When upgrading please run the pre-requisite steps for each version up to and including the specific steps in Version 4.6 that are listed in our upgrade guide in our documentation. These steps are essential to run Loome Publish correctly. Please ensure you read our guide before upgrading here.
In this version there have been large changes to CSS within the portal, including the navigation menu. This will require you to test and update any custom CSS you may have. If you require assistance with this, please contact us at support@loomesoftware.com.
This version includes the addition of the Data Catalogue mode to Loome Publish. The Data Glossary will enable you to create entities and relationships for your BI environment. You can search for and visualise these entities and their relationships via a network graph diagram. You can also annotate these entities with custom attributes.
Loome Publish now provides APIs to import/export and manipulate the Data Catalogue, which will allow you to create new entities for objects such as tables, measures, data sources etc and then optionally link these to assets and terms registered in Loome Publish.
Administrators can access the Data Catalogue by clicking the Data Catalogue icon in the top right of the application, non-administrators are added to the Data Catalogue when assigned the Steward or Reader role.
This release has included a number of improvements to user and group management within Loome Publish for administrators.
When providing access to roles and audiences, you will now be able to visually determine a user or group by an appropriate icon. Where you have added or are adding a group you can expand the group to view membership to ensure you have selected the right group.
If you try to add a user or group that is already added, you will receive a notification.
When looking at an asset, you can view the effective membership for that asset. This will help you determine any issues through combinations of term audiences applied to that asset.
Users will be able to navigate by any term set used for assets in Loome Publish. The user will initially be presented with a default term set, but can choose a different term set from a drop down on the navigation panel.
Administrators will be able to configure audiences on any term set used for assets, and set a default term set to facilitate users navigating by any term set.
Administrators can now export usage data via API calls to Loome Publish. This is done by generating an API key through Loome Publish API Keys section, and then using this key when calling the usage API’s to retrieve data.
You can use tools such as Power BI Desktop to connect to these APIs and extract the data for further analysis.
A general notification system has been added to Loome Publish. This system will provide in-app and email based notifications for things such as helpdesk tickets, discussions, and licensing.
Depending on whether the user is logged in to the app, the application can notify them within the application or send an email if they are not online.
In an upcoming release, this will be expanded to include a notification hub where users can made and view their notifications.
Users will no longer be redirected to the home page when trying to browse to a particular URL within Loome Publish if they have been prompted to sign-in. In addition, users can now copy links to particular assets and send these to colleagues. When sharing a data source such as a SQL Server Database, the application will prompt the user on how best to access the asset and what troubleshooting may be required.
Loome Publish will now incorporate an optional EULA. As an administrator, you can choose to configure an EULA that end users must accept before using Loome Publish.
This can periodically be enforced, and the text of the EULA customised to fit your needs.
Administrators can now choose to send helpdesk requests to an external system such as ServiceNow via a customizable email template. Administrators can also choose to turn off the helpdesk altogether.
Administrators can now configure a Source System to import assets from PowerBI.com. This will allow you to automatically import assets in to the drafts section for your publishers to tag and publish.
Loome Publish will now support the ability to run in a highly available mode. This will allow you to configure multiple IIS servers running the Loome Publish front end behind a load balancer, while running the Loome Publish database on a highly available SQL Server.
Administrators can now upload and apply their own font files. You can do this by uploading your custom font files, and then referencing them in your custom CSS.
Various usability aspects of the portal can now be configured too including the ability to disable discussions to set a default view for asset board (card or list view).
Loome Publish Version 4.6 adds support for the latest version of Loome Identity (2.6).