Spotfire 14.4 elevates analytical automation and customization, introducing Spotfire Action Mods that empower users to create and deploy tailored analytical actions effortlessly. These reusable components streamline tasks across all analytic elements, from visualizations to data manipulation, making analysis faster and more insightful.  Engineers and scientists in manufacturing, energy, and other complex industries can benefit from tailored workflows and domain-specific enhancements. Application builders and developers can integrate and share these actions organization-wide, improving efficiency and collaboration. Administrators gain robust control with new Batch Edit and scheduling capabilities in Spotfire, now with the ability to create and deploy Automation Services jobs that operate on any number of analyses, simplifying the update and maintenance of analyses across the Spotfire library. 

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Action mods

Action mods extend Spotfire with a new type of lightweight reusable action component that can be tailored for specific domains and use cases. Using actions within visual analytics provides extensive options for carrying out tasks and enhancing workflows across all analytic elements, spanning from visualizations to data.

An action mod is a collection of actions (scripts) that are packaged together making them easy to share and reuse. Actions can be added to various controls and triggers in visualizations as well as text areas as part of an analytic application, or they can be initiated directly from the new Actions flyout or from the Spotfire library. Triggers can be added to visualizations using the new Action trigger card in the Visualization properties panel, or using drag-and-drop from the Actions flyout.

Action mods follow the same development principles as visualization mods, with external source code control (in e.g. GitHub), modern IDE with syntax highlighting and code completion  (e.g. Visual Studio Code) with live debugging in Spotfire. Action mods can be distributed as .mod files and shared through the Spotfire library. The security model is based on a trust mechanism and sandboxed execution.

Similar to IronPython scripts, Action mods use the comprehensive Spotfire API for accessing Spotfire analytic items and services, which allows for implementing actions such as:

• Create and configure visualizations
• Drill down or up in hierarchical data
• Navigate to pages and visualizations
• Run data functions and transformations
• Apply page layouts
• and much more

For information on how to develop action mods, see the Spotfire® Mods website on GitHub.

Automation

Batch edit analysis files

It is now possible to automate the processing and modification of large sets of analysis files stored in the Spotfire library by using custom scripts. The scripts calls the Spotfire API to detect and make changes in the files. This approach is valuable and time-saving when the library contains a large number of analysis files that require similar edits. Manual handling of such tasks would be tedious and time-consuming. 

The possible edits that can be done is limited by what is exposed in the Spotfire API. Some examples include:

• Cleaning up analysis files by removing unreferenced items, such as markings, filtering schemes and data tables.
• Update scripts in analysis files to use a newer IronPython version
• Embed jQuery/jQueryUI library instances in text areas and modify JavaScript scripts to avoid referencing libraries used internally by Spotfire

This functionality is made possible by the new Automation Services tasks for looping and scripting in combination with other tasks, such as open/save analysis file.

See the documentation for more information.

Export and Distribute personalized reports

Distribute a single report as multiple, separate PDFs, where visualizations and key indicators are personalized to different target recipients based on selected filter values, bookmarks, and/or document properties. This ensures only the relevant data is shared to each stakeholder, without unnecessary information.

This functionality is enabled by the new ForEach Automation Services tasks now available from Automation Services Job Builder in Spotfire Analyst. For example, a report developer can use the ForEach task to loop over a list bookmarks which filters the data in the report that will be exported. The report can then be sent to different email addresses.

See the documentation about emailing reports using a single analysis for more information.

Looping and Scripting in Automation Services

Automation Services jobs now support looping and scripting with two new tasks: ForEach and Execute Script. These new powerful tasks can be used together and combined with the other built-in Automation Services tasks to implement an almost unlimited number of automation use cases.

The ForEach task allows jobs to iterate over a user-defined input table containing property values such as file paths, filter values, bookmark names or email addresses. For each row of the input table, a series of other tasks is executed with the property values of the current row inserted into various text fields of the other tasks.

The Execute Script task enables fully customized automation jobs. The task runs a user-defined IronPython script that through the Spotfire API can read and modify pages, visualizations, data tables, filters, embedded scripts and other content of an analysis file.

More granular and easier repetition patterns for scheduled Automation Service jobs

You can use now common recurrence rules when you schedule an Automation Services job

For example:

• hourly: every X hours
• daily: every X days
• weekly: every X weeks
• monthly: every X months

Recurrency rules simplify event scheduling, improve efficiency, enhance consistency, and provide a structured approach to managing events, ultimately leading to better time management and organization.

Data connectivity

Web UI and OAuth for Databricks and Apache Spark SQL

You can now use the web client to create and modify connections to Databricks and other Apache Spark SQL based data sources. The new web UI (also available in the installed client) allows for selecting OAuth2 as authentication method (in addition to username/password and Windows authentication) for SSO and safe personalized login.

When needed, connections can be customized by using custom connection properties for data source or driver specific settings. 

Note: Some connection authoring capabilities, such as configuring prompts, writing custom queries, and defining primary key columns, are only available when you use the installed client. For details, see the documentation.

Administration improvements

Better Library search for specific mod types

With the addition of action mods, you can no longer search for type:mod directly when searching the library.

Instead, you can either search for the specific mod types visualizationmod (using type:visualization) or actionmod (using type:action), or, use a wildcard character and search for type:*mod to find all mods.

More options available for configuring library compression

Previously, library items were compressed based on the configuration library.compressed-content.enabled, which could be either true or false. However, sometimes you might want to switch off library item compression for just some item types. For example, columns can take up more space in the library when compressed.

Now, you can also switch off compression of specific library types by configuring the multivalued property library.compressed-content.disabled-lib-types.type, using the set-config-list-prop (or the set-config-prop) command. For more information, see Changing the configuration for library compression.

Updated My Account page with more functionality

The My Account page layout has been changed by moving the different sections previously listed in the page into separate tabs, such as: Account information, Trusted signers and items, Manage logins and Signatures.

Download Spotfire Windows Client

There is also a Downloads tab available in the Spotfire Server UI where you can download the installer for a Spotfire client and connect it to a Spotfire Server. 

Note: An administrator can remove the Downloads tab, if desired. See Removing the downloads tab for more information.

Web Player REST API for updating an analysis

The new Web Player REST API allows an application to update a Spotfire Web Player analysis.

Note: For easy documentation reference, you can browse the API with the Swagger UI on your server: https://<spotfire-server>/spotfire/api/swagger-ui.html?urls.primaryName=web-player.

Note: For easy development of stubs in any language, you can download the OAS (Open API Specification) from: https://<spotfire-server>/spotfire/api/v2/api-docs?group=web-player.