⚙️ UX Improvements and the best Access management mechanism !

The power of the graph for custom access management

This is one of the greatest feature we have added so far. Custom Graph-based access management is just great. And it works perfectly because we sit on top of a graph database.

Custom Graph Access

The concept is the following: for each type of information (node and relationship) we allow you to define a graph query which if it resolved allows access. By default, Ganister has generic permissions to give access to information to specific groups. But sometimes, and it usually happens when you want to give access to external partners, the access rule is a bit more complex and the only way to describe it is by drawing it on a whiteboard. The cypher query we write to implement this is the next step. Easy to write, easy to understand and performant.

By providing the following Cypher query, any user member of a company for whom you are delivering parts and documents will have access to it without having any other generic access.

MATCH (u)-[:memberOf]->(:company)<-[:forCustomer]-(:project)-[:delivers|contains|isDocumentedWith*]->(n)

UX Improvements

Where-used

The new where use feature is great, it is giving quick information about all the connections of a node. Thanks to the graph database, it is also performant has you don't to navigate n relationship tables like you would have to do with a relational database (SQL).

ECO Impact Matrix

Getting customers active on the ECO is giving us a lot of interesting usability feedback. The bigger Impact Matrix get, the more any UX glitch becomes an issue. We simplified the actions you can take on an ECO and we added visual helpers to identify similar elements from the before and the after grid.

String properties formatting

We added a small feature requested by a customer. For homogeneity, they wanted some fields to always be capitalized. Therefore we added a format feature on string properties which allows to set a specific formatting.

Open Ganister with a specific node

When you assign someone on a task, this person can receive an email notification. Until now, the message was just text. We now added a link to ganister with the information to directly open the node related to the assignment.

Server Enhancements

Importing Files with our dataloader

We recently demonstrated it on our youtube channel, you can now not only import data (nodes and relationships) using our dataloader. You can also import files.

Reporting Engine enhancements [Open Source]

This might not be well known but our reporting engine is completely open source and independant from Ganister. It can be useful for anyone using neo4j and wants to build table reports from a graph database. We implemented a few improvements lately with the capability to pass a timezone and various fixes like handling null values for string properties.

Ganister Cypher Reporter

Upgrade

You can upgrade you own instances running npm run upgrade.

Change Log

• [Main Client] Allow to open ganister with a node opened specified in the URL
• [Main Client] Add various usability improvement to the impact matrix
• [Main Client] Reduce dashboard loadtime by reducing workflow related properties fetched
• [Main Client] Fix nodeprop modal selection when creating a new related node
• [Main Client] Remove PLM references to follow our communication pivot
• [Main Client] Fix displaying 0 values in grids
• [Main Client] Add a new whereUsed feature available in grids and replacing the former graph view
• [Full Stack] Allow disabling node actions based on lock state
• [G-Config] add graph access configuration tab
• [Ganister Server] add graph access capability
• [Ganister Server] allow to add text formating on string properties (uppercase, lowercase, capitalized)
• [Ganister Server] Prevent adding/removing change elements in an ECO if already processed
• [Ganister Server] Fix file checking/checkout interface which did not rename correctly the file node
• [Ganister Server] Enhance ECO performance by passing nodetype information in cypher queries
• [Ganister Server] Improve sending notification emails with node url
• [Ganister Server] nodejs minimum requirement raised to v16.14.2
• [Ganister Server] Set assignment creator as requestor by default (custom method)
• [Ganister Server] Fix default value setting for decimal values
• [API] Allow to pass properties to fetch from node properties
• [Utilities] Allow importing files from the local filesystem in addition to Data
• [Reporting Engine] Fix timezone issue by passing the requestor timezone
• [Reporting Engine] Fix handling null string values
• [Reporting Engine] Allow using the contextual user in report queries (enables custom access rights)"

Looking forward

We are definitely late on organizing live webinars. We had to work on the product and serve our customers first. This is work in progress and should be announced soon.

Next

Just download it ! :)