WebFOCUS 8207.01 Release Notes

Customizing Path for the Getting Started Carousel

You can now configure the Getting Started carousel to point to a different workspace in your repository. This can be achieved by customizing the Default List Repository Path setting in the Administration Console. Update the path to reflect the name of your chosen workspace, save your changes, and reload the Home Page. The top carousel changes to display the workspace
you selected. The title linked to the name assigned to the workspace becomes the new title of the Carousel. The following image shows an example of a custom carousel in the Home view of the Home Page.

Note: If you point to a non-existent workspace or replace the path with a blank space in the Default List Repository Path setting, the Getting Started carousel will not display. You can always restore the default path automatically by clearing the value assigned to this setting, saving the change, signing out and signing back in to reload the Home Page.

User Language Preference

Users can now customize their language preference from the User Menu of the Home Page. Click your user icon in the upper-right corner of the Home Page, click Preferences, and then choose a language from the My Preferences dialog box, as shown in the following image.

Adding Insight-Enabled Charts to a Visualization

When you add an Insight-enabled chart to a visualization assembled from existing content, the Insight icon appears in the upper-right corner of the chart, as shown in the following image.

When you run the visualization and click the Insight icon, the Insight chart opens in a new browser tab and displays the Insight toolbar, allowing you to interact with the chart at runtime with full Insight functionality.

Dynamic Grouping Enhancements

When creating dynamic groups in WebFOCUS Designer using the Create groups and Edit groups dialog boxes, you can use drag actions to modify groups. You can drag one value onto another to create a group with those two values, drag a value into an existing group to add it to the group, drag a group onto an ungrouped value to add the value to the group, drag a group into another group to combine them, or drag a value from one group into another group to move it to that group. You can also now edit a dynamic group field once it has been added to your content by right-clicking it in a bucket, in addition to the field list. These features make it easy to create and edit your dynamic groups.

For more information, see Using Dynamic Grouping for Dimension Field Values.

Changing the Size of the Hole in a Ring Pie Chart

When creating a ring pie chart in WebFOCUS Designer, you can change the size of the hole in the middle, or remove it entirely, giving you more control over the appearance of your chart. When you create a ring pie chart, select the Format tab, and then select Series from the area menu. When All Series is selected, the Hole Size property appears in the Shape section. Set a size, as a percent of total diameter, for the ring pie hole. The total value text inside the hole shrinks or expands to fit in the space. If you set the hole size to 0, the ring pie chart becomes a standard pie chart, with no total value text displayed, as shown in the following image.

Field List Expands to First Field

When creating content in WebFOCUS Designer, the field list in the Resources panel now expands to the first available field by default once a data source is selected. If there are multiple nested folders at the top of the business view, they are expanded, by default, one-byone, starting from the top, until the first fields are visible. Additional folders within the last expanded folder are not expanded once fields are visible. This makes it easier to access fields in a data source without requiring the user to manually expand multiple folders, while still keeping most folders closed to avoid the need for excessive scrolling.

WebFOCUS Designer Browser Tab Name

When editing a previously saved visualization in WebFOCUS Designer, the name of the browser tab is taken from the title of the visualization. This makes it easy to identify which visualization is being edited on each tab, particularly when multiple instances of WebFOCUS Designer are open. Prior to saving, a browser tab in which WebFOCUS Designer is running is named Designer.

Using the Outline to Access the Source Syntax of a Single Chart or Report

When creating a new visualization in WebFOCUS Designer, the outline is now available for stand-alone content items. This allows you to view the WebFOCUS Language source syntax of stand-alone content items, which significantly facilitates troubleshooting. Select Outline on the sidebar and right-click the chart or report listed in the outline, then click View source code. The source syntax displays in a read-only text editor. You can copy the syntax, download the chart or report as a .fex file, and search through the syntax using the options on the toolbar. To return to the canvas, click the X in the upper-right corner of the page.

Extended Chart Series Colors for Default Themes

By default, WebFOCUS includes three themes: Designer 2018, Light, and Midnight. These themes specify styling properties for charts, reports, and pages. For charts, one of these properties is a set of series colors. Series colors represent different values of a dimension field added to the Color bucket. When the number of series values in a chart exceeds the number of specified series colors, those colors are repeated in the specified order with increasing lightness applied with each cycle.

To delay the repetition of series colors, additional series color values have been added to each of the default themes, increasing the number of specified series colors from 6 to 12. The following image shows the same chart with 12 series values, using each of the three default themes.

Union, Join, and Select Editors Open as Nearly Full-Screen Windows

In prior releases, the Join Editor, Union Editor, and Select Editor opened as panes on the Data Flow Workspace. Now, they open as popup windows on top of the Data Flow Workspace and are almost full-screen size, as shown in the following image.

This provides more room to see and edit the onscreen elements than when they were confined to a small pane on the bottom of the screen.

Limiting the Number of Automatic Join Pairs in Tables Without Keys

When you join files or tables without keys, the join created automatically based on matching field names is now limited to three pairs of join fields, to avoid attempting a join on an excessive number of fields, especially when joining a table to itself. For example, the following image shows the default automatic join pairs for two tables with the same fields.

You can always add additional pairs or remove pairs, as needed.

This limit does not affect joins on tables with keys, where all of the key fields are joined.

Previewing a File When Uploading

When you upload a file, you can preview the file to make sure that you uploaded the one that you wanted. You can also make some adjustments to the data before loading it to a target, as shown in the following image.

When preparing the data:

• The headers and sample content are shown. By default, formatted data is shown, with the generated data types identified. You can click the Raw button to see unformatted data.
• The number of header rows is determined by scanning the file, but it can be changed as required.
• For an Excel Worksheet, there is an option read the file as a cross-tab.
• The derived data type is shown for each field. You can change the basic data type.
• You can, optionally, change or assign a geographic role.
• A field name is shown for each field, either from the header, when available, or generated as the name FIELD with an index (FIELDx). You have the option to rename the field.
• You can also change the name of the metadata object (synonym) that is created and, for workbooks with multiple worksheets, choose which ones to load.
• You can click the More button to access additional file options.

After you load the data, the page that opens has a Preview button, as shown in the following image.

If you click Preview, you open the same preview pane, with the same options that were available in the Prepare step.

You can click Reload, to reload the data, if necessary.

Redesign of Business View Icons

When editing a Business View, the buttons now have icons that are more standard and clear, and are grouped in a more logical configuration, as shown in the following image.

The first group of buttons control the Business View:

• The Reset Default button ()  recreates the default Business View.
• The Flatten button () lists all measure fields under a single measure group and all dimension fields under a single dimension, with no children.
• The Create Template Folders button () creates empty basic folders when there is no Business View already defined.
• The Hide All button () removes the Business View. A Create Default button () appears so you can create the default Business View.

The second group of buttons provide options for the window:

• The Display button () lets you show Folders and Columns or just Folders, or opens a window with a modeling view of the folders.
• The Find button () opens a search box in which you can enter characters. All component names that contain those characters are highlighted.
• The Choose Columns button () has two options. Choose Columns opens a dialog box for selecting the attributes in the synonym that you want to display. Reset Columns returns the display to the default columns.

New Privilege Allows Users to Create WebFOCUS Designer Content from Business Views

The new Add Designer Content from Business View (opDesignerBV) privilege allows the use of enhanced Business Views as a source for content created in WebFOCUS Designer. This new privilege helps administrators replace the use of direct access to metadata sources stored in Metadata Files with controlled access to metadata through Business Views and Reporting Objects when creating content in WebFOCUS Designer.

Numeric Fields Classified as Dimensions by Default Based on Field Names

When uploading a data file, or when creating a data flow or default Business View, if the name of a numeric field implies that it is more likely to be a dimension than a measure, it is classified as a dimension by default. For example, fields ending with _ID such as ORDER_ID are now classified as dimensions by default.

This allows you to create content that more accurately represents your data.

Using Columns While Selecting a Data Source

The Select Data Source dialog box, which displays when you select data for your visualization in WebFOCUS Designer, now features a column selector. In this dialog box, you can customize the number and type of columns, sort each column by clicking the title, and search for a specific data source. This enhancement is especially useful when you are working with a large number of data sources. An example of the new Select Data Source dialog box is shown in the following image.

Sample Data Shows Warning Messages

When generating sample data in the Synonym Editor or a Data Flow, if problems occur reading the data, an indicator that there are messages displays on the screen, as shown in the following image.

If you click this indicator, you can see the actual messages, as shown in the following image.

Sampling Shows Warning Messages

When sampling is enabled in a data flow and any errors occur reading the data, a warning indicator displays on the synonym node that has the sampling errors. Hovering over the indicator shows the messages, or a partial list, depending on the length and number of the messages, as shown in the following image.

To open a window with the complete list of messages, you can right-click the synonym and click Show Errors, as shown in the following image.

A window opens showing the complete list of messages.

The Reports pane also shows the indicator.

If you click that indicator, the message window opens.