The first quarterly update for MicroStrategy ONE has arrived and is available for download right now. As always, there are so many new features, enhancements, and bug fixes that I cannot write about them all. So, in this newsletter, I’m going to chat about the features that I consider the most important that are related to “Dossier Development.” Later this week I will publish another edition with information on some of the “Administrator-related” features that have also arrived in this update.
Top 6 Features for “Dossier” Developers (In no particular order)
#1 Dossiers are now called Dashboards!
And another name change for Dossiers. With this update, Dossiers will now be called Dashboards. However, you may still see references to Dossiers in existing user profiles, but all new user profiles will have references to Dashboards rather than Dossier. I don’t know yet, but I suspect that there could be some user confusion over the coming months. Watch this space…
#2 Python enabled Transaction Dashboards
Transaction services provide “write-back” capabilities, which is an amazing feature of MicroStrategy. With this update, you can now create “Python enabled transactions.“ This opens a world of possibilities because you can use the power of Python to handle more complex write-back logic. This is extremely exciting and on my list of things to play around with…
Quickly looking through the feature notes, it does appear that there are quite a few steps required to get this feature up and running. Some of the steps are as follows…
- Create a custom Runtime with the new blade option in WorkStation under “Monitors / Runtime” It looks like you need to configure the runtime instance for items such as Instance Size, Environment, Python version, Network addresses, and required Python packages. This is all new stuff for me, so I expect a rather steep learning curve to get everything up and running the first time through.
- Code a Python script that will be used to handle the transaction logic
- Configure the Transaction Grid to use Python scripts rather than the traditional SQL option.
#3 Require Filter Selection for Dashboards
One of the best ways to improve Dashboard (Dossier) performance and reduce overhead on your Database / MicroStrategy servers is to use a filter in your Dashboard. This limits your query results returning from the database and improves the render time of your Dashboard (Dossier.) Now you can instruct your dashboard to “Require a Filter Selection” before the Dashboard renders. This is a brilliant new feature that I can’t wait to test out!
#4 Save and Re-use Personal Prompt Answers for Dashboards
Starting in MicroStrategy ONE (March 2024), for prompts that allow personal answers, you can now save a prompt answer independently of the dashboard you are executing. Once saved, a prompt answer is called a personal answer. The personal answer can be used for any object that uses the same prompt.
#5 Improved Visualization Legend Positioning
Who doesn’t love more flexibility on how visualizations render? I’m loving the new enhancement that improves legend positioning for bar, line, area, scatter, and pie charts. From what I understand, you can now place your legend in the following positions…
- Viz Top: Left, Center, or Right.
- Viz Bottom: Left, Center, or Right.
- Viz Right side: Top, Middle, or Bottom
- Viz Left side: Top, Middle, or Bottom
#6 Mapbox Map Boundary Updates
For those of you that use the awesome Mapbox map visualization, you’ll be happy to hear that all Mapbox boundaries have been upgraded to the latest version. This should provide you with more precise maps as well as additional boundaries to choose from. Here are the main additions in this update…
- Data refreshed with the latest administrative, postal, and statistical changes to date
- Added two million new boundaries, increasing our data coverage in over 100 countries
- Supported more aliases for locator names
- Introduced a new Boundary type, statistical, which are non-administrative boundaries that are most commonly used for statistical purposes. These boundaries are defined by a governmental statistical bureau or historical administrative boundaries that are relevant for statistical uses.
Those are the key features which I found interesting for Dashboard Builders in the March update.
Stay tuned for features specifically for Administrators and other technical folks.
Len OToole
The MicroStrategy Guy and a LinkedIn Data Visualization Top Voice