What's New in Incorta Cloud 2023.1.0

Release Highlights

Incorta starts this year with multiple enhancements to its platform. Some improvements support previously introduced features, such as the next-generation loader and visualization components.

New data applications and a new version of the Slicer component are now available in the Marketplace. The KPI visualization now has more formatting and style options.

Additional enhancements include the ability to create copies of business schemas, a new public API endpoint to transfer the ownership of entities, enhancements to materialized view (MV) cluster mode, mandating compaction, and an improved deduplication process.

General Availability (GA) features

Both of the insights over result sets and Incorta SQL Table features are now GA fully supported product features.

Important

This release uses the Data Agent version 6.0.0. You can upgrade to the data agent version available on the Cloud Admin Portal.

Upgrade considerations

After upgrading to the 2023.1.0 release, MVs with columns that are cast to decimal fail to validate or load with a mismatched types error. To avoid this failure, do one of the following:

  • Cast the existing cast function to match the MV column data type in the Table Editor, resulting in saving the column with the original data type while reserving the defined precision and scale in the original cast function.
  • Change the MV column data type to decimal in the Table Editor and revalidate the MV definition. However, this solution may lead to some limitations when referencing the column in formulas, functions, and dashboards. For more details, refer to References → Decimal Data Support.

New Features

Enhancements to support the next-generation loader

This release introduces multiple enhancements to support the next-generation loader, introduced in an earlier release. These enhancements include UI improvements on related pages, stating the exact job status in load job notifications, and improving the deduplication process.

Enhancements to the Load Job Details Viewer

The Load Job Details Viewer has multiple UI enhancements. You can now preview the load job stages and the elapsed time per each stage when you hover over the job status.

You can also download the report of rejected rows to review the rejection reason per row in CSV format.

Distinguish between failed, finished with errors, and interrupted schema notifications

As a Super User or schema manager, you can now create separate email notifications for schema load jobs that are interrupted or finished with errors.

The emails show the exact status of the load job instead of only showing a failed status for all unsuccessful load jobs, whether failed, finished with errors, or interrupted.

Searching and sorting the load plan list

You can now search the load plan list by schema or load plan name. By default, the load plan list is sorted by the plan name; however, you can now sort the list by the owner and the next run time.

Improved deduplication process

This release introduces an improved deduplication process to:

  • Reduce the planning time of load from staging jobs
  • Minimize the time and off-heap memory required for PK-index calculations during incremental load jobs

Duplicating business schemas

As the Super User or a schema manager, you can now make copies of business schemas that you own or have Edit access rights to. The new copy will inherit the description and department of the original business schema; however, you can edit these configurations in addition to the business schema name. You can create a copy of only one business schema at a time.

To create a copy of a business schema:

  1. Sign in to your tenant as the Super User or a schema manager.
  2. In the navigation bar, select Business Schema.
  3. In the list view of business schemas, for a given business schema row, select More Options (⋮ vertical ellipsis), then select Make a copy.
  4. In the Make a copy dialog, update the required business schema details, such as the name, description, and department.
  5. Select Save.

Slicer component enhancements

A new version of the Slicer component is now available in the Marketplace with new advanced settings and improved support for presentation variables.

Advanced insight settings

You can save the space that the Slicer component uses by:

  • Showing a vertical slider instead of a horizontal one.
  • Hiding the input fields (Min, Max, and Value).

You can also:

  • Show the available list of values in the Field pill and limit the selection to these values instead of the free selection of values.
  • Allow dashboard consumers to select a single value (simulating the equal operator) instead of selecting two values (simulating the between operator).
  • Show the selected values.

Improved support for presentation variables

To better support presentation variables, the Slicer component now automatically detects the use of a presentation variable in the formula pill and shows the variable’s values. As a result, we deprecated the Show presentation variables option.

In addition, you can configure a presentation variable so that it is not displayed as a filter bar pill when previewing the dashboard.

Note

Sharing dashboards via email does not respect the Hide at filter bar option. Presentation variables referenced in an applied bookmark will appear in the filter bar regardless of this configuration.

Additional style formatting for dashboard KPIs

You can now format these style and appearance settings for your KPIs:

  • Alignment of values and labels (left, center, or right)
  • Background color for the KPI tiles
  • Gutter size, or margin between KPI tiles, in pixels
  • Space between labels and values in pixels

For more information, refer to the KPI documentation.

Transfer ownership public API endpoint

As a Super User or a User Manager, you can now use the /users/transferOwnership endpoint to transfer the ownership of all entities that a user owns to another active user. You can also transfer all the share permissions assigned to this user to the other user.

  • You have to provide the email address of both the original owner and the new owner.
  • The new owner must be assigned roles similar to or higher than those assigned to the original owner.
  • The new owner must be an active user. Therefore, you cannot transfer the ownership to an invitee who has not accepted the invitation yet.
  • If the endpoint fails to transfer the ownership of any of the entities, the whole operation fails.
  • The system tracks ownership transfers for audit purposes.

For more information, refer to Public API → Transfer Ownership Endpoint.

Enhancements to the MV cluster mode

  • Increasing reliability and fault-tolerance
  • Reducing memory requirements

Mandating compaction

Starting this release, the Enable Always Compact option won’t be available on the CMC as creating a compacted version of parquet files during load jobs is no longer an option. The Loader Service will start a compaction job during all load jobs. During loading from staging, the Loader Service initiates a compactions job if it detects issues with the compacted version of an object.

New data applications

SAP S/4HANA Financials and Supply Chain (by Incorta)

Expedite your SAP S/4HANA Procure to Pay and Order to Cash data analytics, and ensure that supplier delays no longer impact your sales with our customizable, pre-built dashboards. Use the dashboards with your near real-time SAP S/4HANA data to quickly analyze and optimize your processes. With advanced insights into purchase orders (POs) and materials from your top suppliers, you can be confident that your orders will arrive on time, and that your finances are in order.

For more information, refer to Data Applications → SAP S/4HANA Financials and Supply Chain.

SpendWIZ (by Kenfront, an Incorta partner)

Uncover hidden savings opportunities while cleansing, analyzing, and classifying spend data from any of your data sources, all in one place. Kenfront’s SpendWIZ AI learns from your data and improves over time, always adapting to new patterns. There’s also an optional fraud detection add-on that leverages Kenfront’s pre-built data science models.

For more information, refer to the data application on Incorta.com

BlackLine for Oracle Cloud ERP

Close faster and fix your fragmented financial close process, so you can reconcile with confidence. After consolidating your data in Incorta, you and business users can quickly resolve any transaction discrepancies. Send the data back to BlackLine in a secure format in near real-time or using scheduled data transfers. From BlackLine, you can also drill down into your subledger data in Incorta to support your decisions.

For more information, refer to the data application on Incorta.com.