What's New in Version 6?

Data Discovery

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Publications

Caching

BI Office now provides enhanced caching facilities. There are three separate caching mechanisms:

• Content Caching - Improves response time for accessing your books, custom members and custom sets on the content server. May be enabled/disabled by administrator.
• Query Caching - Improves response time for the accessing of query results from models. May be enabled/disabled by administrator.
• Metadata Caching - Improves response time for accessing model metadata.

Administrators may control caching timeouts for each of the three caching mechanisms (Content, Query, Metadata). For details, see the “Caching Timeout” section in the Settings page of the Admin Help.

Data Discovery

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Proprietary Actions

Support for Proprietary Cube Actions. These have been enacted to work as a combination of the standard URL and DrillThrough actions.

Data Discovery

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Multi-Element Slicer Selections in Actions

Prior to BI Office Version 6.40, Microsoft cube actions could be accessed within BI Office with single-element slicer selections only. BI Office now allows administrators to globally enable cube actions for multiple-element slicer selections on any version of Analysis Services, 2005 onwards. This applies to DrillThrough, Rowset and Proprietary Actions. The settings can be found in the new Actions dialog in the Admin Console.

HTML5

Action Results

The Action results table in the HTML5 client has been upgraded to better facilitate large data sets.

General

Performance

Performance improvements have been made in various areas: communication with Repository database; Analysis services; the HTML5 client; load up in the Main SilverLight client; log views in the admin console.

Added "Import Power BI File" command in the content management system to allow the import of PBIX files directly from inside the application.

Added support for multi-value columns in SharePoint list data sources.

When performing scheduling impersonation with the "Use My Account" technique, no password is required for token-based access.

Added the "Get User by SID" option to the Admin/Settings/Auto Provisioning dialog.

The Master User defined during the installation process can now view all Content tabs within the admin console.

New landing page for custom visuals (solves security issues for both PC and mobile deployments).

• New query optimization switches have been added to Data Discovery in the Query Ribbon > Query Option command. The optimization switches can be used to shorten query response time in various scenarios.
  • Measure Optimization - Improves query performance when using multiple hierarchies not from the same dimension (and placing Measures in Columns/Rows).
  • Optimize Totals - Similar to the Optimize Column/Row commands, this optimization switch employs the NONEMPTY function but does so only when the total operation is used in a query. Should be used when totaling performance is slow.
  • Context Heuristics - This switch injects the existing MDX function explicitly into the query as needed. Highly nested queries with sibling hierarchies on a specific axis (column or row) can experience dramatic improvements in performance.
    
• Significant improvements in large payload handling between client and server.

• By default, PAS content imports without query pre-checking.
• An option to enable the Query Pre-Check feature was added to the ProClarity BBK Importer dialog.

• Added three new parameters under "Settings > Networking > Authentication" for improving authentication response time.
  • Lazy Groups Lookup - Improve login performance by finding user's active directory groups.
  • Support Nested Groups - Improve login performance by disabling support for nested groups (when not needed).
  • Use Directory Cache - Improve login performance by means of server to cache settings.
• Server status checks are now off by default.
• IP Resolution performance improved.
• The Show Community switch has been added to the Home Page Options in the Visual dialog. There are now a total of five switches:
  • Show Contact Us
  • Show Tutorial Media
  • Show Community
  • Use Custom Help
  • Suppress Leave Session Warning
• Added the Evaluate Group with SID option in the Auto Provisioning Settings. The administrator can enable this option in order to use SID (rather than the user group name) to identity the group.

• Added support for token base authentication when using Federated Forms.

• Changed mapping tile engine source from Bing to ESRI.

• DirectQueryWithInMemory and DirectQuery options were added to the Model Query Mode dropdown in the Manage Data Model window.
• Added a new connector for SAP data to the Data Modeling tool set.*
  *Among other things, this feature requires an upgraded license to be operational.

• Added support for database connectivity via Windows Authentication.

• Upgraded engine algorithm for Forecasting (standard option).
• Added new Clustering model option named EMMD.

• New server-side console application for managing services and changing database repository connection options.

• Added new Multi-Select Drop Down Box slicer type.
• Upgraded Hierarchy Tree slicer functionality and search options.

• Upgraded engine for Power BI to interoperate with June, 2016 release of Power BI desktop.

• Two new options in totaling:
  • Separation between bottom-up and top-down hierarchical totaling.
  • Additional switch to make totals in our Scope Isolation.

• Release of updated, version 6 compatible SharePoint 2010 and 2013 WebParts.

• Release of new shape files for Global countries, US states, US counties, US cities, and US zip codes.

• The new beta Sub-Query options feature allows the user to optimize performance of specific scenarios where query time is too long. Note that in some scenarios, it may alter results (handle with care).

• Improvements in memory management for both server and client components.

• Support for Power BI Desktop content publishing to BI Office. Enables analysts to author content in Power BI Desktop and easily share it with internal and external recipients by means of Pyramid Analytics without needing to use the Power BI pubic cloud service.

• Enhancement to totaling engine - addition of "FLAT" totaling option (ignoring hierarchies).

• The new beta Sub-Query options feature allows the user to optimize performance of specific scenarios where query time is too long. Note that in some scenarios, it may alter results (handle with care).

• New row filter option for limiting the size of queries in relational data sources used in data modeling.

• New administrative control to determine where interim data marts are stored for data modeling.

• New administrative security mechanism for controlling which users can create custom members for each data model.
  • New “Custom Calculation Access” option added to Content/Metadata menu.
  • Feature can be used to control which user roles can create new customer members for a data model.
  • Those functions related to creation of custom members will be inactivated in the Data Discovery application.

• Addition of new "Custom Formulation" format option in the Custom Member wizard - allowing users can employ formulas to control string format of custom members

• New content tagging engine:
  • Tags can created for reports, books and folder to provide deeper, searchable meta data labels on content.
  • New tag search functions in the Search page
  • New Tag related API's

• New abilities for conversation and annotation:
  • Ability to share comments with all workers in your organization.
  • Navigate directly from conversation panel start page and feed page to relevant place in application.
  • Added red indicators on report level (in addition to cell, dimension and component levels).
  • Improved response time of the quick filter and search functions within the “Conversations” panel

• Added new boundary shapes for USA cities in GIS database.
• Added ability to view pie charts at unified size.
• New functionality for end user access to upload GIS shapes files directly from the data discovery toolset

• Web services are now available as Rest API calls for developers of 3rd party and BI Office.

• New connectors including Salesforce, Zendesk, Google Analytics, MongoDB, OLEDB, ODBC, OData, SharePoint Lists, Netezza, Teradata, Twitter and BI Office (predefined OLAP or Tabular views).
• New shared folder file upload option.
• New ETL visualization and table viewer with SQL script sourcing.
• New column quality statistics view for SQL.
• New column merging feature.
• New column splitting feature.
• Improved access to adding new columns and measures.
• New auto launch into data discovery mode.
• New ability to make all process models appear in admin list.
• New pre-built packages for Salesforce, Zendesk, Twitter, Google Analytics and Twitter.
• New centralized hosted package service.

• New data model watermarking for “sanctioned content”.
• New home ribbon with commonly used functions.
• New workspace types and interface layouts.
• New conversation and annotation capabilities.
• New report tab for design.
• Improved query tab.
• New auto run button.
• Upgraded totaling engine with new options and appearance.
• New optimize switch option for faster filtering .
• New ability to generate cross axis calculations.
• New analytics tab with time intelligence and binning wizards.
• New header labeling for both rows and columns.
• Improved grid presentation for totals and subtotals.
• Improved accounting grid and measures feature.
• New alternative row color design feature.
• New default flat multi colored grid.
• New options to enable geospatial attributes on tabular models.
• New visualization tab.
• New visuals including tree map, sunburst and circle packing.
• New visual setting and layout options.
• New ability to add dynamic text to analysis.
• New model editing capabilities.
• New ability to add spreadsheets to a data source.
• New modeling tab to create new dimensions, measures and custom columns (Tabular).
• New update to MDX engine to handle combined element selections.
• Improved MDX query script and design.
• New parameterized cascading variable slicers.
• New query options including sorting by member key option.
• New multi-element menu.
• Improved hierarchy selection tools.
• New ability to set data labels by series.

• New dynamic image for infographics.
• New options to use SVG graphics for assets.
• New ability to set banners on non-sectioned dashboards.
• New clear jump buttons.
• New slide tab combining layout and slide design.
• New slide switching interface.
• New collaboration options in running dashboards.
• New conditional display mechanism for interactions.
• New banner options for non-sectioned dashboards.
• New dynamic text imported from data discovery.

• New report trigger option (report level switching).
• New panel settings re-loader.
• New dynamic text interface within the document – and highlighting.
• New dynamic text functions.
• New export to PowerPoint.

• New support for tree slicers
• Improved Visualization support for all changes made to content
• New support for ratings
• Improved conditional display and interaction framework
• New printing/export
• New Previewer option for mobile, tablet, and desktop screens
• New query reset and refresh
• New content complexity reduction heuristic