The Board 2023 Spring Release Is Now Available

Kayne Schwarz · January 2023

We are pleased to announce the Board 2023 Spring Release is live. This release delivers numerous improvements for all users of Board across a wide variety of business scenarios, including:

Citizen End Users can easily tweak the format of values displayed in Data views and show or hide columns on the fly to customize the data shown to suit their needs.
Makers now have various new options and features to load and manipulate data in a much more streamlined and faster way. The new Smart Import Object will be improved with new mapping options providing a much greater level of flexibility, and the Layout will be capable of handling many more use cases involving Unbalanced Hierarchies.
From a design point of view, various formatting options of the Data view and charts are now able to be managed from centralized configuration areas, making it easy for Makers to preserve graphical consistency in reports and dashboards across the entire Board Platform.
The new "REST API call" Procedure step included in this release gives Board a never-before-seen ability to integrate with third-party systems, in a much more simple and scalable way.
Admins and Ops gain other new security and logging functionalities.

The new features of this release include:

New Data View Formatting Options

End users in Play mode can now decide the format of numeric values displayed in the Data view as well as show or hide columns as needed. These changes can be applied on the fly in Play mode, with the possibility to save them using existing Board's self-service BI features such as My Screen View or Presentations. Read more about the new Data view formatting options.

Custom Style Template

Various new properties have been added to the "Row style template" configuration page, the "Block format" configuration page, and the Data view and charts properties panel. All these formatting options are managed from centralized configuration areas and they can be configured in order to be applied automatically, when certain conditions are met. Read more about the new options.

"REST API call" Procedure step

The new "REST API call" Procedure step allows Makers to create Procedures able to send different types of API requests complete with any additional parameter they may need. The new step can be used to send data from Board to other systems (or other Board Platforms), to receive data to be processed and stored in Board Data models, to activate processes outside Board and much more. Read more about the new Procedure step.

Introduction to the Board 2023 Spring Release Webinar

We are excited to present the highlights of the Board 2023 Spring release to you in a dedicated launch webinar. The latest update to our platform introduces significant enhancements and new features for every type of user, from Makers to End Users. Join us for this exclusive webinar on February 7, 2023 to learn more about the Board 2023 Spring release and how it will support you and your organization. Learn more about the available session times and topics here: Introduction to the Board 2023 Spring release webinar

Release Notes

You may review the full release notes now on the Board Manual here: Board 2023 Spring Release Notes

Install Files

To download the latest installer files, please visit Downloads. You must sign in to view and download the files.

Upgrade Instructions

Visit the Upgrade instructions page of the Board Manual to learn about the upgrade process.

Kayne Schwarz · March 2023

UPDATE (03/27/2023)

A new 12.5 Patch is now available for download: it includes various enhancements and bug fixes.

Patch highlights:

Two new features have been added to better manage the application of Row style templates
The use of Temporary Cubes has been extended to Data readers and all Procedure steps
Several fixes and improvements related to Data model memory management, the Dataflow step, Procedures, and more.

New features

New "Ignore format template" property for the Data View

A new “Ignore format template” property (checkbox) has been added to the Data View properties panel, under the "Columns" menu. The new property is disabled by default.

If enabled, it allows the Developer to ignore the applied row style template for specific Entities in the axes and Blocks (columns) of the Layout.

Using the Select to apply a template

Developers can now use a selection to dynamically apply a Row style template to a single member of a specified Entity.

This only works if the following requirements are met:

The template is not set as default and has been chosen manually from the "TEMPLATES" widget in Design mode
The Entity associated with the template is not used in a "Refer To" or a "Detail By" option and it's not in the Layout axes (By Row or By Column)
The Select on the Entity associated with the template includes only one Entity member

The configured template can applied through selections made using the following features/Objects:

Screen selection
Layout selection
Selectors
Pagers

Performance improvements

In previous versions of Board, updating a Database security profile or a Row style template required the Data model to be unloaded and reloaded in memory to apply changes: this could freeze the system and cause other service reliability issues.
Now administrators can update Database security profiles and Row style templates without causing stability or performance problems.

Temporary Cubes in Data readers

Temporary Cubes are now supported in Data readers, giving Makers a lot more flexibility in terms of Procedure design and reducing the need for Cube maintenance and possible concurrency issues, for example when multiple users update the same Cube via multiple instances of the same Procedure.

The configuration of a Data reader with Temporary Cubes is the same, except for the mapping phase.

To map a Temporary Cube to your data sources, proceed as follows:

From the left-hand side of the Mapping page, drag the new "Temporary Cube" object from the "More" group to the center area outlined in blue
Enter the Temporary Cube name in the "Temporary Cube name" placeholder. The name must match exactly the name you chose during the creation of Temporary Cube
Drag the code placeholder (and the description placeholder, if needed) for each dimension of the Temporary Cube structure from the "Entities" group to the center area outlined in blue. For regular Cubes, those Entities are automatically added when you drag the Cube in the mapping area, but this is not the case for Temporary Cubes: you must add the code placeholder (and the description placeholder, if needed) by hand for each dimension, which must match the dimensions in the structure of the Temporary Cube.

If the Temporary Cube name and/or the dimensions entered in the Data reader mapping page do not match the actual name and the dimensions of the Temporary Cube, no data will be imported, but the Data reader won't fail.

If a manually entered Temporary Cube name does not match the actual Temporary Cube name in the Procedure, in the Diagnostic Log set to verbosity level "Warning" a new specific log entry will be created.
The Log entry would look like the following example:

2023-03-16 12:35:59.053 +01:00 WARN Administrator 491b04bb-6b4e-4c3a-9b36-88e2cc1d9405 DataRead 15affa90-7e50-4a7b-93f8-7343753a78ad 2. ASCII Data Read Echo No virtual cube defined. A required virtual cube definition was not found by name: Gross Sales Temporary. DR mapping removed

If one or more dimensions of Temporary Cube are missing in the mapping configuration, a new specific log entry will be created for each missing dimension in the Diagnostic Log set to verbosity level "Warning".
The Log entry would look like the following example:

2023-03-16 12:44:12.931 +01:00 WARN Administrator d6f45ad2-4359-4963-9467-6892b8b8bf9f Import in Gross Sales Temporary a8db4810-f525-4993-b369-3a4ea12e2d5a 2. ASCII Data Read Echo {"Cube":"T001", "MissingEntityIdx":3} Cube dimension is missing in mappings

Since Temporary Cubes are created and used only as part of the Procedure in which they are defined, manually running a Data reader that imports data in Temporary Cubes from the Data reader home page will not produce any results (on Temporary Cubes). These new Data readers should be used only in the Procedure in which the Temporary Cubes were created.

Bug fixes

The following is a list of reported bugs that have been fixed in this patch.

Charts. In some cases, charts did not resize correctly when inside a Tab container and were being truncated. The issue has been resolved, but the fix will only apply to newly created chart Objects: existing charts will remain truncated until manually resized at least once. The same issue caused charts in other tabs of a Tab container to shrink after refreshing the Screen. This issue has also been resolved

Charts. In some cases, applying a selection with a Pager Object caused Bullet charts to display wrong results. The bug has been fixed

Dataflow. In some cases, the simultaneous execution of Procedures that contained Dataflows that wrote on the same target Cube prevented those Dataflows from successfully completing their calculations. The issue has been resolved

Dataflow. In some cases, Dataflows with expressions containing the "AND" operator and a vector Cube as target gave wrong results when they were executed for the first time. The bug has been fixed

Dataflow. A malfunction that caused calculations to fail in some cases where the expression formula included Blocks on which the "Refer to" setting was enabled has been resolved

Dataflow. In some cases, Dataflows that had an expression referencing a Cube with the Yearly Cumulated Value time function enabled and a target Cube with no time dimension gave unexpected results. The bug has been fixed

Dataflow. If a Dataflow Layout contained two Blocks with the same Cube and a Rule was set on the one used as a factor in the formula, the Dataflow ignored the Rule in the calculations. The bug has been fixed

Data Entry. For security reasons, special characters such as “&” and “§” were not saved during writeback operations in RDB (Rolap) Cubes. The issue has been resolved and the characters are now supported. This fix does not affect SQL Data readers, but only affects drill-throughs and writeback operations performed via Data Entry or Dataflows

Excel Add-in. Excel workbooks with a large number of sheets and Board Layouts couldn't be saved after clicking on the "Refresh Workbook" button. The issue has been resolved

Excel Add-in. The “BCUBE” and "BSAVE" formulas in the Excel Add-are now working as expected, even with Platforms associated with the Subscription Hub

Presentations. A malfunction that caused Slides containing Data View Objects created in Board 2022 Summer release to become empty when opened in Board 2023 Spring release has been resolved

Procedures. A malfunction that prevented environment variables from working in the "Output file" path of the REST API call step output configuration has been resolved

Procedures. The "REST API call" step now handles keys containing null values in the JSON response correctly: keys with null values are added as column headers in the output file with no values in the corresponding fields, instead of not being added at all

Procedures. In some cases, connecting to a Data model with running Procedures containing temporary Cubes using the Excel Add-in and then disconnecting from it caused the Temporary Cubes to get cleared or deleted. The issue has been resolved

Screen visualization. A malfunction caused the scrollbar in the Entity list in the Quick Layout configuration to disappear in Play mode when the number of Entities was too large to be fully displayed. The visualization issue has been fixed

Smart Import. When loading data through an Excel file, member codes with spaces before or after their value were not imported, even though the system displayed a message indicating otherwise. The issue has been resolved and a new behavior has been put in place: the Smart Import Object now automatically trims spaces before and after member codes in the loading phase