Release notes - Analysis Hub Aug.2024

The Highlight Selection tool has been enhanced to give greater control for selective highlighting and provide further emphasis options and effects. For example, highlighting can be applied to all items within a selection, or just the entities or links; current highlighted items can be added or removed individually, and link or frame colors can be used for the highlight color.

Different animations can be used for entities, theme lines, links and links with direction. These include revolving, pulsing or expanding circles, pulsing labels, as well as growing, traveling, or marching effects on directional links.

Where chart items contain multiple records a Record Count Badge may optionally be displayed, for example where several records have been united from multiple data sources or there are duplicate records. This makes it clear on the chart which items are made up of multiple records, and how many records are held for that item.

• The option to display Record Count Badges for entities or links, and the font, font size and color for badges may be configured from the options menu.

Chart item Groups can now be named, helping to identify the purpose of the group on the charts surface. The group border and label can either be displayed when selected or permanently displayed on the chart surface.

Where multiple differently named groups are combined the resulting combined group name follows the chart labeling rules.

Source reference images are now displayed in search result lists providing immediate visibility of images associated with records.

Source reference images can also be used as marker icons in i2 Maps.

The option to display source reference images as marker icons in i2 maps is available from Chart Settings in the web client and i2 Analyze Settings in Analyst's Notebook.

Where there are multiple source reference images for an entity, the latest image on the lead record will be used.

A user can now select whether a Visual Query is saved for their own use only or they may choose to share it with specific users, all users, or defined groups of users.

Access levels control how saved Visual Queries can be used and modified once shared.

To help organize saved queries, hierarchical folders can be created to categorize both private and shared queries.

Visual Queries now give the ability to combine AND/OR operators when defining conditions allowing the user to create powerful multi condition searches. The addition of Conditional blocks makes it easy to treat multiple conditions as a single group, visually conveying how the conditions interact with each other.

Individual conditions can be rearranged within the query or within blocks to make it easy to restructure without the need to delete and recreate query conditions.

An importer tool is now available in the web client to allow users to directly import structured data from csv text files into web charts, giving the user the ability to create chart information from a new source to supplement existing data or to simply create standalone charts.

Identity matching within the data to be imported can be controlled by choosing which properties to compare.

Regular Expressions (Regex) can be utilized when creating import specifications to perform input data transformation.

Import specifications that have been created can be saved for future reuse with similarly structured source data. A user can save an import specification for their own use or share it with all users or a defined group of users.

Access levels control how import specifications can be used and modified once shared.

To help organize import specifications, hierarchical folders can be created to categorize saved import specifications.

Chart items created using the web client importer can be shared with other users using the Share Records capability of Analyst's Notebook and the web client.

The web client now provides a chart palette giving the user the ability to manually create entities and links on a web chart. The available palette item types are controlled by the information store schema and by the connector gateway schema.

These manually added chart items enrich the chart with new information or inferred intelligence not available from the connected data sources or by importing.

Manually created chart items can be shared with other users using the Share Records capability of Analyst's Notebook and the web client.

The records of web client chart items may be edited in the Record Inspector giving the user the ability to add additional information or correct source data errors in the web chart. The ability to edit chart records is limited to records created manually or with the web client importer, and external search results.

Changes to record properties are persisted in saved web charts and can be shared with other users using the Share Records capability.

The icons in Analysis Studio have been updated with all new icons to give charts a more modern look.

Additional icons have been introduced to cover inclusion and diversity, business process modelling (BPMN), as well as new technologies, social media, dating apps, crimes and activities.

The new icons are available for i2 Analyze information store and connector schemas, and are used for charting in Analyst's Notebook and the web client.

This release of Analysis Hub introduces Connector Designer, a "code free" visual tool for creating and modifying simple external searches against third party data sources. Connector Designer gives an Analyst with experience of working with REST services or SQL databases the ability to setup connections and simple searches without needing coding skills or using external consulting resources.

Compatible with REST endpoints and Microsoft or Oracle SQL databases.

Connector Designer is included with Analysis Hub. Details on how to deploy Connector Designer are available at https://docs.i2group.com/ah/ah-connector-designer.html

Installation of Connector Designer requires Docker Engine and an internet connection.

Note: We are excited to introduce the new Connector Designer. While we have worked to ensure a smooth launch, you may encounter some minor issues. If you do, we would greatly appreciate your feedback as we continue to refine and enhance the experience.

It is now possible for i2 Analyze to dynamically manage connectors through connector configuration providers.

Connector configuration providers, such as the Connector Designer, are web services that oversee a set of connectors and their configurations. These managed connectors complement those configured in the i2 Analyze deployment files (topology.xml or connectors.json for example).

A connector configuration provider can use the /reload endpoint to force a refresh of the available connectors. If a change is detected, i2 Analyze will automatically update the gateway and the i2 clients to reflect the change.

Long running Visual Queries, for example complex queries running over large amounts of data, can be cancelled by the user if they do not wish to wait for the results to be returned, or would like to refine the requirements of the query to obtain a more concise result set.

In addition, new system auditing events allow an administrator to trace the server activities associated with Visual Queries, providing monitoring of the kind of queries users are creating and their impact on the system. An optional timeout control is also provided to automatically cancel long running queries after a designated time period defined by the administrator.