Explorer Release 4.6.4

P2_RGB Explorer Icon

P2 Explorer 4.6 consolidates what was previously three installers into one. It also combines the three separate databases of P2 Server, P2 Explorer, and P2 Security into a single database. 

This release introduces the concept of the Info Zone – an area on the right side of the Explorer screen which displays context-sensitive information in a new Explore panel. This takes the concept of the “Table of Contents” in previous releases of Explorer, to the next level. For this release, comments and display information will appear in this zone, with more to come in future releases.

P2 Explorer version 4.6.4 is a patch release, with new features including a rich text editor, clickable images, new line styles in the trend, and a new Action Button component.

Rich Text for Commentary and Case Management

Text fields in Explorer’s display mode can now be edited with a Rich Text Editor control.

For example, a case’s Description or Commentary (on a page or in the Explore Panel) can have a bold or italic font, have different font sizes, or be given a different colour.

Likewise, comments on an Explorer page, or in the Explore Panel, can be highlighted in this way, as can Knowledge Management and Commentary, for a display, or from an Info Button on a page.

In some of the text areas (such as Commentary fields, and Comments), the Rich Text Editor is initially hidden but appears when some text is selected. Other text areas (such as a Case description), have the Rich Text Editor always on display.

Read more: Case Management, Using Comments for Collaboration

Rename Workspaces

Users who have the Workspaces Edit privilege (this is also inherited from the Explorer Admin module privilege) can rename public Explorer workspaces.

Workspace names must still be unique, and private workspaces (i.e. My Workspace) cannot be renamed.

To rename a workspace, first click the Settings button in the Workspace, and then the Rename button.

Type in the new workspace name, and then click the Rename button at the bottom of the dialog box.

Read more: Explorer Workspaces

New Line Styles on the Trend

There are three new line styles available for traces in the Explorer trend: Dashed Line (---), Dotted Line (….) and Dash-Dotted Line (._._._). This addresses customer issue 372733.

The style picker on the trend now has a total of eight different styles to select from:

Read more: Trend Trace Table

New Component: Action Button

P2 Explorer now allows you to add a button to a page that can be configured to change the status of a case.

The Case ID is passed to this component from a page variable, which the user can select (from, for example, a Combo Box), or which they can update by typing into a Text Input component.

When the user clicks the Action Button, the selected Case ID is updated to the Case Status selected for the component (such as Investigating or Closed).

After the button is clicked, a message appears to confirm that the action has been completed: ‘Update Successful’. If the Case ID does not exist, an error message appears.

An Action Button can have 3 states:

Disabled: The button will be disabled if no default value has been specified and the user has not specified a Case ID, or the if the input case ID is not a number.

Enabled: The button will be enabled when a valid default has been specified, or if the user inputs a number for the Case ID.

Hover: When a user hovers the cursor over an enabled button, the hover state is enabled. The button can be designed to show a different colour when the user hovers over it.

In Design Mode:

In Explorer Studio, the Action Button component has been added to the Control group in the Toolbox.

In design mode, the page designer specifies the text that appears on the button (e.g. Close Case), the variable that stores the Case ID, and what the status should be for the target case.

In this release, there is a single Action Type available for this component, called Set Case Status, which allows users to update the status of a case.

The variable storing the Case ID should be a Number type, and can also be specified using Page Defaults.

Style designers can change the font size, family, colour, weight, and case for the button’s label. For the button itself, the border’s radius, colour, width and style, can be changed, as well the background colour of the button in both the normal state and the hovered state.

Read more: Configuring an Action Button

Clickable Images

In this release, images can be made clickable by adding a Link Action in the image component itself, rather than having to add a hotspot over the image.

This means that images can now be configured to be interactive. For example: a user clicks on an image, and an Explorer page opens in a new tab.

Images on existing pages will not have a Link Action selected, however a Link Action can be applied after an upgrade to this version.

Available Link Actions are:

Open Page: Opens the specified Explorer page. Variables can be mapped from the current page to the destination page.

Open Trend: Opens the specified Explorer trend. Variables can be mapped from the current page to the trend.

Open URL: Opens the specified URL. Variables can be mapped from the current page to the URL.

New Trend: Opens a new Explorer trend. Variables can be mapped from the current page to the new trend.

Set Variables: Sets page variables to specified fixed values or variables, when the image is clicked.

Read more: Configuring Images

Adaptive Raw Sample Method on Pages

The Adaptive Raw sample method, introduced for Trends in version 4.5.4, is now available on Explorer pages as well. The Adaptive Raw sample method fetches far fewer points than the Raw sample method (a maximum of 2000 points) but with a similar fidelity of data to Raw. Server fetches the raw data points from the Historian, then uses an algorithm to reduce the number of points, before sending these on to Explorer.

While any time series data on an Explorer page can now be configured to use the Adaptive Raw sample method, this would be most useful on a chart or an embedded trend component.

The default value for the page variable pageSampleMethod can also be set to Adaptive Raw.

Read more: Adaptive Raw

Pie Chart Colours

In this release, page designers are now able to assign and specify colours for each segment in a Pie Chart individually, if they don’t want to use the default colour assignment. This addresses customer request 403566.

This can be configured in Studio by using the Add or Autofill buttons in the new Segment Colours section. Note that the Name for a segment must match the value of the Name Column property.

Top Tip: Turn on the legend to see what the name values should be.

Read more: Configuring a Pie Chart

Autocomplete in the Entity Selector

In this release, autocomplete has been added to the Find Under field in the Entity Selector. The field is enabled when the Entity Selector is configured with a Start Node.

Read more: Configuring an Entity Selector

Comments and Comment Button Label Change

When configuring the Comments or Comment Button component, it was not obvious that you the control could also be used to add comments for tags. To make this clearer, the ‘Entity’ property has been renamed to ‘Target’. The functionality remains unchanged.

This release (4.6.4): Earlier versions:

Pie Chart's Selected Property

In this release, the Pie chart's 'Selected' property has been changed from being a Data Item to being a Variable only. This is consistent with the Selected property for other components such as the Treemap, and fixes an issue where snapshots were not being saved correctly.

When upgrading from a previous version of P2 Explorer, only pages using a variable for the ‘Selected’ property will continue to be configured correctly. Pages that did not use a variable for the ‘Selected’ property will need to be reconfigured.

Here is an example of a Pie Chart configured to use a variable in the previous version:

In this release, page designers must specify a variable for this property.

 

Trend Auto Range Change

In the Explorer trend, the Auto Range is now zero or higher, unless there are values to be plotted below zero. Previously, the minimum could be a negative value, which was confusing for the user when there were no points to be plotted below zero. This was introduced in release 4.5.5 and addresses customer request 398786.

 

Page Defaults Match BabelFish Defaults

When a new page is added in Studio, the default values for startTime and endTime now match those in P2 Explorer 2.6 and earlier (BabelFish).

Note: This change will not affect existing pages, only new pages created in Studio will use the new defaults.

In this release, the startTime is now a Relative Datetime, set to 1 Day from the endTime, which is now Current Datetime with a Refresh Interval of 1 minute.

In version 4.6.2 and earlier, startTime and endTime were defaulted to a Fixed Datetime with the endTime being today and the startTime the previous day.

startTime and endTime defaults in this release (v4.6.4): startTime and endTime defaults in earlier versions:

 


Previous Releases

For a complete list of P2 Explorer release notes, see Explorer Releases.

 

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