Release Notes archive - 2015 Q1

March 21, 2015

Limited Release: Add Data to Projects as Needed with the New Data Explorer

With the new Data Explorer, business analysts can add new data to their project on an ad hoc basis, shortening time to insights. Want to try this feature now? Contact your GoodData Account Manager.

NOTE: Your project must use the Agile Data Warehousing Service (ADS) to use the Data Explorer.

Sometimes, business analysts need data that does not yet exist in the GoodData project to create a report. With the new Data Explorer, they can now add data to projects on an ad hoc basis. This helps ensure that the data needed to create reports is always available.

Benefits include:

• Shortens time to insights.
• Reduces business analyst dependence on IT resources.
• Enables the technical users managing the ADS to prepare all needed data from a data source at one time, instead of adding data incrementally as the needs of the business analyst change.
• Keeps the GoodData portal free of unnecessary fields.

Here’s how it works:

1. A technical user identifies fields that a business user may want to add to the GoodData portal, and adds the data for these fields as columns to the ADS output stage tables.
   
   These columns become prepopulated fields that the business analyst can add using the Data Explorer.
   
   
2. Business analysts open the Data Explorer on the GoodData portal and select one or more fields to add to the project.
   
   
   
   The selected fields are added to the LDM and data loading for all project data is triggered. After data loading completes, the fields become available for use in reports.

Limitations

• Data Explorer works only with the ADS.
• In this first version, the Data Explorer works only with data already prepared in the ADS.
• In this first version, you can specify only some data source types. In future releases you will be able to specify any type of data source.
• Only full loading of data from ADS to data mart is supported.
• All tables and views in the ADS instance set as the output stage for a project are visible in the Data Explorer.
• Only standard date dimensions are supported. Fiscal date dimensions are not supported.

Learn More

• Set up Data Explorer for a Project
• Add Data Fields to a Project with Data Explorer

All Users Can Schedule Emailing of Dashboards to Themselves and Others

With our new email scheduling feature, all users can now schedule automatic emailing of dashboards to themselves and others - even people outside of the GoodData project - via the GoodData portal.

Use scheduled emails to automatically receive information from your GoodData project without logging in. You specify the time and frequency of email delivery, can customize the email subject and body message, and can optionally add additional recipients. Any filters applied at the time of scheduling are also applied to generated emails. This means that all email recipients receive the exact same version of the dashboard and its data that the email scheduler sees.

NOTE: Adding additional recipients to scheduled emails is an optional feature. To enable it for a project, contact your GoodData Account Manager.

Steps:

1. Navigate to the dashboard that you want to email. Optionally add filters, then click the clock icon () on the top right corner.
2. Choose the dashboard tabs to email and the emailing schedule. Optionally add additional recipients or define a custom email subject and message.
   
   
3. Click Schedule. 
   
   The GoodData portal begins generating emails as scheduled.

Limitations:

Currently, only email recipients can unsubscribe themselves from these scheduled emails. Editors and administrators cannot manage them under Manage > Emailing Dashboards.

New Improved API Reference Documentation

The GoodData documentation team is happy to roll out a new version of our API Reference documentation. This version features improved findability and navigability, more complete information, better JSON descriptions, faster loading time, and improved look-and-feel. You can check it out at https://developer.gooddata.com/api.

 

Here’s how this impacts you :

• We have re-architected the navigation pane so you can so you can more easily find the resource or call you’re looking for. All resources are still there (in fact, we’ve added many resources).
• URLs to specific resources or calls have changed. Please update your links!
• The standalone version has been disabled. You can access the API Reference documentation only from the GoodData Developer Portal. All of the features you’re used to from the standalone version are available in the new embedded version.

NOTE: Third-party cookies for apiary.io must be enabled on your browser to view this documentation. If you see a blank screen when you access https://developer.gooddata.com/api, check your browser settings. If you still have a problem contact GoodData Customer Support.

Happy calling!

March 5, 2015

End of Support for CloudConnect Zendesk Connector

We no longer support the CloudConnect Zendesk Connector. Instead, use the CloudConnect RESTConnector. For more information about using the RestConnect see:

• CloudConnect User Guide, Chapter X > section 53 > RESTConnector
• Paging Using the CloudConnect RESTConnector
• Using OAuth1.0a with REST Connector

New Restrictions on the Number of Projects You Can Create via API

We have restricted the number of projects you can create using the GoodData API. You can now create a maximum of 100 projects per token in a floating 24-hour time period. if you exceed the maximum number of requests, a status code 429 is returned.

February 7, 2015

Feature Preview: All Users Can Schedule Emailing of Dashboards

With our new email scheduling feature, all users can now schedule automatic emailing of dashboards to themselves and others -  even people outside of the GoodData project - from the GoodData Portal.

Want to try out this new feature now? Contact your GoodData Account Manager.

Scheduled emails let you set up automated delivery of dashboard exports straight to your inbox. You specify the time and frequency of email delivery, and customize the email subject and body message. Dashboard exports are delivered as a PDF attachment. 

Steps:

1. Navigate to the dashboard that you want to email, and click the clock icon () on the top right corner.

2. Choose the dashboard tabs to email and the emailing schedule. Optionally define a custom email subject and message, or add additional recipients.

   

3. Click Schedule.
   
   The GoodData Portal begins generating emails as scheduled.

Limitations:

• Currently, only email recipients can unsubscribe themselves from these scheduled emails. Later, users will be able to manage them on the GoodData Portal.

• Any filters or saved views that are applied when you schedule emails are not applied to the emailed report. This will be available in a later release.

New Data Model Visualizer

Check out the new searchable visualization of the data model in the GoodData Portal. From the Manage page, select Model.

January 31, 2015

Share Dashboards with Only Specific Users

Editors and Administrators

You can now share dashboards with only specific users, giving you more granular control over who can access each dashboard. Sharing with specific users also allows you to privately collaborate with other Editors and Administrators to create and populate dashboards. Previously, you could hide or share dashboards only with all users. If you share a dashboard with a user, all of its reports and metrics become visible to that user via the dashboard.

NOTE: Hiding and sharing dashboards is not a security feature. Any object can be accessed by any user via link. Use Data Permissions for security.

For more information about hiding and sharing objects on the Portal, see Manage Object Visibility - Hide and Share Objects. For related API changes, see User Access to Dashboards in the GoodData API documentation.

January 27, 2015

Introducing the Analytical Designer

The Analytical Designer is a new environment for flexible data discovery and visualization design that makes business analysts more self-sufficient and productive. Users simply drag-and-drop data fields onto interactive drop zones to create powerful visualizations that can immediately reveal actionable business insights. The Analytical Designer leverages the collective intelligence of GoodData’s cloud platform users to present recommended best practices on screen.

With the Analytical Designer, you can:

• Drag a data field onto the canvas and watch a visualization appear before your eyes. Drag another field to instantly refine your visualization.
• Select a single date dimension when adding dates to your visualization.
• Explore details about the data in your project by hovering over a list of available data fields.
• Create the right visualization with a single click on any of the Analytical Designer's best practice recommendations, or build sophisticated analyses such as period-over-period reports by selecting a single check box.
• Zero in on the right data with drag and drop attribute and date filters.
• Export a visualization as a report, modify it in the Report Editor, and then insert it into an existing dashboard.

Ready to learn more? Please contact GoodData Account Management.

Additional information is available here: https://support.gooddata.com/entries/104564073-Feature-Preview-Analytical-Designer.

Introducing the Data Explorer

The Data Explorer helps business users to be more self-sufficient by enabling them to add more data to their projects as their needs grow, thus reducing their dependence on IT resources, speeding up the time to insights, and shortening the time to value.

Here’s how it works:

1. First, technical users prepare a superset of data ahead of time in the Agile Data Warehousing Service but publish only a subset of the available columns according to current business needs.
2. Later, business users can use the Data Explorer to select unpublished columns and publish them into their projects on an ad-hoc basis.

For more information, please contact GoodData Account Management, or see https://support.gooddata.com/entries/105659746-Feature-Preview-Data-Explorer.

January 17, 2015

Previously, a Data Permission filter affected only the data relevant to the values of the specified attribute. This limitation caused some problems.

Suppose your dataset contains two attributes: State and City, and your Data Permissions filter is the following: State = “Oregon”.

When the filter is applied, all users who have the filter should expect to see in dashboard drop-downs only the cities located in Oregon for the City attribute. However, without additional specification, users could also see the cities in other states.

• Customers may be in the habit of working around this issue by creating additional filters for the other attributes of the dataset.

This issue has been fixed. Now, the filter applies across all attributes in the dataset, so in the above case, the City attribute is limited to only Oregon cities.

NOTE: This fix should have no impact on existing sets of filters that have been properly specified. For customers that have worked around this issue by specifying data filters for the other attributes in the dataset (City in this case), those filter specifications are simply redundant.

Limitations:

• Data Permissions filters do not propagate to linked Date dimensions.
• Data Permissions filters do not propagate to other datasets linked to the specified dataset.

For more information, see Let's Get Started with Data Permissions.

Release Notes Archive

To access release notes from older releases, please visit GoodData Platform Release Notes Archive.