Version 2.4 (2016-09-28)

Features

All Things List View

This list gives you all your things in one view, regardless of Thing Type. In addition to the normal sorting and filtering capabilities, you can sort and filter this list based on Thing Type.

This view is the start page when you log into the App Board and is always reached by clicking the logo in upper left corner.

Analyze

Analyze, found in the top menu, is a powerful tool for analyzing sensor data from your Things. You can compare any sensor data, both multiple resources from the same Thing and from different things. This allows comparison of e.g. input power and output power for an engine with the same data for one or more other engines.

To get started, just select the resources for the Things you want to analyze and they show up color coded in the Analyze chart, as bar or line chart as you select. Unchecking the resource checkboxes enables you to filter and focus on the observations you really want to understand.

By default a week’s data is analyzed ending at current time. With the observation picker you adjust start and end time and the zoom-and-move capability within the chart allows you to focus on specific time periods and observations to better understand behavior and/or abnormalities.

The granularity of the data presented is related to the selected time spam and dynamically adjusted to fit the chart nicely.

You can analyze many resources simultaneously, but the user experience is best for up to about 20 resources.

You can name and save your analysis, enabling you to get back later and do the same analysis again. All saved analyses are found in a list below the chart.

The data points of the current visualization/analysis can be exported to a .csv-file to be treated in other systems or programs.

Observation Period Picker

Major improvements are done to facilitate intuitive and fast selection of time periods, including:

  • Selection of date and time (hours and minutes) in the same pop-up, for both Start and End time
  • Quick button to select current time as End time
  • Default duration the first time in the session (before any changes are done): Start time is 00:00 seven days back and End time is current time
  • The selected time interval persists during the session in the complete App Board, meaning it will stay the same when you navigate around in App Board, until you log out

Filter

We have added powerful capabilities to the Filter

  • Filtering on payload (sensor data) values and support for three operators: greater than, less than and equals. This enables you to filter e.g. “Show all things where the power is less than 500 watts” or “Show all houses where the temperature is above 25 degrees”
  • Filtering on Thing status, enabling you to e.g. filter out all Things that is online
  • You can add multiple filters
  • When collapsed, the Filter bar shows what filters are applied, if any
  • When collapsed, there is a quick button to clear all filters

The Filter is present in more views

  • Filter is now available in the Thing Type Overview in addition to the List view, meaning it applies to all widgets in the Overview. Today these are Map, Histogram, Events and Credentials

Every Thing Type has a separate persistence of the filter, i.e. the Filter selections are unique to the Thing Type. The Filter now persists during the session (until log out) under these conditions

  • Navigating within the same Thing Type (List/Overview)
  • Navigating to Thing Dashboard and then back to Thing Type level
  • Navigating away from this specific Thing Type and then coming back (from e.g. Settings, other Thing Types, Profile)
  • When navigating from one Thing Type to another Thing Type, the filter shall change to the persisted filter for the Thing Type you navigate to (or cleared filter, if no filter has been applied)

Rules additions

User interface editing a Rule is improved and simplified

  • Flow is improved and clearer stating what you need to do
  • Choosing trigger Rule “once” makes Needs acknowledgement mandatory
  • Summary of the Rule is improved in readability
  • You can now navigate between the different steps by clicking the step banner
  • In the default Event message we have added the Rule Name.
  • To facilitate easier customization of Event message, a help section is added on the message information syntax.
  • Fields for Email and Webhook are larger and expanding as you write

Events additions

Top menu Events display now shows two numbers representing:

  1. Events that needs acknowledgement – These Events are shown until acknowledged by any user in the system
  2. All other new Events – These Events are reset as soon as they are viewed, e.g. by opening the pop-up.

The corresponding pop-up now has separate sections. In the upper half, up to 10 Events that needs acknowledgement are shown. Below, up to 10 other new Events are shown.

Thing API – Backdating Observations in two ways

Backdating an observation means, you send it from the Thing to the cloud some time after it has happened and therefore would like to include the time stamp when the observation happened.

We have added a second alternative to backdate observations when sending them to the cloud, Standard flow backdating:

  • You can now send backdated observations using the normal topic for observations in the Thing API. You just add the time stamp and send it like any other observation. The time stamp will be taken as the time of the observation.
  • If time stamp is not included, time is set when the observation arrives at the cloud (the Thing Shadow) – this is the normal behavior when not backdating.

The typical use case is a Thing that buffers observations in sequence, either because the Thing only connects to cloud periodically (every hour or every day) or when the connection to cloud is lost. When the Thing connects/re-connects, it sends the buffered data in sequence to the cloud (First-in- First-out).

Standard flow backdating shall only be used when observations are sent in sequence as it has some features that you need to be aware of

  • The observations passes the Rules engine, therefore Rules are triggered
  • The last backdated observation sent will be considered as the current observation until a new observation arrives, and the Thing meta-data “Last updated” will be set to the time of the last reception of an observation, not the time stamp sent with the last received observation.

Since version 2.2 we have Batch flow backdating, which applies to use cases when you don ́t want to trigger Rules and/or you don ́t want to update Thing Shadow, but only add historical observations:

  • Observations are sent with time stamps in batch to a specific “backdate” topic of the Thing
  • The observations does not need to be sent in sequence and are treated and stored as historical observations, but does not update Thing Shadow, nor trigger Rules.

Minor improvements and corrections

Numerous minor enhancements and bug fixes are delivered by the new release, including:

  • Responsiveness for Phones/Tablets: Top menu and tables improvements
  • Context sensitive widget edits, to ensure you always get relevant edit options depending on choice of widget type
  • Creating a new widget always places the widget on top and opens the edit widget dialog
  • When selecting a Thing Type, the page displayed now is the Overview instead of the List view
  • +WIDGETS and +THINGS buttons are moved to the far right in the App Board
  • Thing Name is shown on top of the Thing Dashboard page instead of Thing ID
  • The wording “Thing ID” is replaced with “Thing Name” in the complete App Board
  • Pop-up message when a created thing batch is completed is removed. Instead an Event notification is created when finished
  • Fixed issue with Last updated timestamp in widgets, where the timestamp under certain conditions could be “inherited” by other widgets
  • Fixed issue with indenting domains in domains list
  • Fixed issue with Thing Types being editable in sub-domains when not supposed to