TrendMiner 2020.R2

1st of June 2020

The 2020.R2 release contains the following new functionality and improvements:

Presenting TrendHub NextGen (BETA)

Almost 6 years ago, our first TrendMiner customer started using the user-interface that you currently all know as TrendHub, which consisted of little more than the trend-chart, an overview of the active tags, and 1 search dimension: similarity search. Over the years, as a result of joint innovation with our customers, we’ve gradually extended the TrendMiner capabilities to other search dimensions, adding new functionalities such as the tag builder, influence factors and recommendation engine etc… in line with our users’ analytics expectations (and we have a lot of exciting analytics capabilities in the pipeline for our next releases). However, growing a product is not only about adding new capabilities, it’s also about improving the product experience for our users, for which we have received plenty of ideas over the years via the Make-a-Wish button in the software. 

You asked. We listened. 

We analysed the plethora of user ideas extensively and combined them with the input provided by our customer success engineers, in order to define the big topics, annoyances and usability issues that we should address in a next generation interface. We conducted 50+ interviews with customers, to zoom in on their way of working and their analytics journeys to fine tune the options to explore in more detail. Subsequently, we engaged with 20+ customers for demo presentations with mock-ups of our designs to help finalize the vision for the next generation of our TrendHub interface.

Today, we are proud to announce the first step towards the full launch of TrendHub NextGen, which will replace the existing TrendHub interface in the near future, making the TrendMining-experience faster and easier for everyone. With this release, a BETA version of TrendHub NextGen will be available to all of you, next to the existing TrendHub as a preview of what is to come, such that everyone can play around with it and share your feedback with us to improve the product experience even further. You will find it directly accessible via the Hub-switcher (where you switch between TrendHub, ContextHub and DashHub) to start a new session from scratch or as an option for loading, when opening one of your existing saved views to kick-start your TrendHub NextGen experience.

This BETA-release is centered around the data exploration aspects of the software: the chart, the tag-list, the layers, the statistics and an improved version of TrendHub views. With this first step we succeeded in implementing over 350 user ideas, focussed around the following topics:

• View-centered experience to improve situational awareness
• Resizable and collapsible side-menu to maximize working space
• Improved stacked plotting (now your default!) with more user-friendly interaction
• Improved scatterplot with more data-points, gridlines and individual histograms
• More intuitive layering options with drag & drop for repositioning
• Option to Undo time navigation, eg. to unzoom

We hope you all enjoy the new design!
And we are of course looking forward to hearing your feedback...

The 2020.R2 release also contains the following new functionality and improvements:

New Functionalities

• Internationalisation: Native support for English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese,  Dutch as well as Mandarin and Simplified Chinese translated versions of the user interface.
• In-app Notification Center to inform users of background operations such as sharing of work, success/failure of context items imports & exports and success/failure of PI AF/EF syncs.
• Current value tile for dashboards to display the last registered value from sensor data
• Export ContextHub views to csv or excel. 
• Extended OSIsoft PI AF integration capabilities with support for Child attributes (minimal connector version v3.5.1423).

Application Enhancements

• Save your work immediately in the correct folder in your work-organiser.
• Improved UX for opening saved work from within TrendHub.
• Support for formulas with dynamic number of parameters and additional engineering functions such as lmtd and unit conversion options.
• Improved integral calculations and support for backward and forward aggregations next to the existing “central” aggregations.
• Improved context item import, with support for context fields.
• Delete context items in bulk by selecting multiple items or deleting everything in an entire view.
• Improved time filter that allows targeting context items with custom time ranges, cfr. Focus chart in TrendHub + allows for filtering on creation date. 
• The Gantt view mode in ContextHub now visualizes overlapping items.
• Possibility to download only the most recent logs via ConfigHub for more efficient troubleshooting.
• The time zone for the reported start date in monitor emails can now be set in ConfigHub.

Important bug fixes 

• The SQL jdbc connector syncs numeric properties without error.
• The description of a fingerprint monitor is again included in the email and the webhook response. 

Known issues

• Tag grouping, chart type selection and fingerprint position are not yet remembered as part of the TrendHub view state and may be lost when refreshing the view, clicking the back button of the browser or loading a saved view in TrendHub
  → Try TrendHub NextGen in BETA for the improved version of TrendHub views!
• Heavy load on the new PI AF time series connector might result in connectivity issues to the Historian server. 
• After an update, it is possible that DashHub and ContextHub won't work. A hard refresh of your browser will fix this issue.
• Aggregations on top of discrete and digital tags might result in incorrect visualisation for recent periods, due to prolongation of the underlying tags. The index values are not affected.
• Scooter values may change when zooming in after adding the scooter. This is due to the fact that scooters currently interpolate the data points on the chart. 
• The back button of the browser does not correctly restore the panel state.  
• When calculated tags are deleted, they cannot be created with the same name again. 

Important

This release requires an upgrade of the plant integration connector to version 3.5.1423 or later.

Synopsis functionality

Internationalization

All main TrendMiner Hubs are now available in the following languages: Portuguese, Dutch, Mandarin & Simplified Chinese. The language which is presented to you, depends on the language setting of your browser (eg. see chrome://settings/languages).

In-App Notification center

Our new notification center notifies you of background actions/processes in TrendMiner, independent of which Hub you are using. The amount of unseen notifications is indicated with a red badge in the top bar.

Read notifications are shown with a white background, unread items are indicated in light blue.

The current value tile shows you the latest known value of a tag or attribute on your DashHub dashboard. By enabling live mode, the value will be updated at the configured refresh rate and the optional timestamp indicates the exact time of the datapoint. The tag or attribute can be directly visualised in TrendHub by clicking the value.Current value tile

Export ContextHub views

All items in a saved ContextHub view can be exported. You can choose to export the data as an XLSX or CSV file and you can select the timezone. When the export is ready for download, depending on the size this can take some time, you will receive a notification in our brand new notification center. The file will be available for download for 7 days. 

Child attributes

Child attributes that are defined in an OSIsoft PI AF, are now available in TrendMiner for visualisation. In the asset browser you can choose to add the parent attribute with the plus sign or dive deeper by clicking on the arrow icon.

Context item import

In the previous version, it was already possible to import context items via a csv file. Now it is also possible to add context fields to this import as "property key" and "property value" in the csv file.

Context item bulk delete 

Deleting multiple context items is now possible using the checkboxes to select multiple items. You have the option to delete the selection or select all items that meet the filter criteria and delete the complete view.

Deleting a few items will happen instantly, deleting the complete view will be a background process and you will be notified by the notification center.

Improved time filter: creation date and custom time ranges

In the previous version, the time filter was always event based. Now you can also filter on the creation date of an item.

Note that for the event date filter, you can specify your own fixed time range now.

Overlapping context items in the Gantt chart

When multiple context items occupied the same location on the Gantt chart, you were  unable to differentiate them. Now you can access them by clicking on the upper context item. When doing this, you will get a list of items that are available on that spot. You can select the context item you need in the list for more details.

You also have the option to expand rows so every item has its own unique spot. You can do this row by row or for the complete view. Your preference is saved when you save the view and your chosen default will be used going forward.

Time zone for monitoring emails

In ConfigHub, a new setting is added to the Email configuration overview, which allows the administrator to change the reported time zone in monitor emails. This is a global setting for all users.

TrendHub Next Generation

Welcome to the Beta version of TrendHub Next Generation!

You have access to the beta release of the brand new TrendHub Next Generation (TH NextGen) module which will be made generally available during the coming months over a series of TrendMiner releases. Having received thousands of suggestions and ideas we worked hard together with many customers and our customer facing teams to fully understand your needs. In this subset of TrendHub Next Generation alone, over 350 customer ideas and wishes have been implemented. 

TH NextGen will eventually replace our existing TrendHub, until then we invite you to get to know the new platform step by step. The purpose of this beta release is to give you an opportunity to experience the future of TrendHub, and to have your say in that future. Give this brand new environment a try and get to know the next generation of TrendHub. 

Please do share your experience with us, we really would like to know what you think!

How to access TH NextGen and what can you expect to see:

Click on the HubSwitcher at the top left of the screen and select 'TrendHub Beta'.

Home screen 

First you will notice that the home screen has changed from black to white. Aligning with ContextHub and DashHub, TH NextGen provides that sleek look you have grown to expect from TrendMiner. 

In addition to the unified top bar, we have added a brand new view bar that shows the view you're working with and hosts direct access to a statistics button, live mode and a variety of actions that will enable you to manage your work effortlessly; providing a better contextual feeling of which view you are working with.

Chart improvements - stacked plot

In TH NextGen by default your work will be displayed in stacked trend mode, enabling immediate comparison between your selected tags and attributes. Axis labels on the stacked trend plot are situated at the top left of each tag lane and the value indicators are situated on the axis ruler itself. When you drag the ruler across the plots, the Y values of each lane can be read at any moment in the plot. Trendline filling and grid lines are available as options to toggle on or off depending on your personal preference.

Tags, attributes panel & grouping

Tags can be hidden or removed as before through the use of the eye icon / minus icon beside each tag or attribute in the details list. There is also a hide all tags option under the 3 vertical dots at the top of the tags list. Active tags list and recently used lists can be collapsed as well as cleared.  You can now also resize the entire left panel so that you can broaden the detailing in a way that is comfortable for you, eg. to read the full name in case of long tag names or attribute names.

Dragging tags or attributes onto each other (within the focus chart) will create a group. In the active tag and attributes panel there is a group header that appears when tags have been grouped together within the focus chart. The panel offers auto-scaling options at this group level.

Navigation

The focus chart now provides a more fluid experience with added options. Undo zoom functionality takes you back to your previous chart state and undoes any time navigation action, restoring the view to where you started from.

Scatter chart basic improvements

High performance scatter view mode provides greatly improved visualization of plots. Click through to individual scatter plots with corresponding histograms visualized, and then click through to each histogram. Click on the "return to overview" button at the top left of the chart to restore your original plots. Click on the settings button located at the top right of the chart to visualize or hide gridlines and enable or disable histograms.

Layers

The layer functionality has been made available in TH NextGen, enabling you to quickly compare layers of interest for different periods, in a visual way. In this version, click the [+] button and a pop up window will appear for you to input the time period you want to add. Select the layer in the context chart and drag and drop to reposition your layers. The new layers panel enables you to:

• Hide and unhide layers
• See start and end timings
• Shift a layer
• Give layers a name (NEW!)
• Style layers

Saving a view

Situated conveniently in the views bar the "Actions" button when pressed reveals save functionality, amongst others. Create your view and select the "Save as" option and a "Save view" panel appears from the right. Fill in the fields in the panel and select directly the location you wish your view to be saved. Now grouping and chart visualisation type is included in the save, making it possible for you to completely restore your initial views. 

Saving Live mode:

Entering live mode  enables you to visualize data as it arrives in real-time.

Now you can save live views. The view-type is described as a live view with a time frame that includes "Now" as the end point and "On" for mode state. Save your live views in one of two ways; with a fixed timespan (eg. visualize last 8hours or last day)  or with fixed start time (eg. visualize period since last year).

Statistics summary

In the view header a "Statistics" button is available. This tool provides you with immediate access to all of your views stats in one easy to view table, situated directly above your chart. Values automatically update when you zoom in or out of the chart. Sort each table column by clicking on the header of the column. Click on the table settings button to reveal an "Edit statistics summary table" and select the statistical parameters you would like to see displayed in your table. You can also update the number of digits after the decimal point. 

Note: The compare layer table will be made available in a later release.

Compatible views TH - TH NextGen

Normal TrendHub views saved in the current versions of TrendHub can be opened in TH NextGen.