Panopticon 2021.0: An Introduction

Hugh_R_Heinsohn

Here’s a high-level summary of the changes in Panopticon 2021.0:

• Server: Major rewrite of internal threading for improved resource utilization, performance, and stability plus enhanced user and content management. The release also incorporates a new management interface scheduled tasks that is easier to use and more consistent with the server administration GUI. These changes provide:
  • Support for more simultaneous users and lower server resource utilization.
  • Users can now monitor server resource utilization through a Panopticon dashboard, along with statistics on user activity, server content utilization, and more.
  • Easier management of scheduled tasks.
    
    
• Data & Connectivity: New AWS Kinesis connector (useful in many IoT applications), improved importation of formatted Excel files and handling of Kafka real-time streams, and enhanced connectivity for Oracle and InfluxDB data sources. Improved data caching enables users to make effective use of intermittent data sources, which is especially valuable in many industrial and IoT applications. Users can offload high-demand data sources to data extracts to improve overall processing speed. We now have 37 native data connectors built into the product, several of which are support multiple data sources.
  
  
• Dashboard Design: New dashboard design tools that enable business users to build and share colorful, well-aligned, and clean-looking dashboards more easily. New indicators for broken parts and settings with direct links eliminates the risk of publishing workbooks with configuration issues.
  
  
• Visualizations: Improved labeling and formatting functions throughout the product, including the ability to add custom shapes to scatterplots and maps. New color shading and alpha transparency controls enabling the creation of density plots and more, which eliminates occlusion problems in cases where several data items occupy the same X-Y position. The release also supports more sophisticated and better-looking geographic visualizations (especially important in applications involving transportation and logistics).
  
  
• Analytics: New statistical and aggregation functions, including Weighted Standard Deviation, provide users with a wider variety of analysis tools. Bookmarks are easier to edit and manage, and users can configure PDF reports using bookmark links. A single workbook can generate multiple PDF reports. Specifying different bookmarks for each report saves time and eliminates the need to create multiple similar workbooks. Users can also specify default date and time parameters that are relative to the current time.
  
  
• Overall: Numerous improvements to user management and security, time series data handling, reporting, and data-sharing function.