We sought to accomplish the following with the major 1.20.0 release:

  • Improve the ability of developers to create data flows.
  • Remove the guesswork about how data flows will behave.
  • Give developers real-time feedback about their processes as they are working on them.
  • Make documentation readily available and easily accessible.

New Features in 1.20.0 include:


Rebuilt project management interface

  • Provides more stable and consistent menus, tabs, and tab groups.
  • Redesigned data flows and top level data flow bars to be simpler and easier to read.
  • Added the ability to close all tabs in a tab group with a single click.
  • Tab groups can now be added to an unlimited depth which reduces the need to use browser tabs.
  • Creating a new action now shows contextual recommendations about which action to add at that point of the data flow. Each action has a full description of its behavior.
  • Added inline data flow view to the action form. New actions can be created or inserted from the action form.
  • Rebuilt Transform operations selector so that it now has full descriptions of each operation. Each operation also includes a link to the website documentation. The selector is also searchable.

Inline Data Processing in the Admin Panel

  • Included data processing functionality in the admin panel.  
  • This allows users to test what the data flow will do in the browser before running it for real on the server.
  • Every action in the data flow has process data introspection.  This allows the user to simulate the behavior of the data flow in real time.
  • “IF” actions allow the user to enter in sample input data which will be passed on to the subsequent actions in the data flow.
  • The before and after introspection highlights the exact changes that have been made to the process data via difference inspection. 
  • CHECK_DATA actions shows the end user the result of each condition check and displays whether or not the supplied data will go to the THEN branch or the ELSE branch depending on whether or not the conditions have been met.
  • RESPOND_SUCCESS, RESPOND_FAILURE, and LOG_INFO actions include an example log file that shows what the response data will be when the process is run.
  • SEND_TO_URL action allows the developer to include the expected response data that they anticipate will be returned. This data is usually copied in from an existing log or from the API documentation.  Also shows and example outbound call log with all the same data points as the production environment.
  • APPEND_TO_QUEUE action displays exactly which data gets loaded into the data process when a queued item is run.
  • ITERATE action displays exactly which data gets loaded into the data process during each step of an iteration process.
  • SESSION_STORE action shows exactly which data is stored on the session key.
  • SESSION_READ allows the user to enter in the data that is expected to be loaded by the session read action. This data can be copied from the SESSION_STORE sample output. 
  • ACTION_CALLBACK shows the data that will be returned by the connector action.
  • RUN_ACTION shows the sample data that the action expects to receive from the caller.

Process Data Memory Introspection

  • Every action in the data flow has process data memory introspection.  This estimates the memory allocations that have occurred during the course of the processing.  This allows the developer to see how much memory is required by each update to the process data.

Scripting Code Completions

  • Provides a typeahead for all available methods and constants.
  • Includes a brief description of the functionality of the method.
  • Auto completion includes a code snippet of the method with the correct parameters for the method.
  • Auto completions include a link that takes the user directly to the complete online documentation for the method.

Script Error Checking

  • Script errors are marked in the editor. These include explanations as well as showing the location where the script error was detected.

Typeahead

  • Each key in the process data is displayed in every key selector using the correct templating syntax.
  • Users can use typeahead on templated properties.
  • Typeahead includes a preview of the current value of the process data variable.

Inline Form Descriptions

  • Each property in the form has a description that is displayed that describes what the property does when the user hovers over the label.

Rebuilt Run Endpoint Interface

  • Run Endpoint interface is now simpler and easier to use. Shows live status of processing and automatically opens the request record on completion.

Rebuilt the Inbound Request Record Interface

  • The request record view now includes a complete timeline of all processes that ran during the execution of the inbound request. The records are shown in order of execution and the time it took to run each step is shown in the timeline. This makes it easier to visualize the timing of when actions are being executed during the process.
  • Each timeline action links directly to its associated log so the user doesn't have to look elsewhere for all the info concerning that action.
  • The timeline will update in real time as new actions are processed for the inbound request.

Other changes in 1.20.0 include:

  • Updated website with new documentation menus and content.