Do more with more!

We are happy to announce that Viewport 5.3 is available as of today.

This is our biggest release yet, with over 90 new features and bugfixes. It has a light, modern and ergonomic user interface and provides more ways to get data in and out of Viewport. We have made it easier to improve your data quality and work with files. Authentication and permissions have also been extended. In this blog post we will explain all the new and exciting things you can find in version 5.3. Let Viewport help you do more… with more!

We have updated the Viewport user interface based on feedback from usability studies. The overall color scheme is a lot lighter (unless you select the new Dark mode, of course!) and less cluttered. We removed large text links from several places and added small icons in one place, for a more consistent user experience. Links have been added in other places to help you move around more easily.

Viewport 5.3 mockup

Data, any way you want it!

Getting data into Viewport and making it look the way you want has never been easier. Our philosophy has always been to support the ELT (extract-load-transform) approach instead of the more traditional ETL (extract-transform-load). A couple of new features have been added to support transforming the data after it has been loaded in Viewport:

  • File editing: you can instruct Viewport to split files, rotate pages, perform OCR, or do shape recognition after the file has been imported. A new “re-import request” can be issued to reprocess the file.
  • Metadata editing: if enabled, you can edit metadata of files and other entities. You can change or remove metadata and add new metadata. With the new metadata type “label” you create links between files and tags, without actually having to change the file or source system.
  • Full undo and replay capabilities: we set up file and metadata editing so that changes can always be undone. And if a newer version of a file or tag record comes in, changes are re-applied automatically so you don’t have to redo any work.
  • Data Tables and Data Views: you can import Excel and CSV files into Data Tables. These Data Tables can be used in Data Views, as a source to query and combine with (derived) data in the Viewport database. Data Views can also integrate with JSON data from web services. This opens up a world of possibilities for reporting and providing data to other applications

With this new data transformation tooling, Viewport 5.3 can form an important building block in your application data landscape.

New Grid Component

Viewport has a new grid component that is used in a lot of different places. You can add and remove columns, filter by one or more columns, and sort by any column.

The data that is shown in the new grid component can be downloaded as a CSV file. Any column filters that are active are also applied before exporting to CSV, so “what you see is what you get”!

Authentication and Authorization, Augmented

Besides the existing SAML-based single sign-on (SSO) support, Viewport 5.3 now also OpenID Connect (OIDC). This offers more ways to connect your existing identity provider to Viewport, with the benefits of enhanced security through two factor authentication (2FA). We have focused on making the configuration more flexible, so that you do not have to change anything in your existing usergroups or roles to make things work in Viewport. For example, custom roles can be carried over from your Active Directory and assigned permissions to view certain data in Viewport. And in 5.3 it is also possible to assign multiple AD usergroups to a single Viewport role, or a single AD usergroup to multiple Viewport roles. Mix and match it any way you like!

For those that use Viewport’s built in identity management: you can now force users to change their passwords on first log on, and enable them to change their own passwords.

New Historian plugin

A new Historian plugin is available. It is bundled with Viewport 5.3 so it is part of the Viewport update cycle, making the solution more robust when APIs change. The look and feel seamlessly integrates in the new interface. Setup has been simplified. And best of all, it now can connect to both AVEVA PI and OPC UA so it can show data from more historians than before.

And there's more...

Yes, there are more features in Viewport 5.3 that we have not covered yet! For example: automatic referencing by manufacturer and model (eliminates the need to link manuals!), integration possibilities into other web applications, site reports, support for PDF portfolios, quicklinks to edit data directly in source systems (e.g. SharePoint)…

We will follow up in other blog posts to tell you more about the new version in more detail. We hope you are as excited about this new release as we are!

(Oh and there is also an easter egg inside the new version, see if you can find it!)

Contact us

Want to experience first-hand what Viewport 5.3 has to offer? Contact us for a demonstration.