Release History

September 2024 Release History (5 items) – 139 total

The September 2024 release introduces several key improvements to the platform, including enhanced dashboard features, pivot grid functionality, and updated link handling. Below are the key updates:

Dashboard Designer – Vertical Line Indicating the Centre of the Canvas
To assist with design precision, a vertical line now appears in the dashboard designer, indicating the centre of the canvas. This feature aims to simplify the alignment of elements, ensuring better symmetry and layout.

Pivot Grid – Column Width Adjustment
In certain scenarios, the width of the first column in the pivot grid may require manual adjustment. This update addresses those instances to improve the user experience and grid layout.

Pivot Grid – Sort by Value
The pivot grid now supports sorting by value, providing users with more flexibility in organising data within their grids.

Charts – Unique Count
A new feature has been added to the charts component, allowing users to display unique counts, improving data analysis capabilities.

Cards Component – Support for Microsoft Edge Links
An issue with opening links in Microsoft Edge has been resolved. Links prefixed with “microsoft-edge:” in the LinksAsText field will now correctly redirect to the intended Edge-specific links, providing better integration with internal applications that require Edge.

Navigation – Option to Display Icons on Second-Level Menus
An option has been added to the navigation settings, allowing icons to be displayed on second-level menus. This feature is disabled by default but can be activated for improved visual customisation of submenus.

Dashboard Component – Audience Targeting
A new audience targeting feature has been added at the component level, allowing users to specify which groups or individuals can view a given component. If a user does not belong to any of the designated groups, the component will not be rendered. Additionally, this feature is supported in export/import, with groups being included in the export, while users will not be saved.

Dashboard – Option to Hide Top Pane
An option to hide the top pane on dashboards has been introduced, providing users with more control over their dashboard layout and presentation.

Card Component – Option to Open Links in the Same Tab
A new configurable setting has been added to the card component, allowing users to choose whether links should open in the same tab or a new tab, offering greater flexibility in managing navigation flow.

August 2024 Release History (5 items)

The August 2024 release (v1.8.2) brings a range of improvements to the LiveJSUpdates feature, along with enhancements in dashboard design and navigation. Below are the key updates:

Navigation Icons on Second-Level Menus
A new option has been added to display icons on the second level of the navigation menu. This option is disabled by default but can be activated in the navigation settings, allowing for more visual customization of submenus.

Dashboard Designer – Vertical Alignment Indicator
A vertical line now appears in the dashboard designer to indicate the center of the dashboard. This feature helps users align elements more accurately when designing dashboards, ensuring better symmetry and layout precision.

Smart Card – Improved @ Suggestions Functionality
A bug affecting the Smart Card component, where @ suggestions were not functioning, has been fixed. Users can now expect the @ suggestions to work smoothly when adding mentions or dynamic fields within smart cards.

Cards Component – Configurable Link Behavior
The card component now allows users to configure how links open. Users can select whether links in cards should open in the same tab or in a new tab, offering more control over the navigation flow.

Dashboard Designer – Enhanced Drag-and-Drop
Improvements have been made to the drag-and-drop functionality in the dashboard designer.

July 2024 Release History (21 items) – 125 total

Hub-like Component
A new hub-like component has been introduced. This feature allows rendering items in a similar format to the App Hub view. It displays items as tiles with specific fields. Initially, the component excludes help links and favouriting options.

Map Component – Cross-Component Filtering
The map component now supports cross-component filtering. When a country is selected on the map, data in a connected grid component is automatically filtered based on that selection.

Bar/Column Chart – Color Mapping
Colour mapping has been added to bar and column charts, similar to what is available for pie charts, allowing for more customized and distinct visualizations.

Chart – Add Link Option
An option to add a static link next to the chart title has been introduced.

Gauge – Option to Exclude Empty Values
A new configuration has been added to the gauge component, allowing users to exclude empty values from calculations. This ensures more accurate averages when the data set contains many empty values.

Smart Card – Configure Decimal Places
Users can now define the number of decimal places displayed in smart cards. This allows for more precise representation of numerical data, especially for averages and other calculations.

Accumulation Chart – Drag-and-Drop Sorting
Support for drag-and-drop sorting has been added to accumulation charts, making it easier to reorder items as needed.

Map Component – Theme Colour Fix
The map component’s colour scheme has been updated to ensure it matches the selected theme colors.

Accumulation Chart – Font Size for Center Text
A new option allows users to configure the font size of the text displayed in the center of an accumulation chart.

Cards Component – Icon Size and Help-Link Enhancements
Improvements have been made to the card component based on customer feedback. The help icon now appears permanently if a help link exists, rather than on hover. Both help and favouriting icons have been resized for better visibility.

Data Source – Support for Merging with Child Data Source
The platform now supports merging data from a child data source, providing more flexibility in handling hierarchical data structures.

Dropdown Filter – Yes/No Column Support
Support for Yes/No columns has been added to dropdown filter components, expanding filtering capabilities.

Card Component – Filter Functionality Update
The filter functionality in card components has been improved, providing better flexibility in filtering data.

Pivot Grid – Column Width and Resizing Options
New configuration options have been introduced in the pivot grid component. Features: Set a main column width and Enable column resizing for more flexible data presentation.

Card Component – Alphabetical Sorting
Cards can now be sorted alphabetically, making it easier to find items within the card component.

Chart Component – Clearing Row Series Issue
A bug related to clearing row series in charts has been fixed, ensuring that charts update correctly when row series are removed.

Card Component – Configurable Link Behavior
Users can now configure whether links in card components open in the same tab or a new tab, providing more control over navigation.

Card Component – Additional Column Type Support
The card component has been enhanced to support more column types. Image fields now support the Image column type, allowing images to be uploaded along with items.Text columns now support choice fields, further improving flexibility.

Merged Data Sources – Child Filter Support
Filters applied to child data sources are now also applied when merging data sources, resolving an issue where certain filters were not being propagated.

Card Component Stories
New stories have been added to the card component, providing better documentation and examples for developers and users.

Dashboard – Custom CSS Support
A major new feature has been added to allow the application of custom CSS at the dashboard level. Users can now define custom CSS that influences the dashboard and its components. Static component selectors are provided to enable precise styling adjustments.

May 2024 Release History (6 items)

Grid – Option to Change the Font Size
A new feature allows users to change the font size for both content and header within the grid component. This provides greater customization and readability for grid data.
While the grid is selected, open the Properties tab → Change the Content Font Size and Header Font Size options.

Summary Card – Target – Support for Decimal Places
The summary card component now supports decimal places, allowing for more precise display of numerical data.
Select a summary card that is on your dashboard → Open the Visual Settings tab → Set the Min Decimal Point and Max Decimal Point → Decide whether to show the Thousand Separator.

Webpart – Use 100% of Webpart’s Height Without Showing Scrollbar
Enhancements have allowed webparts to use 100% of their height without displaying scrollbars. This ensures a cleaner presentation for dashboards containing a single component.

Gauge Component: Option to Change the Basic Color of the Gauge
An option to change the basic colour of the gauge has been added, providing more customization for data visualization.
Add the gauge component from the Charts section → Assign a data source and set the Value field → Open the Visual Settings tab to change the basic color.

Accumulation Chart – Show Total in Center

A new option has been added to display the total value in the center of the doughnut chart. This feature is customisable and enhances data presentation.
Add an accumulation chart component → Open the Properties tab → Enable the Show Center Label option → Customise the text format  ‘Total {totalValue}’ as needed.

Dashboard – Single Filter Attached to Different Data Sources
A single dropdown filter can now be attached to different data sources, reducing the need for multiple duplicated filters. This feature allows for more streamlined and efficient filtering across multiple data sources within a dashboard.

Polar/Radar Charts
Polar charts have been added to the visualisation options, providing more ways to represent data.

March 2023 (6 items) – 93 total

Grid – Enhanced Search Functionality
Users can now opt for real-time search within grids by typing, rather than waiting for hitting enter. A configurable setting at the grid level enables automatic search upon typing, with a minimum text length requirement of 3 characters.

Smart Card – Expanded Font Options and Code Editing
In response to user feedback, additional font sizes have been incorporated within the Text’s RTE control of the Smart Card. Additionally, a code editing feature has been introduced, accessible via the last button within RTE’s ribbon.

Summary Card – Target Indicator Feature
A new enhancement allows users to designate a specific field as a target indicator within Summary Cards. Depending on the selected target, the component dynamically presents either a chevron up, chevron down, or a tick. Advanced options are accessible within the Visual Settings panel (Summary Card -> Assign Data -> Toolbar -> Visual Settings).

Custom Dynamic Columns Support
The system now supports custom dynamic columns created within a data source. These columns offer diverse output types and are defined using JavaScript code, providing users with enhanced flexibility in data manipulation.

Dashboard Designer – Data Limit Control
Users can now toggle data limit functionality while editing dashboards. By default, the top 20 items are fetched to optimise performance. A switch control located in the top right corner of the dashboard allows users to disable this feature, ensuring the complete dataset is presented.

Dashboard Permissions Enhancement
Within Settings->Navigation, when configuring permissions for a dashboard, clarity has been improved. The tooltip now features legible text and the red hierarchy icon appears appropriately, indicating when permissions may differ between the dashboard and its associated navigation item. Additionally, the dashboard screen now displays an unlocked icon for public dashboards and a user icon with relevant tooltips showcasing permissions when direct access is granted.

Oct 2023 (2 items) (ver 1.6.26)

Data Sources added support for file icon and file size for Document Libraries
We updated the data source functionality to add support for displaying file icons, file size.

Data Sources added support for ignoring folders for Document Libraries
You can now display a flat list of all files in a document library without their folders.

Sep 2023 (7 items) (ver 1.6.24)

Kanban added support for users’ avatar
If an item is assigned to a user then we display that user’s avatar in the swimlane header, the tile’s title, and the tile’s summary.

Kanban support for Yes/No columns
The Kanban now supports the SharePoint Yes/No field type.

New rounder dashboard layout
Users can now choose a new Dashboard Viewer Mode called “Lucid” which changes the components on a dashboard to use rounded corners rather than the square edges that appear in the default viewer mode.

Navigation – Support for grouping
Users can now add links to the left navigation and group them under headings.

Navigation – Text layout update
We have improved the left navigation to add more padding between the menu options and now support up to three lines of text for each menu item.

Dark and Light mode
We have added dark and light themes to give customers even more options when designing their apps.

Syncfusion updates
We have updated the version of Syncfusion in use in Sintel BI to take advantage of the latest updates.

Aug 2023 (8 items) (ver 1.6.18)

Kaban Board Updates
We released a host of updates to our kanban control including:

1. Show/hide items count – Users can choose to display or not display the count of items in a column.
2. Custom Column sorting – users can now define which values should appear first (i.e. draft, approved, in progress, completed).
3. Swimlane support – users can now configure the display of swimlanes.
4. Hide empty columns – users can now choose to display or not display empty columns.
5. Show link to an item – when enabled an icon will appear in the top right corner permitting a user to view the item.

Update to the icon picker
We updated Sintel BI to use the latest version of FontAwesome and take advantage of the latest icons.

Security trimming to the dropdown filter
You can now apply security to values in a dropdown filter to grant specific groups access to specific values or define 1 or more groups that should have access to all filters.

SQl data source improvements
We added a tooltip with a sample SQL connection string to make it easier to evaluate the SQL data source option.

Jul 2023 (2 items) (ver 1.6.5)

Kaban Board
We have added a new component called a kaban board. This provides a visual system for teams to manage project tasks, workflows and communications. A simple example of a Kaban Board is a board with 3 columns ‘To do’, ‘Doing’ and ‘Done’.

Updates to the Scheduler component
Categories are now supported on our scheduler component

Jun 2023 (6 items) (ver 1.6.0)

Left navigation menu updated
When the app is installed, there is by default a heading within a navigation called Admin with links to Site Contents, Site Settings and Site Permissions. This is visible to admins only.

Web parts
You can now use Sintel BI as a web part. This enables you to add multiple dashboards to one screen or add BI dashboards alongside other web parts on a  SharePoint site.
Web Parts – Sintel Apps

Navigation – indicate if heading permissions don’t match dashboard permissions
If the heading’s permission is different than the dashboard’s (within that group), i.e. more users have access to the heading than have access to the dashboard, BI will now indicate this by changing the colour of the user’s icon to red.

Dashboard filters – permissions-based filtering
In the dropdown filter, we have enabled permission-based filtering. This setting ensures that the filter values are visible only to people who belong to the appropriate group.

Scheduler component
Designed to simplify and streamline your data visualisation experience, the Scheduler allows users to effortlessly integrate event management, room bookings, and hot desk functionalities into their dashboards with just a simple drag-and-drop action.
Scheduler – Sintel Apps

Left Navigation update
The size of text and icon change in expanded mode

May 2023 (20 items) (ver 1.5.70)

Grid – numeric column – move min/max decimal places settings
Min/Max decimal places settings should be before the ‘Show as’ setting

Exclude Color Tag field
SharePoint added new default Color Tag field in every list – we exclude it in Sintel BI by default

Navigation Item – link – reorder properties
When adding links to the navigation the Title appears before the URL

Pie chart – disable ‘Show other’ setting by default
For a pie chart the ‘Show other’ option is now disabled by default

Grid component – open forms in a new tab by default
The edit/new form now open in a new tab by default

Dropdown filter component – support numeric column
We now support numeric columns in our dropdown filter component

Data source – remove 200 items default limit
We removed the default limit of 200 items when creating new data sources

Left navigation – new wide mode
We added a new option to display the left navigation menu with icons on the left and text on the right of them

License information caching
We now cache license information so the application runs faster

Grid – make filtering icon even more prominent
We’ve made the filter icon on grids more obvious when it has been applied

Grid – cross component filtering – support date filtering
We now support date fields when connecting components for filtering purposes

Grid – multiline field – add setting to specify cell’s max height
When using a multiline text column, the text can be very long and thus take even more than 1000px vertically. We added a per column setting, to limit max column height. If the column is taller than the limit we show a scrollbar inside the cell.

Grid – custom html template – allow to access other columns within a column template
You can use {{[]}} to insert field values when using custom HTML

Accumulation chart – workflow status column – import values/colours from Sintel Forms
Users can import the colours applied to the Workflow status within Sintel Forms to make colour coding easier

Grid – add option to disable sorting/filtering on per column basis
Users can enable/disable sorting and filtering on a specific column

Grid – opening forms in a new tab
The grid control can be configured to open items in a new tab

Navigation settings – Add option to inherit group item permissions
Permissions can be applied to a parent item in navigation and the child items under it can be configured to inherit those permissions

Navigation settings – indicate which elements are public and which shared
An icon is now displayed to indicate if a navigation item is publicly shared

Navigation settings – improve UX
When the properties panel is displayed for a navigation item clicking on another navigation item will refresh the panel to show the properties of the selected item

Grid – User column – add option to show avatar
You can now display a users avatar/photo when using user fields on the grid control

Mar 2023 (1 item) (ver 1.5.53)

Inline editing of list items (boolean columns) within a Grid

You can now enable the inline editing of list items on boolean columns i.e. Yes/No columns within Grids.

Jan 2023 (6 items) (ver 1.5.39)

Cross-component filtering (Dynamic filters)

You can now connect components such that clicking on a segment of a pie chart component can filter the data shown in a grid component. This makes it even easier for a user to filter the data they are viewing or drill into it by simply clicking on a component on the screen.

Grid component – emphasize filtering icon in the column header

We increased the font size and emboldened the column which is being filtered in the grid to make it easier to distinguish which columns are being filtered.

Grid component – added support for {webURL} to the HTML column template

If you add columns to the grid to accomplish things like adding a link to open a form in a new tab, you can now use the {webURL} token instead of hardcoding the URL of your site. This makes it easier to move an app based on Sintel BI from test to live as you won’t need to worry about the change in the URL, it will update automatically.

Grid component – Pill column

You now have the ability to import values from the Sintel Forms Status column and in doing so the Sintel Forms Status values and colours are auto-imported. This is a huge timesaver!

Grid component – Wrap text in column headers

We have added an option to enable you to wrap text in column headers which is especially useful if you are trying to display a lot of columns in the grid component.

Custom apps –  load apps in standalone mode

We have added the option so that users can load apps in standalone mode.

Dec 2022 (0 items)

No Release

Reviewing backlog and prioritising

Nov 2022 (7 items) (ver 1.5.15)

Dropdown filter – Text field – added option to set a custom default value

We have added an option to the Dropdown filter component for text fields so that it allows you to specify a custom default value from a list.

SharePoint connector – exclude folders by default

We have added a new setting to SharePoint connectors called Exclude folders.  When enabled, the data source should return list items only, folders are skipped.

Grid component – new option to change the location of the context menu

A context menu appears if you enable editing or deleting on the grid component. If one of those options is enabled you will see a new setting control called Context Menu Order, with default value 2 which means that the context menu will appear as the second column in the grid component.

You can change it to any position by changing the value and if you wish to hide it you can set it to 0.

See app usage dialogue

We have added a sites used count similar to the dashboard count aggregate so you know how many sites you are using.

Grid – Option to enable/disable searching on hidden columns

A new setting has been added to the grid component – ‘Search hidden columns’. The default value is set to false. This option only appears Allow searching is enabled.

Grid- Coloring cells based on the value

Oct 2022 (0 items)

No Release

Reviewing backlog and prioritising

Sep 2022 (7 items) (ver 1.5.12)

New “Refresh data” button on dashboards

We have added a button to the top bar on dashboards so that users can refresh data manually if needed.

New data source option (any site in the tenant)

You can now create a data source using any list from any site within the current tenant. This permits you to build dashboards using data stored on other sites.

Sintel App templates now include permissions

When you create an app template you can now include permissions. Both dashboards and navigation entries support permissions so if your app uses custom groups or has permissions applied to dashboards or navigation items using groups, then these can be included in the app template. Any groups required by the app will be created as part of the app import process. This feature makes moving an app from test to production much easier as the import process will create any of the SharePoint groups you need.

Sintel BI App Hub

This new feature enables customers to create an App Hub which is a central location to access all the apps that have been created in their environment. All sites that have Sintel BI added are automatically added to the App Hub and when an app is ready for use it can be published which makes it visible to users. Each app in the App Hub has a configurable title, colour, and icon. Within the App Hub users can search for apps and add specific apps to their favorites. The favoriting mechanism leverages the out-of-the-box favourite sites mechanism available in M365.

Filter component update

The Filter components now display data from lists based on the default list view. If certain items are excluded from the default list view then they won’t appear in the filter components.

Grid control date filtering improvement

Previously when filtering by a date multiple entries could be shown for a date if multiple items contained that date. This has been updated such that only 1 filter option is shown per date i.e. duplicate dates are no longer shown.

New “Show usage” screen

Sintel BI -> Settings -> My License -> Show usage. This new screen will display all the sites in the tenant where Sintel BI is in use including the number of dashboards in each site. The screen permits the user to check all sites to verify if an upgrade is available for them and to update all sites they have access to. The screen is accessible from any site in which Sintel BI is in use which makes it very easy for an admin to upgrade all sites across the environment.

Aug 2022 (3 items) (ver 1.4.28)

Settings – Page redesigned

The settings screen has been redesigned to improve its look and ease of use.

Orphaned Column error message improved

In the case of an orphaned lookup list, an error message is now displayed with the name of the look-up column.

Demo Dashboard

When someone newly installs Sintel BI, a single demo dashboard is included. Users can now view and play around with a preconfigured dashboard to help them understand how the app works. This dashboard is also easily deleted if the user does not need it anymore.

Jul 2022 (4 items) (ver 1.4.24)

Navigation – Multilevel

There is now multilevel navigation so that items can be grouped for users who add multiple links to the navigation.
You now simply add a heading such as ‘dashboards’ and you drop your dashboards under the heading.

When you hover over the heading on the navigation, the dashboard options will then appear.

Navigation – Minimal

You can now enable a compact variation of the navigation menu which only displays the icons.

Navigation – Reorder of creation navigation

When you are creating a dashboard the left navigation menu has been reordered. They are now displayed in the following order: Getting started, Data Sources, Dashboards and all three items can be hidden via the settings page.

Data Source – View/Edit source of a data source

There is a new option to enable users to view and edit data within the data source menu.

Jun 2022 (2 items) (ver 1.4.10)

Navigation – Link Names

Full link names are now displayed when the user hovers over the link on the navigation.

Map Component

We have added two kinds of maps:

Bubble maps – enable the user to visualise quantative values using different-sized bubbles on a map.

Choropleth maps – allow the user to show quantitative values based of of a colour scale.

Hovering over the map sections displayed further details about the data.

May 2022 (7 items) (ver 1.4.1)

Grid – Remove/ Add all columns

An option has been added to remove/ add all visible columns to a grid in one go. This improves how quickly you can add the right columns to your grid.

Grid – Default columns visible improved

Previously when a user added data to a grid, all columns from the list were added to the grid by default. This created a cluttered default grid. Now the columns visible on the grid are set to a limit of 20 by default, making it easier for the user to pick and choose which columns they want to be visible.

New date formatting for charts 

It is possible to display date columns as values on charts in a few different ways i.e. Year, Month, Day of the week.
A new option was requested and that was to show the date on a char as: “Month, Year” for example “May 2022”.

Data Source storage improvements 

We adjusted how data sources were stored. There is now common storage for data sources such that only a single copy of each data source is stored.

Navigation – Improvements to Hiding 

There is a setting available to hide the left navigation panel. We have made improvements so that the user doesn’t have to refresh the page to see if they have applied this setting.

Dashboard Viewer – Empty Dashboard information

If a dashboard is empty, text and an icon are now displayed to inform the user that nothing has been added to the dashboard.

Dashboard Designer – Refresh data sources option

Apr 2022 (0 items)

No Release

Reviewing backlog and prioritising

Mar 2022 (5 items) (ver 1.2.8)

Grid Component – New delete confirmation modal

When deleting a list item via the grid component a new confirmation modal is shown to confirm the deletion.

Filter Component Settings – show only data sources that are used on a dashboard

All of the filter components have the DataSource property and previously all of the data sources were listed. With this update, only those data sources which are assigned to at least one component are listed.

Grid – show dates based on the site regional setting

All the dates shown on the grid control now inherit the regional settings of the site in which the grid control is used. The only exception to this is when a user overrides those settings with personal time settings.

New Default theme options

We have added a number of default themes to enable customers to quickly change the branding applied to apps built with Sintel BI.

Accumulation charts – change the default size of the component

Previously when adding the accumulation chart to a dashboard, it displayed as 4×4 by default, we have changed this default size to 8×8.