March 18 Release Notes
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March 18 Release Notes
- 5 Minutes to read
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Feature/Functionality Retirement
MyPlan
A robust, yet easy-to-use Planning solution for the casual business user, where users can carry out all budgeting tasks for human resources, capital expenditures, forecasts, and budgets from one centralized interface, without the help of administrators. The interface, called MyPlan, can be customized to display specific charts and accounts so that Planning users can quickly report and perform various tasks related to budgeting and forecasting.
Benefits of MyPlan
Casual business users should primarily use MyPlan. We define casual business users as individuals that have minimal responsibility when it comes to creating or updating a budget or a forecast. These users primarily focus on three things; managing people costs (hiring and firing), managing assets (buying depreciable items for their department), and managing expenses (direct and indirect expenses tied to their department such as; subscriptions, professional fees, and legal fees). With MyPlan, users work from one interface, there is no need to navigate to different application pages as all tasks take place within MyPlan. For example, you can build and submit a budget or forecast for approval, view data from Dashboards to see how your organization is performing, and get notified when a budget or forecast is due, past due, or pending approval.
The configuration for MyPlan is minimal.
Modeling 2.4.1
The SpotlightXL Add-in was not changed in this release. This release does not require existing users to upgrade their client software.
Reminder: Users should go to the Host Analytics Community portal for Release Notifications.
Changes in this Release
Consolidated Online Help System for all Host Analytics Products
Improvements to Model Manager with Support for Model Backup from the More Menu
Improvements to Breakback with Support for 0% Allocations
Known Issues and Resolved Issues are available in the Host Analytics Support Portal, Zendesk.
Consolidated Online Help System for all Host Analytics Products
In this release, users can access Online Help for all Host Analytics products from one interface, at help.hostanalytics.com.
The Home page provides access to each of the main products and their user and admin guides.
The Search feature now searches for terms in any of the products and lets you find the information quickly. You can also search for partial words if you are not sure of the spelling.
What's New provides links to the release notes, with the latest release being the first one listed in the year it was published.
Main topics provide a list of contents of all the major headings in that topic file.
This help system has a more modern look and similar feel as other web-based documentation. However, if you wish to continue to use the previous look of Modeling Help, you can find a list of links that provides the same connection to content as the left pane of the previous Modeling Help System.
Known Issues and Resolved Issues for Modeling have been moved to Zendesk, for consistency with Planning, Consolidation, and Reporting applications. See Known Issues and Resolved Issues.
Improvements to Model Manager with Support for Model Backup from the More Menu
In this release, Model Backup functionality has been added to the More menu in Model Manager in Spotlight. This is the same functionality as in SpotlightXL under Manager, Application Administration, and Model Backup/Restore.
Only users with Administrator privilege can see this menu item and run Model Backup.
If the model is in an Ungenerated state, you can backup the model but there are no data choices available because there is no data in the model.
If the model is in a Generated state, either Locked or Unlocked, you have three choices for your Model Backup:
Backup Without Data
Backup with Leaf Level Data only (this option is recommended; it is helpful when moving large models across environments)
Backup with All Data
After you select Model Backup (and select a data option), the model is immediately backed up as a ZIP file. Some browsers may ask you if you wish to open or save the ZIP file. Otherwise the resulting ZIP file is stored in the Downloads folder associated with your browser.
Notes:
To restore from a backup, admins must use SpotlightXL. Model Restore will be added to Spotlight in a future release.
Model Backup size limitations are the same in Model Manager and SpotlightXL. The maximum size of a model backup is 200 MB by default. You can call Host Analytics Support to increase this default.
As a best practice, use Leaf Level for Data when backing up your models.
Improvements to Breakback with Support for 0% Allocations
In this release, users can now specify a 0% increase or decrease in the value of the allocation.
In the Breakback user interface, you can specify 0% for the Current or Reference spread types. This is available in Spotlight, but not yet in SpotlightXL. SpotlightXL will be updated to include allowing 0% in a future release.
A 0% change is useful in cases where you have a calculation that runs a series of Breakback operations where the value of the change is specified by reference. This use case is described in the Calculation Breakback, Value Reference Example where a user specifies the amounts of several changes in a data input sheet. If one of the inputs by the user is 0, the calculation will run successfully (no data is changed with a 0% allocation).
Audit Log Enhancements
The Audit Log has been enhanced to include additional entries:
Date and time of user logins
Date and time of user logouts
Date and time of user login failures. If the user that attempted to login is a Business user, the failed login attempt will appear in the Audit Log within their application(s). If the user that attempted to log in is an External user, the failed login attempt will appear only in the Audit Log for the Master application that is maintained by Host Analytics.
TLS 1.2 Support
We recently announced that Host Analytics will only support TLS 1.2 and above for data integrations into the Host Analytics platform. This may only affect a small number of customers that load data via Web Services using their own data integration provider. As part of the May 2018 Release, Host Analytics will only support TLS 1.2. TLS (Transport Level Security) is a protocol used to handle privacy and data integrity between applications.
For detailed information, see the Support Portal article; .https://hostanalyticsinc.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003835383-TLS-1-2-Support-for-Legacy-Browsers-3rd-Party-Data-Integration-Providers
Known & Resolved Issues
Known application issues we are working to resolve, as well as any resolved issues for this release, can be found in the Host Analytics Support Portal, located at hostanalyticsinc.zendesk.com/home.
Support Portal Access
User authentication is required to access the Support Portal. To access the Support Portal directly, setup a password which will work with the email address you use to access your Host Analytics application as follows:
- Navigate to https://hostanalyticsinc.zendesk.com/access/help.
- Enter the email address you use to sign into your Host Analytics application.
- Open your email client and locate the email titled, "Host Analytics, Inc. password reset" and follow the instructions in the email.
Feature/Functionality Retirement
Information on features and functionality planned for retirement is provided here: https://hostanalyticsinc.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/212952083-Feature-Deprecation-Summary-Timeline
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