New in Omniscope 2.5
Version 2.5 new views, added features and general improvements
Version 2.5 is now available as the main release from the main downloads page.
Download Omniscope • Full list of features • Omniscope editions • Coming in 2.6
Network View
The new Network View replaces the Tree View with far broader functionality and much improved performance.
Dial View
The new Dial View adds dials and meters with zones and alerts for high-impact dashboards:
Content view
Place formatted text annotations with embedded images and formulas anywhere on the page:
Connectors for remote-hosted data platforms
Connectors enable Omniscope to import data from sources other than delimited data files & spreadsheets or database tables supporting standard connectivity protocols. Some connectors are available with pre-configured Omniscope template files that open ready to help you perform specific data management tasks. Most direct connectors are available only from the Professional and Enterprise Editions. Some web connectors, such as the AppExchange-listed Omniscope Connector for Salesforce, are installable free web services that permit even free Viewers to download the latest version of their remotely-hosted data using pre-configured templates.
Tabs
"Reports" from Omniscope 2.4 have been greatly simplified and improved, and are now called "Tabs". New features include:
- Create new tabs with one click.
- Double-click to rename a tab.
- Tabs now scroll (with an option to go back to the old "squashed tabs" behaviour).
- You are always working within a tab - no more "exit report".
Layout modes
Customisable modes allow you to switch rapidly between clean dashboard, presentation, reporting and working modes. Each mode comprises a visual style and different settings for toolbar visibility. The new Styles dialog allows you to easily customise the look of your files further, for example to add corporate colours.
Formula improvements
- Formula editor usability: Hover over parts of your formula to see partial results and function usage information. Tab stops are now set to 3 spaces, and the entire window is resizable.
- Comments in formulas: Use comments such as /* this is a comment */ to include explanatory text that doesn't affect calculations.
- Formula dependencies: can be viewed in the field tooltips (e.g. from table view columnheaders on hover), showing references to/from the field in all formulas.
- Formulas in aggregated views: option to calculate a formula field for aggregated data, rather than aggregate underlying formula results.
- Export all formulas: A new option to export all formulas as .TXT files to help copy-and-paste formulas into another IOK file.
- Copy as HTML on right-click in formula editor copies the formula to the clipboard with HTML formatting
- DATEADD function (to add/subtract a specified number of days/hours/etc. to a date) now available in formulae
- DATEUNIT function (to retrieve the day number 7, month number 3, or year number 2008, from the date "7 March 2008")
- TODAY function (to retrieve the current date)
- CONVERT_OSGB_TO_LAT/LON functions for converting OSGB map coordinates into latitude/longitude now available in formulae
- SUBSET function added, for specifying data subsets in formulas
- SUBSET_SUM, SUBSET_MEAN functions, etc. added as simpler alternatives to the (now deprecated) DATASET_XXX set of functions.
- RANK function now accepts a SUBSET parameter for calculating the rank within a subset of the data
- IF function now has a longer form IF(test1, value1, test2, value2...,else_value) removing the need for complicated nested IF statements
- SUBSET, SUBSET_SUM (etc.), RANK and DATASET_SUM etc. no longer need field names to be quoted. You can now insert fields for all function parameters identifying fields to sum (etc.) using the insert field picker in the formula editor.
- ISO_COUNTRY_NAME/ISO_LANGUAGE_NAME functions to convert an ISO country or language code into readable form.
Other Additions and Changes
- Free trial offer screen no longer opens when users click on .IOK file links and attachments
- Buttons and toolbars have seen major improvements in look and consistency.
- Size-by in map/graph now allows choice of a function for clustered markers.
- World map colours have been changed to shades of blue for much clearer data visualisation.
- Menus have been restructured for improved usability and clearer navigation.
- Drop-downs for selecting fields and measures now provide rapid filtering and searching of drop-down contents with consistent behaviour and appearance, improved performance, and field summary tooltips.
- Field manager now allows searching and filtering.
- Details and image slideshow buttons removed from views and moved to main toolbar to reduce clutter. Now also supports slideshow over queries.
- Read-only fields: Selectively mark fields read-only to prevent inadvertent cell edits (e.g. in system identifiers).
- Custom line breaks in field names: "\"characters in field names introduce custom line breaks, seen in Table View column headers (when multi-line headers are enabled) and Sidebar devices.
- Data scrambling: new "Scramble data" command scrambles all text in the data, allowing sensitive data to be shared with Visokio for support/feedback.
- Export links: new "Export linked files" command copies or downloads linked resources for a subset of the data into a folder.
- File tagging: enhancements to "Open image collection" and "Open folder of files" allow editing of filename and audio/jpeg-embedded tags within Omniscope for easy management of large media archives.
- Image browsing: newly enhanced Tile View improves browsing of image collections, with new Images control providing rapid access to image-specific options such as zooming.
- Salesforce integration: download/import reports and data objects from Salesforce; browse/analyse/edit offline, then synchronise changes back to Salesforce. (more info)
- Text search: powerful improvements to text search devices, with 3 new text column search modes ('exact cell', 'substring', and 'regular expressions') in addition to the classic 'word prefix' mode. The default text search mode has also been changed to "substring". For more detail on using regular expressions, please see the tutorial at www.regular-expressions.info.
- File security: a new option to require an external NTP server time-check on opening a time-limited .IOK file (for Enterprise publishers only).
- Table View: summary bar settings now much more accessible, field picker now in the ViewToolbar, active row highlighting and performance improvements.
- Default measure function in aggregation and table view grouping has been changed to Singleton for Text/Category fields, Sum for numeric fields, and Mean for date fields.
- Currency symbols or any arbitrary text prefix/suffix, configurable for numeric fields.
- Details configuration: function to apply details view settings to pop-up details, and vice versa.
- App data: Omniscope now stores settings only in the user's AppData folder (for easier systems administration), and no longer uses system-wide settings (for improved Vista compatibility).
- Export dialogs now default to the selected data subset (if you have a selection), or the filtered data subset, rather than all data.
- Field name at import time is now tracked through field renames, etc.
- Singleton Value measure function is now available for all data types
- Number of records measure function now available
- Unique values list measure function summarises all unique values for any field in a comma-separated list
- Unique values count measure function is now available for all data types
- Mode measure function is now available. For all data types, evaluates to the most common value (the first if multimodal).
- Bar view now has option for fading colours for successive measures, an option to hide (exclude) the "other" bar, and fixes the "group into other" behaviour so it honours bar ordering, if ordered.
- Table view now has an option allowing you to show group values as percentage of overall values.
- Shift key in bar view drop-down menus replace, rather than appends, your selection.
- Warning on save in save dialog (previously "write-protect") now with configurable warning message.
- Zoom: using a slider, making buttons and fonts bigger or smaller - for the visually impaired, or to adapt Omniscope to the resolution of monitors or projectors.
- Viewer installations no longer reveal Pro functionality, providing a simpler, cleaner interface for .IOK file consumers.
- Scrollbars can now auto-hide for a cleaner display (via an option)
- Bar view now has option to choose the decimal places when showing stacked 100% bars - previously this was fixed as integer percentages.
- Pivot view now allows you to choose whether to show the totals row and column independently.
- Exporting can now be done as an "HTML formatted table" for pasting into a website
- Various bug fixes and performance improvements
Download Omniscope • Full list of features • Omniscope editions • Coming in 2.6
