Version 0.4.6 of the Bluyah application has been released. As we get ready for our official launch on March 6th, you’ll see these next few releases contain minor fixes to the existing services as we polish up the app. This release in particular contains several back-end fixes that will make your experience with Bluyah more enjoyable. They include:
- A more coherent approach to DNS management [Ticket #119]. The end result is that users should no longer experience lag when going from their sub-domain to www.bluyah.com (or back again). All primary and sub-domains are now running fully on EC2.
- Problems logging out in IE7 [Ticket #172]. We realize that one of the most-appealing features of Bluyah is its ability to help you get things done quickly. You log in, do what you need to do, then log out and get on with your other work. IE had other ideas about how you should be spending your time - so we’ve squashed it’s attempts at workload domination.
- Letting you know when something goes heinously wrong. [Ticket #69]. We don’t expect it to happen - but half of being prepared is expecting the unexpected. We’ve enhanced error messaging so if in the off-chance something goes wrong in a big way, you won’t be left staring at a blank screen, clutching your coffee mug and wondering what just happened.
- Google Docs Connector now enabled for hosted accounts. [Ticket #127]. If you use Google Apps for your business then this is what you’ve been waiting for. All of your spreadsheets at docs.yourdomain.com can now be exported through Bluyah into your favorite formats.
- Enhanced features for Professional and Enterprise accounts [Ticket #150]. Our senior level account subscribers now have much more control over export configuration - including the ability to turn off the Bluyah branding attached to all Maps, Charts and Marquees. Now why people would want to do this we have yet to figure out….
- Fixed an issue with pie charts where users were not able to properly set the row containing their chart data in the UI. [Ticket #166]
- Enhanced maintenance notifications and defined maintenance window. You will now see a ‘System Unavailable’ message when we’re performing maintenance on the system. Additionally, we’ve standardized our maintenance schedule. For the immediate future, all maintenance will be performed on Saturdays between 9:00 - 10:00 PM PST. W will post a calendar to this blog and to the website.
Pie charts are simple, elegant, and serve a distinct purpose: how does ‘this’ compare to ‘that’ when taken as a whole.
Right after 0.4.5 was launched, I became curious. ’How many report exports have I created - and how popular are they?’ I wondered. Fortunately, Bluyah tracks ‘views’ for each export type. We are doing it for internal measurements, primarily, as it helps us determine where we need to invest our optimization time. But after throwing together a quick report query, I realized that (1) this would be a great feature for users to have for their own accounts (more about this later), and (2) I was surprised by the results.
Turns out the Marquee containing Mac World news posts that I added to the DiMax website last weekend is getting more eyeballs than anything else I’ve created so far. (Truthfully - I would have expected the chart I put together comparing Max Unemployment Rates since 1948 to garner more interest - but maybe people aren’t yet ready to hear that news…)
What were you saying about Pie Charts?
Which brings me back to my point. Just saying that as a sum Marquees are my most-served export type is all well and good. But showing you how each type compares is even more effective:
Version 0.4.4 of Bluyah was launched late Friday night (thus the reason I’ve taken so long to post the announcement). This release introduces some really great features, chief among them is support for Google Docs spreadsheets. The complete list of enahncements / bug fixes is:
- Fixed bug with ‘bad decrypt’ on user Connector passwords [Ticket #105]. All connector passwords are encrypted and that encryption algorithm is tied to user’s own Bluyah account. We discovered in testing that if user changed their account password, their connector passwords would become unreadable. We’ve fixed this.
- Fixed a bug whereby changing a column’s displayed name in the Report Edit screen would prevent user from retrieving any columns they had previously removed from the report. [Ticket #134]
- Fixed an error whereby if a user tried to hack the URL for a report export, the app would display an internal error rather than a friendly message informing them that the export they were looking for could not be found. [Ticket #85]
- Clarified and posted the Refund Policy for new accounts. The Refund Policy is now part of the Terms of Service.
- Fixed an IE7 only issue affecting users attempting to login from the wrong sub-domain. Now IE7 users are auto-routed to their correct sub-domain - regardless of which domain they initiated login. [Ticket #39]
- Google Docs support (Yeah!!!). Bluyah now can read any Google Docs spreadsheet provided it meets the following prerequisites:
- The email address you use to access the Google Docs account is a ‘GMail’ account (hosted domain accounts are not yet supported - but coming soon!)
- The spreadsheet is in a tabular format with columns and rows. Columns without named headers will not be imported.
- More intuitive Map Editing screen. The map editing screen is now WYSIWYG. You see what the map will look like as you’re defining which data you want to display on the map. (See Fun with Google Maps for a more thorough explanation of the features)
As always, feel free to Let Us Know what you think of the latest feature set. If you want to see some additional features in Bluyah, please submit a feature request! If we don’t know about it, we can’t build it.
With version 0.4.4 of the code base we introduced Enhanced Maps which allow you to easily control the marker color and the contents of the “bubble” that displays when you click on the marker.
With these new features, creating robust, data-driven maps become an extremely easy thing to pull off.
Case in point:
The USGS publishes an RSS feed that contains data on all of the earthquakes that have occurred over the past 30 days. We went from feed to map in about 3 minutes by doing the following:
- I created a new Atom/RSS connector. The input screen only required I give it a memorable name and input the feed’s URL.
- Once saved I clicked on the “Report” link for the newly established connector. This brings up the Report Edit screen:
- On this page I changed the ‘pubDate’ column to ‘Reported’ and changed the ’summary’ column name to read ‘Earthquake’. You change the column name by clicking on the name itself. I also hid a couple of columns I didn’t need by clicking the [x] box in the upper-right of the column header.
- Once I had saved the report (you can see the report in tabular format here - or as a CSV file here), I then clicked on the ‘Export’ link at the top of the screen, then the ‘New Map’ link and selected the newly created Report name. The map edit screen has a few more configuration possibilities:
- Because the data elements ‘lat’ and ‘long’ already existed in the RSS feed, they were automatically selected as the fields to be used by ‘Latitude’ and ‘Longitude’. (If my data set had contained street addresses instead, I would have clicked the ‘Plot by Geocode’ link instead )
- I only wanted the ‘Reported’ and ‘Earthquake’ columns from my report to show in the bubble that displays when a user clicks on a map marker, so I dragged them from the ‘Available Data’ box beneath the map, onto the bubble, and ordered them appropriately.
- Saving the map resulted in this:
Let us know your thoughts. Or better yet ~ create a map of your own and send us the link. We’d like to see what you’ve done.
[UPDATE] A screencast of this tutorial can now be found here.
You may have noticed that it’s been a week since our last release. This delay doesn’t mean we haven’t been working hard - quite the opposite in fact.
Version 0.4.4 will introduce two significant features and we want to make sure that they function perfectly (especially with each other) before we push the code out the door. We were going to push the release on Wednesday, but at the last moment discovered a minor ‘glitch’ that took a little longer to trace back to it’s roots than we anticipated.
So what’s coming?
First off : The Google Docs connector. Unlike most online tools that allow you to access data in your Google Docs spreadsheet, Bluyah does not require that you make your spreadsheet publicly available (what Google calls “published”). You can keep your spreadsheet private and still report against it. And all reporting is done in real-time. You make a change to your spreadsheet, the next time you view your Bluyah chart export built against it you’ll see the results.
We feel this will be a huge win for Bluyah users, as we’ve been receiving a ton of feedback that this is where a lot of IT teams are doing their ad hoc data analysis.
Second Off: Enhanced Google Maps. This release will allow you to custom design the pop-up windows that display when users click on a map icon. Additionally, since we realize only the truest of geeks have geocoded data sets, Map Exports will now allow you to convert a street address to a plot on a map on-the-fly.
Best of all, because Bluyah Exports work the same regardless of the data source, you’ll be able to create maps as easily from a geocoded XML feed (ie: The US Geological Society) or from a Google Docs spreadsheet (ala: our list of pizzerias in Fremont).
I’ll post some data samples when the release goes live so you can compare them yourself.
Until then, keep following us on Twitter to stay abreast of the latest features and release dates.
We pushed an emergency patch to prod (tagged 0.4.3) to fix some problems with password encryption. If you experience any problems with your database connectors, please let us know.
Additionally, we fixed a small problem with forgot password functionality whereby a user who had authenticated their account, but never actually logged in, was resent an authentication token (instead of a forgot password token).
Keep your eye on this space - we have some exciting new Map Export features coming soon.
