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Release Notes - 4.3 - AO Platform

Intended audience: SOLUTION DEVELOPERS

AO Platform: 4.3

Release Date

  • August 2025

Overview

  • Release 4.3 builds on the previous 4.x release of the AO Platform. We continue to introduce many new features that will make the development and management of solutions much more effortless, productive, and rewarding.

  • The 4.3 release continues with a strong focus on enhancing the Composers that support Easy Answers solution development directly, including Ontology/MSO, Solution, and Insights Composers.

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

New in Release for AO Platform

Ontology and MSO Composers

  • Federated Data - a new Federated Data page has been introduced in the Ontology Composer, making it easy to configure a Federation Server as well as the options to create persisted data instances of Cached MSOs, Materialized Views, and ad-hoc Runtime Views. All these options ultimately bring improved performance when retrieving data into Easy Answers solutions when data sources have been configured using the Federated Data server, as data gets replicated closer to the AO server and therefore any high-latency/high data volume data sources will not be used. The replication from the original data source into the Federation Server is done either manually or via a scheduled job. See Ontology - Federated Data.

  • Referenced Ontologies - a new Referenced Ontologies page has been introduced in the Ontology Composer supporting implementation teams developing multiple similar ontologies and solutions say within a specific domain can now benefit from the ability to create parent/base ontologies that contain all common MSOs and enrichments which are then references from customer-specific (child) ontologies where only the customer-specific configurations are done. This reduces work as all common objects only require configuration in one location and each customer-specific ontology only contain what makes one customer ontology/solution different from the next. See Ontology Models and Inheritance and Ontology - Referenced Ontologies.

  • Inheritance - leveraging the Referenced Ontology concept, once a parent/base ontology has been referenced by a customer-specific ontology, a number of objects within the customer-specific ontology can be configured to leverage (inherit from) parent/base objects, including MSO Properties, MSO Linguistics, MSO Settings, Quick Insights, and even Public Dashboards from a Referenced Solution. See the Solution Composer section below, and Ontology Models and Inheritance.

  • LLM Questions - a new LLM Questions page has been introduced in the Ontology Composer. This page allows solution developers to bootstrap Easy Answers solutions by auto-generating questions that will appear to users of Easy Answers based on the associated ontology, and related to different user personas, ie specific questions can be generated for sales, operational, marketing, engineering, and executive staff in an organization.

  • Validation and Issues page - with all the moving parts in an ontology and associated MSOs, it can be hard to get everything right on the first try. To aid in optimizing ontology creation and ongoing enrichment of ontology objects, the solution developer can now take help from the new Issues pages and associated Validation processes that will execute various checks, including testing for integrity, missing and optional configurations, etc… A similar Issues page and Validation process are available for Quick Insights. See Ontology - Issues and MSO - Issues.

  • Audit History - a new Audit History page has been introduced in multiple Composers, including the Ontology/MSO Composers. To aid with the trouble-shooting of any issues appearing based on updates to various composer objects, the Audit History page will list all such changes relating to Create, Update, and Delete operations. This includes such operations done either manually by users or based on users running processes that may change data and/or alter configurations. Each audit record is clearly identified by the object being changed, who did it, when it was done, and the specific details of the changes. See Ontology - Audit History and MSO - Audit History.

  • Save Ontology As / Save MSO As - somewhat related to Referenced Ontologies and Inheritance, two other productivity options have been added, including the ability to clone an Ontology and clone an MSO. This ultimately saves time for the solution developer as updates can be focused on making changes to the new Ontology (or MSOs), compared to starting from scratch. See Saving Ontology As and Saving MSO As.

  • Allow Composite Key creation during MSO > Discover Relationship - in those cases where relationships are not created automatically based on schema information during the Ontology Discovery process, the MSO Discover Relationship dialog has been extended to allow Composite Relationships to be created as part of the manual process. See Discover Relationships for MSO.

  • Search for Apps/Curations across the full Ontology - the previous 4.2 release introduced a new ontology Search option that allows the solution developer to search for a search term across many different objects within an ontology, including Linguistics, MSOs, Properties, and Prompts. In the 4.3 release, Application objects have been added to search within either MSO Curations or even Apps added to Easy Answers Dashboards. See Search Ontology.

  • Ontology and MSO Settings pages - numerous new settings have been added/updated in both Ontology and MSO pages. Additionally, the MSO Settings pages have been organized a little differently into separate pages (instead of sections on a single page) to optimize loading time and improve usability. See Ontology - Settings and MSO - Settings.

Solution Composer

  • Referenced Solutions - a new Referenced Solutions page has been introduced in the Solution Composer supporting implementation teams developing multiple similar solutions say within a specific domain can now benefit from the ability to create parent/base solutions that contain all common Public Dashboards in a solution which can then be referenced from customer-specific (child) solutions where only the customer-specific dashboards are done. This reduces work as all common objects only require configuration in one location and each customer-specific solution only contain what makes one customer solution different from the next. See Solution - Referenced Solutions.

  • White-Labeling of Solutions - for 3rd party integrators, solutions can now be configured that do not carry the App Orchid branding. Please note: such white-labeling configuration requires a specific license agreement with App Orchid. See Solution - General.

  • Customize Home Page - as part of the new Home Page in Easy Answers solutions, an important aspect is the option to customize both sections available and the appearance of certain elements on the Home Page. This is a new page in the Solution Composer, allowing the solution developer to create a default customization configuration per Role and furthermore the customization can be extended based on permissions to allow individual users to customize from the Easy Answers Home Page directly. See Solution - Home Page and Easy Answers - Home Page.

  • Save Solution As - a new ability to clone an existing Solution is now available in the Solution Composer. This ultimately saves time for the solution developer as updates can be focused on making changes to the new Solution, compared to starting from scratch. See Solution Composer.

  • Audit History - a new Audit History page has been introduced in multiple Composers, including the Solution Composer. To aid with the trouble-shooting of any issues appearing based on updates to various solution configurations, the Audit History page will list all such changes relating to Create, Update, and Delete operations. This includes such operations done either manually by users or based on users running processes that may change data and/or alter configurations. Each audit record is clearly identified by the object being changed, who did it, when it was done, and the specific details of the changes. See Solution - Audit History.

Quick Insights and Insights Composer

  • Enhancements to existing Quick Insights - additional configuration options have been added for Survival Events, Regression Insights, and enhanced Spatial Correlation. See Quick Insights Based on Machine Learning Models.

  • Generate Data Summaries / Add to Data Summaries Page - Quick Insights have been enhanced with the option to both generate LLM-based Data Summaries for Quick Insights as well as add said Data Summaries to the new Data Summaries page in Easy Answers solutions. See Model > LLM Summary Configuration tab and Preview dialog on Model > Model tab.

  • Advanced Data Input (via SQL) to Quick Insights - in addition to being able to configure input data for Quick Insights by selecting MSOs and their Properties on the Data page in the Quick Insights composer, the solution developer can now select an Advanced option that allows an SQL Query to be entered for more complex input data use cases. This includes adding $CRITERIA#$ parameters to the SQL Query for injection of Filters for the Runtime Profile configurations for Quick Insights. See Quick Insights > Data and Quick Insights > Runtime Profiles.

  • Validation and Issues page - with all the moving parts in insights configurations, it can be hard to get everything right on the first try. To aid in optimizing insights creation, the solution developer can now take help from the new Issues pages and associated Validation processes that will execute various checks, including testing for integrity, missing and optional configurations, etc… See Quick Insights > Issues, Insights - Issues, and Insights Composer.

  • Audit History - a new Audit History page has been introduced in multiple Composers, including the Insights Composer. To aid with the trouble-shooting of any issues appearing based on updates to insights configurations, the Audit History page will list all such changes relating to Create, Update, and Delete operations. This includes such operations done either manually by users or based on users running processes that may change data and/or alter configurations. Each audit record is clearly identified by the object being changed, who did it, when it was done, and the specific details of the changes. See Insights - Audit History.

Admin Solution

  • Add Configuration records to Transport - a new option (a checkbox) has been added for all individual masterdata configuration records, allowing such records to be added as a Transport package.

  • Audit History pages - two new Audit History pages have been introduced for Administrators, including Audit History specifically for masterdata configurations in the Admin solution, and All Audit History, which brings together all audit records from across the entire AO Platform. To aid with the troubleshooting of any issues appearing based on updates to various masterdata configurations, the Audit History page will list all such changes relating to Create, Update, and Delete operations. This includes such operations done either manually by users or based on users running processes that may change data and/or alter configurations. Each audit record is clearly identified by the object being changed, who did it, when it was done, and the specific details of the changes. See Audit > Admin Audit Events and Audit > All Audit Events.

  • Validation pages - two new pages have been introduced: a) Validation Messages - a new page to show all the possible Validation Messages that will appear when issues are found in various composer objects from running the Validation processes, and b) Validators - a new page to show all the possible Validators used by the Validation processes. More Validators are expected to be added going forward. See Admin > Functional Configurations.

  • Vector Databases page - a new page with configuration records for Vector Databases, including Weaviate DB and Pinecone DB.

  • Highcharts Map Properties page - a new page supporting the existing Highcharts Maps page with configuration records for the different subcomponents of the Highcharts Maps layers, including Name and Abbreviations for Map Regions.

  • Question Generation Instruction Mapping page - a new page with configuration records supporting the Question Generation page in the Ontology Composer.

  • Insight Configurations page - a new page with configuration records supporting the new LLM Data Summary generation for Quick Insights in the Insights Composer.

Transport Tool

  • View Configuration - this is a new option available for the transport package records that have been prepared for download from the source server. It shows the configuration (including dependencies) for composite transport packages, such as Ontologies. See Transport Tool > Selecting and Downloading.

  • View Details - this is a new option available for the transport package records that have been uploaded to the target server, allowing the details of the uploaded transport objects to be viewed. See Transport Tool > Uploading.

Other

  • Security - updates to key software libraries, including webix.js-10.2.0 → 11.x, highcharts.js-11.1.0 → 12.x, Amazon Linux 2, AWS RDS PostgreSQL v11 → v17.

  • Google Gemini (GenAI) - production-ready support has been added for Google Gemini Models.

  • Generative AI Models - many more Generative AI Models have been added, including Azure OpenAI and Anthropic.

Documentation

  • Updated the Open Source Library list included with AO Platform and AO Easy Answers as of July 2025.

  • The product documentation can be accessed from outside the software. However, the documentation is not publicly available; a token is required to access it unless accessed from within the AO Platform and Easy Answers product UI in the User menu. Use the following URLs:

  • The ChatGPT-based AO Knowledge Assistant, introduced in the 4.2 release, has been updated with 50+ new and updated topics. The combined AO Platform and Easy Answers documentation has been used to create a GPT that can generate summarized responses to practically any question about the functionality and use of the AO Platform and Easy Answers solutions.

Deprecations/Removals

  • None

Known Issues

  • If using the Apache Druid data source and a Categorical Trait is created for one or more properties, please make sure that the MSO > Settings > Easy Answers > Quantitative Views > Bucketing Type is set to “Value”. The Apache Druid data source does not support “Percentage” as a Bucketing Type.

  • If using the Apache Druid data source and a Sortable Trait is created for one or more properties, a Druid limitation exists that only allows column sorting of time-based properties. See https://druid.apache.org/docs/latest/querying/sql/#order-by.

System Requirements

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