Launch of Sisense Fusion 2021.12 — Notebooks, Web Access Token security and much more.

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Infusing intelligence everywhere is the way to uplevel standard to strategic decisions at the right place and the right time. At Sisense, we’re always working on enhancements to help you get more out of your data without endlessly switching between programs.

Our latest release provides a number of new features and significant improvements to the Sisense Fusion platform on Linux, which will maximize the value and impact that you get from analytics. Top features include the new notebooks, WAT based features, hide group from sharing, viewing queries to BigQuery dashboard and so on.  

By bringing the power and flexibility of code-first to BI, scaling the delivery of analytics securely, enhancing admin controls and ultimately delivering all users with faster time to insight and more informed decision-making, these features outlined below will change the way that you approach analytics in Sisense. 

Q4 2021

December release: L2021.12

Release notes

Sisense Fusion 2021.12 provides several new features and significant improvements to the Sisense Fusion platform on Linux.

Key highlights: 

Code driven analytics

Notebooks

With Notebooks, Sisense is bringing code-first to the self-service BI environment to provide data analysts with the tools to conduct advanced analysis, and accelerate time to insight. 

Analysts can unite disparate data, perform complex ad-hoc analysis in a fraction of the time, and develop easy-to-interpret charts that effectively tell compelling stories, all within an integrated workflow. With this next generation of data exploration, any organization can leverage one platform for in-depth analysis and BI to move the business forward, all while preserving data security and integrity.

 Code editor 

Notebooks provides a best-in-class multi-cell code editor that allows analysts to smoothly reference and continue their research from query to query without interruption. This is valuable for building complex queries step-by-step, asking separate but related questions and enhanced storytelling 

Folder organization

Folders can be used to organize Notebooks into relevant categories for efficient collaboration and management of many Notebooks. Owners and Admins are able to create folders based on subject or relevance and add their Notebooks and other folders (up to 3 levels) into them.

Python Notebook

Enhance SQL analytics with Python to easily perform advanced analysis such as predictive and time-series analysis without needing to jump between tools. With Python notebooks, analysts can expand on their data exploration by loading their SQL results into Python as data frames to do further calculations and transformations with a vast set of libraries. After using SQL to query the database, the analyst can use the SisenseHelper functions to load and save their work using Python. 

See Notebooks documentation for detailed information. 

 Admin experience updates 

Hide group from sharing 

At Sisense we are always working towards making analytics more reliable, personalized and secure. With this update, admins have greater control over permissions at scale. Users can limit sharing to a specific group that is used for configuration only. 

If “Limit Users Sharing” is enabled - this group will not be included in the list of users that are available for sharing. This provides increased control for the admins as well as reduced dependency on any add-ons especially in a multi-tenancy environment.  

Embed SDK accessible via Web Access Token

 The new web access token (WAT) feature that was introduced a few months back, grants a secure, scalable, and customizable viewer experience. With this release, you can enrich and scale the infusion experience by including the WAT parameter with a generated Web Access Token when configuring your Embed SDK.

User Role Restrictions prevent Web Access Token users from performing actions higher than the Viewer role experience permits (the primary concept of the Web Access Token approach) - SDK actions available for edit Mode or Designer and higher roles were disabled.

See Embed SDK for information on configuring Embed SDK.

 Web Access Token-based Jump to Dashboard plugin support

 We are continuously innovating new ways to support your analytics experience, while keeping your data and users secure. Keeping that in mind, the first aligned and approved plugin supported for Web Access Token usage is ‘Jump to Dashboard’. See Jump to Dashboard for information on this plugin.

Sisense is currently developing full support and compatibility for all Sisense-certified plugins in Web Access Token-based environments.

Web Access Token security 

At Sisense we are committed to providing granular security controls to keep your analytics secure yet easily accessible. With this release, you can apply data security rules for each token and dynamically define the scope of available data for the end analytical consumer on a per business case basis.

Include the token’s data security rule within the "grants": { "acl": [ {acl1}, {acl2}, etc ] } claim.

Self Service Data Model 

Percentile and Quartile Analytic Functions for Live Models

Users now have greater scope to explore data velocity with additional statistical functions. When creating a new formula, the Percentile and Quartile analytical functions are now available for querying the data source for Live models

This is relevant only for Live models using the new analytical engine.

Manual upgrade

This release includes a major security upgrade and with this increased protection, you must now perform a one-time manual upgrade to your server-side plugins for them to continue functioning.

To perform the upgrade, you can either contact your CSM or follow the step-by-step guidelines in the release notes. 

For further details on these features, check out the Release Notes that include a full list of features and enhancements, or contact your CSM.  

Also, watch this video from our training team, demonstrating how to use the new features: How to Use the Top 5 Features from the December 2021 Release in 7 minutes.