Appboard/2.4/overview/whats new

This page provides a summary of changes in 2.4. For a complete list of all changes including bug and security fixes please refer to the release notes:

• AppBoard 2.4.0 Release Notes
• AppBoard 2.4.1 Release Notes
• AppBoard 2.4.2 Release Notes
• AppBoard 2.4.3 Release Notes

Staring with AppBoard 2.4 the product now ships with a Welcome set of default content highlighting the major features including examples. This is the recommended way to explore the new features.

Major New Features

• Stacked Widgets: Arrange multiple widgets into the same location
• Tile Map Widget: Google like zoomable tile map making use of Open Street Map data.
• Sparklines: new micro-chart renderers for the table widget.
• Scrolling Text Widget: much more flexible and smoother scrolling replacement to the old Marquee widget.
• Content Import/Export (2.4.1): export one or more stacks and import onto a target system. This allows parts of one system to be overlaid into another system greatly improving workflow between different environments or groups responsible for separate parts of the production system.
• Enable Download (2.4.1): Allow end-users to download the data collection driving a widget, or other data collection as configured by the administrator.
• Shared Filters (2.4.1): Filters (icon, color, colored shape) have previously been tied to a particular data-source entity that meant sharing was limited. Filters are now available for use whenever the widget configured data-collection has matching attributes for a particular filter. So, for example, if a filter is created using an attribute called Status, then any widget with any data collection will also be able to make use of this filter provided the configured data collection also has an attribute by the same name.
• Kiosk Mode (2.4.2): built-in kiosk mode support for unattended displays with configurable cycle speed.
• New Flat Theme (2.4.2)
• HTML Widget API (2.4.2): Extend AppBoard with HTML widgets that integrate and behave just like native widgets.

Viewer Improvements

• Layout changes now saved: end-users can resize widget containers and this information is stored with the client allowing users to optimize the layout for their particular monitor and preference.
• Home Icon for Web Widgets: new home icon is now visible in the widget title bar for web-widgets allowing the user to quickly restore the configured home URL.
• Improved in-widget search: The search field is now toggled via a icon in the widget title bar. This saves space in the default case and also encourages search via the widely recognized magnifying glass icon.

Builder Improvements

• Multi-Query SQL Data Sources: Define the connection information once, configure one or more SQL queries under the same connection.
• Renaming Data Sources: This wasn't possible prior to AppBoard 2.4.
• Renaming Attributes (columns): Attribute (column) names returned in a data source entity often end up in visualizations such as legends and labels. While it's possible to change these via data processing scripts or external to AppBoard, administrators are now able to easily Alias attributes to the desired value in the Data Source wizard.
• Improved Data Collection Status Reporting: The client now reports much more useful information about the state of a data source and the response to the client from the server.
• Hide/Expand Widget Title Bar Icons: reclaim widget title bar space in the builder by hiding all icons in a expandable strip.
• Data Collections now allow multi-column sorting.
• Updated Table Widget: replaces both the old Advanced Table Widget and Table Widget - unifying the capability.
• New Widget actions:
  • Copy to Clipboard: Administrator defines text with tokens based on the selected item. This text can include whitespace and newlines. When a user clicks an item in the widget the configured text is copied to the system clipboard.
  • Clear Sort: This will revert a Table widget to it's configured sort state, or if no sort was configured then the sort order of the data collection.
• Data Mode for Widgets: toggled via icon in the Widget title bar this flips the widget over showing a table with the raw data collection.
• Copy Widgets and Boards: From the Stacks & Boards or Widgets administration pages use the new Copy button to make a copy. Copying widgets copies all actions and optionally allows the configured data collection to be copied too. Copying a stack copies all child-boards and widgets and actions, and also allows for optionally copying data collections.
• Theme-able Modal Dialog Behaviour: A visual thing that can help administrations working on AppBoard via remote-desktop solutions where shading, blurring, and animations can negatively impact usability of the Builder.
• Quick Access to Administration Settings: The Builder Settings page has been updated to include a number of administration settings previously only accessible via the enPortal interface.
• Configurable box-width for Flow style Lists: Previously the box size for Icon and Status Lists was fixed, this now allows for better sizing to suit the labels.
• Enhanced Sparkline Tooltips (2.4.2): allow for sparkline values to be shown in tool-tips depending on mouse position on the actual sparkline.
• Enhanced DateTimeAxis controls (2.4.2): allow for overriding the default time unit and also for date formatting. This applies to all charts that support DateTimeAxis such as line, area, and column.
• None fill type for Area Charts (2.4.2): This effectively allows for overlaying lines on an area chart which is useful for trend lines and threshold lines.
• Auto Pause Polling (2.4.3): data collection polling is now automatically paused when editing widgets, actions, or accessing System Administration functions to improve client responsiveness.