizing column feature (too small) / Cannot change font size)
- Data entry : Allow an end users to input data directly in dynawrite
- Data entry : Not working with block reference or with a select in the layout => Add over-complexity in datamodel by creating unwanted cubes as a workaround
- Chart : Allow users to use "Quick layout" on chart and not only on dataview
- Dataview with 2 entities on rows : For subtotal, merge the header and subtotal rows to ease the reading of tables + option to choose if we want to display subtotal entities before or below children
- Map : It is not possible to set a fixed size of bubbles (default too big)

Sugunendra Sanivarapu

Hello Julien Cardon

I am unable to figure out the usage of the Board APIs, in the 11.3 release. Can you kindly post about how to configure the API for a DB and how to get data using this API. I am looking to get a CUBE in a flat table format or trigger a procedure to do the same. Thank you.

Regards
Sugunendra

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Sugunendra Sanivarapu
Consultant
BIOS MANAGEMENT SRL
Italy
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