Release Notes

Version 2.30 (2018-08-30)

Important notices

Technical documentation available online

All technical documentation for Managed IoT Cloud, including API specifications, Release notes and Getting Started Guides, are available online: https://docs.telenorconnexion.com/mic/

Features

Device Management enhancements

Device Management sees major additions related to management of jobs. 5 new actions are available

• Add new targets for an existing job.
• Get job document for a uploaded job.
• Get a job execution status for a thing in a job.
• Cancel a job execution for a thing in a job.
• Delete a job execution for a thing in a job.

The new functionality is available through the Cloud API. It will be enabled in App Board in coming releases.

Permissions API enhancements

In this release the Permission object is introduced. It holds all permissions for a user. This is the foundation for the more granual permission model which will be introduced in coming releases.

Furthermore, two new endpoints are introduced

• REMOVE_ROLE removes all privileges of a role and removes all users from that role.
• LIST_ROLE_USERS lists all users for a specific role.

Widgets improvements: Custom decimal formatting

Custom decimal formatting of the observation value is now enabled in the Value, Gauge and Dynamic widgets. You select the number of desired decimals in the widget edit dialog. Please note that the value is truncated, not rounded.

Rules improcements: TCXN convention resources enabled in rules

We now support TCXN payload convention resources in Rules, both in triggering criteria and formulas. It is now released for use through the Cloud API. App Board will get this support in coming releases. Please note that it is not possible to set the value of a TCXN resource.

HTTPS Proxy enhancement: Extended sessions

It is now possible to extend a http/https proxy session by calling the proxy control server and specifying the extended time.

TCP proxy over MQTT enhancement:

When setting up a TCP Proxy session you can now specify the time to wait for the first connect attempt. This enables adaption to various applications or systems connecting to the Proxy. The parameter is optional and if not specified the default value will be used.

Minor improvements and corrections

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

• Updated File API to, when deleting a file, enable selection whether to delete only the latest version of the file, or all versions. This feature will not be enabled in App Board, but from there all versions will always be deleted.
• View modes are now sorted in alphabetical order.
• The resource picker in Analyze now sorts the resources in alphabetical order.
• Fixed issue with API Gateway returning bad messages under certain circumstances.
• Fixed issue with create job under certain circumstances.
• Fixed issue with error handling in Thing data ingestion indexing.
• Fixed issue to ensure it is not possible to move a domain so that things are outside of their thing types accessible domains.
• Fixed issue with Rule edit displaying incorrect Thing Type information under certain circumstances.
• We now prohibit using dash (-) in thingName when creating things through the Cloud API.
• Fixed issue with backdated observations updating the Thing shadow and therefore possibly triggering rules.
• Fixed issue with error text being hidden by the button on the “Trouble signing in" page.
• Nested resources (former sub things) are now enabled in Analyze.
• Fixed issue with “Last heard from” not handling tcxn resources correctly in All Things dashboard.
• Fixed issue with a created thing not automatically showing up in the thing list, but a refresh was needed.
• Fixed issue with virtual resource not being used when updating the resource value, but a new resource was created.
• Improved error message when trying to replace certificate for a Networked Thing.
• When namning a Networked Thing, a user friendly message is added informing on allowed characters.
• Fixed issue with parent (Gateway to Networked Thing) icon not being displayed under certain circumstances.
• Added redirect if getSgnedUrl is used with a deprecated path format.

Version 2.29 (2018-06-27)

Important notices

Technical documentation available online

All technical documentation for Managed IoT Cloud, including API specifications, Release notes and Getting Started Guides, are available online: https://docs.telenorconnexion.com/mic/

Features

Networked Things

In addition to the existing Sub Things, which can be seen as a way of nesting the payload or resources reported from a Thing, we now introduce a new concept called Networked Things. Networked Things are Things that connect to the MIC platform through any kind of gateway which acts as a local authorizer. The gateway holds the MIC certificate and credentials and are responsible for all Things connected to it (Networked Things). A Networked Thing gets an own Thing Shadow in MIC and is therefore, in the view of the MIC platform, seen and treated as any normal Thing, including API and App Board. The only difference is that it doesn´t have a certificate. A Networked Thing will have a reference to its gateway and vice versa. Device Management for Networked Things will need extra efforts since it needs to be managed through the gateway.

API and App Board is supporting Networked Things since it is considered a normal Thing, but some additional information will be available:

• In Thing lists an icon will notify if it is a Networked Thing and likewise the gateway will have an icon indicating that.
• In the Thing Dashboard for the Gateway there will be a drop down menu which gives you quick access to all its Networked Things

Networked Things can be created either on the fly by the Gateway when it reports the Networked Thing and its resources, or manually through the API or App Board.

More details are available in the online MIC documentation.

NOTE! A networked Thing will be considered a Thing also in terms of MIC Subscriptions, meaning that e.g. a Thing (gateway) with four Networked Things will be considered as five MIC Subscriptions.

Device Management improvement

To the Device Management functionality we have now added support for deleting cancelled jobs through the Thing Jobs API

Node-RED

Since release 2.11 Telenor Connexion offer “nodes” for connecting Managed IoT Cloud to Node-RED (https://docs.telenorconnexion.com/mic/release-notes/2_11/)

With the current release, these nodes have been updated to work with the REST API. The nodes have also been published in the https://flows.nodered.org library.

Simplified definition of “point-of-interest” geo-fence rules

In addition to geo-fences based on three or more coordinates and the lines connecting these, an alternative mechanism for defining circular geographical areas have been introduced.

With the “point of interest” geo-fence definition, a circular geo-fence can be defined with one coordinate and a radius. This functionality was introduced in the Cloud API in version 2.26 and in this version 2.29 we now enable it in App Board too.

Minor improvements and corrections

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

• Fixed issue with observations being queued under certain circumstances.
• Limited the flexibility in relation to creating and moving Things. It is no longer possible to create Thing in, or move Thing to domains where the Thing Type of the Thing does not exist, i.e. move the Thing to sister domains or domains above to where the Thing Type exists.
• Removed automatic conversion from hexadecimal to decimal values at dashboard rendering for String resources.
• Fixed issue with users being unable to create rules for Thing Types in parent domains.

Version 2.28 (2018-06-12)

Important notices

Technical documentation available online

All technical documentation for Managed IoT Cloud, including API specifications, Release notes and Getting Started Guides, are available online: https://docs.telenorconnexion.com/mic/

Features

Improved and new file widgets

The files widget is now available in both Thing Type dashboards and Thing dashboards. Using these widgets, files in the Thing Type bucket and the Thing bucket, respectively, can be viewed/downloaded, uploaded, and deleted. The look and feel of the widgets have been updated to align with the file browser released in the previous version.

Updated Thing API for invoke GetSignedUrl

The Thing API invoke call for uploading and downloading files to/from MIC (GetSignedUrl) has been updated to conform to the new file structure. This change is backwards compatible with how getSignedUrl worked previously and hence, no change is required in device applications.

For details, please see the technical documentation.

Real time data in time series and table widgets

Time series and table widgets have been enhanced with the capability to display real time data. In the widget configuration dialogue, the “Enable realtime” option will result in that the widget loads with the last resource observation available in the thing shadow, and the data series is then appended in real time as new resource observations are received.

The presentation is limited to the last 100 observations – when 100 values have been loaded, the oldest values are purged one-by-one as new updates are received.

Improved clarity on what data a widget displays

The widgets have gone through a complete update to enhance clarity on what data is presented. The “last updated” field is introduced in the new release. With the new functionality, it is clearly indicated if a widget displays real-time data (and if so, when one of the values displayed in the widget was last updated) or if the widget displays historical data, as per the selection in the period picker.

Access to real time data from things in multiple domains

With the new release, users can be given access to real time updates for multiple sibling domains. For example, a user in the “A” domain in the below structure can be given access to real time data from things in domain “B”.

Root

• A
• B

Access to multiple domains is administered using the Permissions and User API endpoints. The user giving this access must have access to both involved domains, i.e. be a user in the “Root” domain in the above example.

Certain limitations apply, please see the API documentation for details.

This functionality is currently only available using the APIs. Corresponding functionality for the App Board is planned for future releases.

New Search API

A new API for prefix-wildcard searches has been introduced. The new API can be used for queries on Domains and Resource data, and will return a paginated result set with configurable sort field and sort order. The new API can for example be used to efficiently retrieve subsets of large datasets for rendering in user interfaces.

For further details, please see the API documentation.

Minor improvements and corrections

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

• Corrected content type for file download in the API endpoint /things/certificate
• For widgets displaying the count of values for a population of things in the thing type dashboard, the configured unit of the relevant Resource was previously displayed next to the count value. This was often misleading, and in the new release no unit is displayed by default for count widgets. Please note that the widgets unit field can be used for entering a widget specific unit for e.g. the count aggregation widget.
• The password rule validation has been improved in regards to special characters, and the validation message has been updated to properly indicate the set of accepted special characters.
• When rendering widgets with non-aggregated data, only the last 100 observations for each widget within the selected period should be loaded. A bug resulted in that fewer than 100 values was loaded in certain scenarios, which has now been corrected.
• Fixed issue with unintentional reuse of images uploaded for process widgets in scenarios where several process widgets shared the same Thing Type and ID number.

Version 2.27 (2018-05-22)

Important notices

GDPR

Managed IoT Cloud has now been adapted to drive compliance with GDPR (EU’s General Data Protection Regulation) which will enter into force on 25 May 2018.

In addition, functionality simplifying for our customers to fulfill the GDPR requirements has been added, including

• Storage retention settings (v 2.25)
• Generic mechanism for user consent or agreement acceptance for new users (v2.26)

Technical documentation available online

All technical documentation for Managed IoT Cloud, including API specifications, Release notes and Getting Started Guides, are available online: https://docs.telenorconnexion.com/mic/

Features

Full App Board support for the File API, including New File Browser

The new File Browser replaces the old Things file browser. Here all files in MIC can be uploaded, viewed and deleted. It uses the new capabilities in the File API released in v 2.26. This includes the following four different file buckets

• Public – for files that should be publicly available.
• Root – for files that are relevant at the MIC instance-level.
• Thing Name – for files related to a specific Thing.
• Thing Type – for files related to a specific Thing Type.

In addition, App Board has been upgraded to fully support the enhanced File API

• Files widget (update and delete file will be enabled in coming version)
• Image files in Process widget
• Image files in Thing Summary
• The logo file in Branding

Existing files will be migrated in relation to the release roll-out

App Board support for storage retention time

In System Management menu (under Settings top menu) storage retention can now be specified in number of months. Retention can be specified separately for Raw Observation Retention (the S3 data lake) and Indexed Observation Retention (the Elasticsearch Observation index) in order to differentiate long term storage and observation indexed for fast search and analyses. Retention for the indexed data cannot be set to less than retention for the raw data.

Changes to storage retention can only be made by root users with full system access and the user needs to provide the user password to proceed with the changes. As default, retention is not enabled (i.e. by default, no data is deleted automatically).

IMPORTANT NOTE: Retention shall be used with great care - data older than the retention policy will actually be deleted and cannot be recovered.

Minor improvements and corrections

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

• Updated and improved documentation on Elasticsearch 5
• Added support for more status codes (successful status) in webhooks
• Fixed issue with response message from API GW when calling replace certificate
• Fixed issue to ensure all resources are deleted when a Thing Type is deleted
• The API for Storage Retention has be updated to one endpoint instead of two separate for raw data and indexed data

Version 2.26 (2018-05-03)

Important notices

Request for input on current usage of the File API (no later than 14/5)

A new version of the file API is released in 2.26. To secure practical migration paths and facilitate decommissioning of the current File API, we kindly request developers and customers that use the current File API to get in touch with us as soon as possible (and no later than the 14/5) for discussion and planning.

Technical documentation available online

All technical documentation for Managed IoT Cloud, including API specifications, Release notes and Getting Started Guides, are available online: https://docs.telenorconnexion.com/mic/

Features

New version of the File API, including REST API support

A new version of the File API is released. The new API covers typical operations for files across the following buckets:

• Public – for files that should be publicly available.
• Root – for files that are relevant at the MIC instance.
• Thing Name – for files related to a specific Thing.
• Thing Type – for files related to a specific Thing Type.

For additional information and details, please see the API documentation.

Additional geo-fence definition method in API

An additional method for defining a geo-fence has been added to the Rules API. The new method is based on one center coordinate and the radius of a circle. This method is intended to allow detection of proximity (e.g. proximity to a “point of interest”) without requiring a coordinate-by-coordinate definition of the geo-fence.

In the current release, the new method is not fully supported when configuring Rules in the App Board user interface.

Additional fields for user data

Three additional fields for miscellaneous information have been added to the user data, and correspondingly, the sign up and user settings dialogues in App Board.

These fields are intended for scenarios where an administrator would like to collect some additional information (e.g. role requested by a user that sign up, serial number of a physical product that the user bought) to facilitate the sign up process.

Generic mechanism for user consent or agreement acceptance for new users

An generic mechanism that require users to accept certain text (for example a Terms and Conditions document, or a text about consent to store certain data in the system) before using the MIC platform has been added. The new mechanism is turned on or off (default is off) per instance by request to the Telenor Connexion Service Desk.

If the user consent mechanism is tuned on, an administrator will be able to upload a PDF document in the Settings -> System Management section.

Only users that are flagged as having accepted the PDF document will be able to use the MIC platform. The following mechanisms are used to control the flag per user, if the mechanism is turned on.

• The self-signup procedure will not be possible to complete without accepting the document.
• Existing users will be presented with the accept dialogue at the first login after the accept mechanism is turned on.
• Administrators are able to revoke a previous accept for a user, to trigger a new accept (as per the item above) for e.g. an updated PDF document.

Minor improvements and corrections

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

• Minor improvements and bug fixes for the Device Management functionality and user interface in App Board
• To facilitate troubleshooting of REST API requests, support for CORS headers in the response have been added.
• Improved permission checks for rule filters on individual things.
• Fixed issue with “Policy not found” error messages after a period of inactivity.