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Release Notes - 3.5

Intended audience: ALL USERS

AO Platform: 3.5

Release Date

  • October 2023

Overview

  • Release 3.5 builds on previous 3.x releases of the AO Platform. We continue to introduce many new features that will make the development and management of solutions much more effortless and be done mainly from the browser as a low-code environment.

  • The 3.5 release continues to have a strong focus on UI and functional enhancements to the AO Easy Answers solution as well as the composers supporting Easy Answers directly, including Ontology/MSO Composer, Solution Composer, and Model Composer.

  • This topic includes a high-level introduction to the enhancements made during this release.

New in Release

AO Easy Answers

  • The Easy Answers name has been “upgraded” to AO Easy Answers and will be recognized as such in published materials going forward. This documentation will continue to use the shorter version, Easy Answers, except for when first mentioned.

  • The UI has received a refresh to become more end-user-centric and with many new functional updates:

  • New support for type-ahead when entering Easy Answers questions.

  • Enhancements to our Natural Language interpretation and Question Types (Text2SQL), including support for Negation, Alternate words, Default MSO (for Address, Amount, Date), Having Criteria, Field Compare.

Ontology Composer

  • Major updates to Ontology Composer, “merging” Ontology and MSO pages based on a new UI refresh that has become more end-user friendly. See Ontology Composer - Home Page and MSO Composer - Home Page.

  • New Discover Ontology option that makes it easy to create a new Ontology from a multi-table schema in a database or spreadsheet, including:

    • Automatic creation of statistics for the entire Ontology to immediately enrich results when using Ontology from Easy Answers. See Discovering an Ontology.

    • Automatic discovery of enrichment options for all tables (data sources) added to the Ontology, such as relationships, words, and traits. See Discovering Enrichments for MSO.

    • Task Viewer to help users understand the progress of all background tasks. See View Tasks for Ontology.

  • New Add Compositions options for MSO field properties associated with AO Common MSOs, such as Address, Amount, etc… See MSO - Properties.

  • New Composite Key option for MSO field properties. See MSO - Properties.

  • New Sort By option for MSO field properties.

  • New Enhanced MSO Filter options.

  • New Traits (Synchronized, Sortable, Trend), and multiple updates to configuration properties for all existing Traits. See MSO - Traits.

  • New MSO Query Functions - used to create expressions for MSO field properties. MSO Query Functions can also be used to create Derived MSO field properties using expressions. See Using Expressions.

  • New Micro Apps have been added for MSO Curations, including: Waterfall Chart, Dependency Wheel Chart, and Forest Plot Chart.

  • Some new Micro App configuration properties have been added for MSO Curations, including: show axes titles and min/max values for axes.

  • Additional Data Styles were added for Text and Background Color for Table Micro Apps.

  • MSO Settings. See MSO - Settings.

    • Easy Answers - multiple new settings properties across existing sections.

    • Easy Answers - new sections for Popup Views and Connected MSO Views.

    • Discovery > Word Suggestions - new settings that will impact the Word Suggestions being proposed to users from the new Discovery processes on MSOs.

    • Discovery > Categorical Traits - new configuration settings when Categorical Traits are added to the Discover Traits process.

    • Default Criteria - the ability to set a default data filter criteria that’ll be applied to all Easy Answers questions.

Model Composer

  • New option to create Bayesian probabilistic models, including a Learning Models page. See Model Composer and Learning Algorithm.

  • New option to create custom Transformations on Transformations and Feature Engineering pages. See Model Composer.

  • Enhanced the ability to enter field properties allowing multiple field properties to be added per transformation, supporting custom transformations that may require multiple input fields.

  • The Icon representing the Model Composer solution has been updated.

Insight Composer

  • This is a new composer but with the same page content available in the Ontology Composer in the previous 3.4 release. The Insight Model Configurations and Insight Composer pages have been removed from the Ontology Composer in the 3.5 release. See Insights Composer.

UI Composers

  • New Solution Composer added supporting the creation of Easy Answers solutions. See Solution Composer.

Admin Solution

  • New pages in the Easy Answers > Unit Testing section for configuration of MSO Suggestions. See Admin > Easy Answers.

Other UI Improvements

  • Much improved Notification panel from “bell” icon in the Header of solutions. See Notifications.

Infrastructure

  • All core AO Platform system components have been containerized using Docker images, including:

    • Platform server (Cloudseer and VulcanUX).

    • Python services (Text2SQL and Entity Extraction).

    • ArangoDB graph database.

    • Elasticsearch (to be used for Google Cloud deployments. AWS offers out-of-the-box managed ES service).

    • PostgreSQL (development purpose only).

  • Also, initial work has been done to create Helm charts and deployment scripts for use by Kubernetes orchestration to provide the following benefits for the AO Platform:

    • Faster deployments, application setup, and upgrades.

    • Platform services autoscaling based on user traffic with zero outages.

    • Improved application monitoring and logging.

Documentation

  • 50+ new documentation topics were added in this release supporting the feature enhancements and UI updates described above.

  • The AO Platform documentation can be accessed from https://docs.apporchid.com - or from options in the User menu in the AO Platform UI. This main user documentation is not publicly available, a token is required to access it unless accessed from within the AO Platform UI in the User menu.

Known Issues

  • When creating an Annotation in Annotation Composer, it’s possible to divide a Layout cell into multiple rows. However, if such a cell in a row has an adjacent cell that isn’t divided, then the multiple rows in the first cell won’t be rendered correctly at runtime. The workaround is to create the same amount of divisions in all cells in the row and for instance use the Spacer control to ensure the Layout renders correctly, eg:

Deprecations/Removals

  • None

System Requirements

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