Welcome to the JMP Development Update for April 28, 2023!
JMP 17.1.1 has proceeded into the final installer validation phase after successful functional testing and confirmation from both customers that they are indeed happy with the planned fixes. This fix release will resolve critical issues impacting important customers Regeneron and Taiyo Yuden. To read more about the contents of this fix release, please see this page in Confluence. This release will not be made generally available to all customers, but will be offered upon request for impacted sites.
On Monday we notified Early Adopter members that JMP 18 EA2 is ready on My JMP and we’re already seeing responses from the three associated usability studies (MSA Design, Easy DOE factor list, and SEM). If you want to take a look at features we’re highlighting in EA2, see the JMP 18 Single Source Document. Or, if you’d like to see what Early Adopter members see, all JMP Staff can access the Early Adopter page on my.jmp.com. Note: if you have a SalesForce license you need to access My JMP through SalesForce (i.e. don’t use my.jmp.com). Please see the Early Adopters FAQ for more details about the program.
We plan to freeze JMP 18 EA3 on May 12th. We are now only ~3 months out from our JMP 18 Feature Freeze milestone planned for 7/21/23. Thanks very much to those of you who continue to add new feature pages in our JMP 18 Features category in the JMP Confluence space this week! You can check out all the JMP 18 Feature pages here. Please follow this How-To page that covers how to use the JMP 18 feature page template when you create a new page.
A cross-functional group known as The First 5 Team has been meeting since the fall to explore ideas for improving the new user experience. Much of this work, including some plans for changes in the JMP 18 cycle, are captured here. In addition, a large group from across JMP met during the Reunion to explore how to solve the new user problem, “I open JMP and I don’t know what to do.” Several ideas were generated, and a next step is to develop prototypes. More to follow in future updates, but a big thank you to all who participated in the workshop!
Big thanks go out to Nick Ruva for completing a migration of the JMP DevOps Jenkins automation server into AWS this week! This Jenkins server houses hundreds of projects that define automated tasks ranging from ongoing continuous integration builds for various branches to nightly code analysis runs, weekly help and daily MIF/PDF builds, the “Bots” (XBot, TestBot, StringBot, JiraBot), as well as critical download and data processing jobs for crashes, JMP telemetry, L10N processing and QA jobs. Nick and others continue to also work on migrating of the Windows agent VMs that run those automation jobs over to AWS. Nick migrated numerous CI build, baseline test and analysis VMs to AWS over the last several months. Audrey relocated data processing and installer testing VMs, and Kryzsztof migrated the L10N team’s JMPTRAN MemoQ server that executes numerous L10N automated jobs. We do not have a cost effective solution for Macs in AWS due to Apple licensing restrictions, so as we move off SAS-owned Macs where we have been hosting VMs using VMWare, Nick has been working with teams to order additional Macs for us to host in the JMP lab.
Nick continues to work with various team members to create Windows images in AWS to replace additional SAS-owned VMs. Myron Chandler, Melanie Drake and Devon Powell are currently working through testing the MIF and PDF generation process on an AWS machine, while Jim Borek has begun migrating unit test machines, and Dave Barbour has worked on moving some parts of the image differencing pipeline to an AWS image. Lifting and shifting machines and processes to the cloud requires patience, teamwork, and a willingness to experiment with different configurations to optimize process performance and machine settings. Thanks also go out to Alex Taylor, Josh LoPresti and Daniel Powell for sharing advice and knowledge gained during the JMP host and JMP Live teams’ own AWS migrations!
Congratulations to JMP team members who were honored at the recent SAS patent dinner! Caleb King, Brad Jones, John Sall, Ryan Lekivetz and Joseph Morgan were all recognized for their patents awarded over the past year.
Wenjun Bao reports busy days in Copenhagen at the CDISC Europe Interchange this week! She attended the CDISC board meeting for the first 2 days. In the afternoon of the second day, Wenjun gave a presentation titled “Streamline Assessing Clinical Trial Data with Standards Using FDA NDAs and CRs as Examples” and Geoff Mann gave a live demo of JMP Clinical 17 at a CDISC and JMP joint workshop. JMP’s Christian Bille (based in Copenhagen) also attended to support the team. CDISC CEO Dave Evans joined the workshop and shared his great JMP user experiences with audiences during and after the workshop. Dave liked the workshop format and wants to continue to hold joint CDISC workshop events with JMP. (No word on whether there was any team karaoke after the event, though…:smiling_face_with_smiling_eyes:)
In addition, the JMP Japan team held an introductory seminar this week highlighting the newly revamped JMP-only version of JMP Clinical 17 and invited Wenjun to present a virtual keynote based on her CDISC talk. Wenjun says a special thank you to Hideo Oi and Naohiro Masukawa, who presented excellent demos featuring JMP Clinical and machine learning features in JMP. Thanks to the time zone difference, she is happy to report that she did not have to get up at 1am but instead joined the seminar after 7am!
Thanks very much to Tonya Mauldin for sharing this week’s beta/crash tracks with crashes selected!
JMP Beta Report - Distribution | JMP Live (sas.com)
And finally, thanks to Audrey Shull for sharing this Jira Tip of the Week!
JMP has added an issue type called Initiative to many of our projects. You will see it as an option when you add a new issue. Initiatives are a new issue type in Jira. Atlassian describes Initiatives as “collections of epics that drive toward a common goal.” We’ve generally used epics to describe a major new feature, and then the epic is broken down into stories corresponding to pieces of functionality. Initiatives are even bigger in scope and will be used by Product Management to help categorize our work and group related epics. While being more rarely used, Initiatives will play an important role in helping to organize our JMP Roadmap. Expect to see and hear more about them from Product Management in the future!
General Announcements
- If you’re willing to be a featured employee on Inside JMP, please download a copy of the Get to Know form. Simply fill out the questions and when you’re done, upload it, along with 3 photos of you to the folder. Thank you for helping to make our JMP family a little more familiar!
Important Upcoming Dates
- JMP 18 EA3 Freeze – 5/12/23
- JMP 17.2 Code Approval – 6/13/23
- JMP 18 EA4 Freeze – 6/23/23
- JMP 17.2 Code Freeze – 6/30/23
- Please visit Confluence for a full list of JMP 17 and JMP 18 dates.
JMP Development Updates
Interactive HTML
- John Powell: Planned end of sprint meetings. Fixed incorrect markers positions in oneway (JMPHTML-2103). Reviewed candidates for our open C++ developer position. Submitted support for using column values as markers (JMPHTML-1036).
JMP Live
- Aurora: 18.0 - Improved "immediate" notification emails (don't batch them, make subject lines more helpful). Removed the "Following" feature entirely. Started work on removing package-level control over downloadability. Fixed a few bugs. Miscellaneous: Chatted with Bryan Fricke about getting fast feedback for JMP Live usability. Met with Sheila Spence to start the discussion about GDPR compliance in JMP Live. More interviewing for an open JMP Live position.
- Michael G: Worked on new report view layout for JMP Live. It’s looking good! Also shared report view updates in UI meeting.
Statistics
- Jianfeng: Working on fixing issues from technical support that could be possibly integrated into JMP17.2 including JMP-15017 and JMP-14862. Similar work will be applied to JMP-16392.
Life Sciences Updates
- Elizabeth: Fixed predictions and the prediction formula for GLMMs with a continuous random effect following John’s work on the other Mixed-type platforms. Working on the next repeated measures structure for GLMM – ANTE(1).
- Laura C-S: Investigating a bug with robust inference when using multiple-groups. Continued working with James to submit an abstract for Discovery and prepared an upcoming brief presentation for Novozymes.
- John Sall: Completed fixes for non-centered continuous random factors, with Elizabeth and Fang. (JMP-16431) Fix two Stepwise bugs reported by Yusuke for mixed direction. (JMP-16491, JMP-5580)
- Annie: Worked on importing & exporting Product Statistics into CCB for the Short Run control charts.
Stat Testing
- Mark: Testing Jira tickets for Load Design feature in Easy DOE with Jacob. Met with DOE team and patent lawyers to address issues raised by examiner. Investigating issues with using Mail() JSL function in usability study scripts. Help Jacob diagnose issues for some EA customers when running the add-in for usability study. Answer questions in JMP Community.
- Jacob: Testing Load Design in Easy DOE, working on new load design unit tests. Testing the Easy DOE factor list. Testing Explore Missing Values and adding unit tests for recent fixes. Investigating beta feedback about the usability study add-ins.
- Tonya: Testing short run control charts and the process potential graph in process screening. Reviewed OSI changes made by documentation. Answered a user community question about distribution in V15. Bug verification.
Stat Documentation
- Michael C: Worked with Colleen to get help keys added for “Columns” messages for stat platforms in the Scripting Index so that the Topic Help buttons in those entries will work. In general, the button will take users to launch window documentation for the various platforms. Also, worked on various doc Jiras for bugs and NFs.
Product Management
- Product marketing hosted a training on the Chemical Industry this week led by presenters James Barkatullah and Scott Allen. You can check out this excellent recap of the session on Inside JMP written by Kaylee Warren.
- Dan V: Met with Jeff, Daniel, Brian, Stan and John Jones to discuss a new JMP 18 User License process using My JMP.
- Bryan F: Working on a prototype of a revision to the data index, logistics related to an internal usability panel, and providing design guidance.
Technical Support
- Duane: Tech support participated in the effort to make sure JMP 17.1.1 updaters would address Regeneron’s issues, and the Tech Walkthrough for the upcoming Novozymes Hackathon. Wendy is preparing for her first hire, Christine Kjellberg, to start next week, too! TS continues to be involved with numerous other projects:
- The progression of My JMP
- Testing Legacy data (GIDB) in Salesforce
- Preparing Service Cloud infrastructure for Engagement (email to case, phone queue, etc)
- Transitioning support from the SAS CEC to the JMP Engagement Team
- Preparing for Store 2.0 support
- Getting JMP Japan TS into Salesforce
- As always, Tech support continues to handle our customers cases and tracks. Here are the TS JMP Live reports and the link to the Jira filter showing the tickets reported by TS for the last 14 days
Development Operations
- Bob: JMP 17.1.1 Windows installer build and testing work, download page creation, Windows installer validation benchmark file creation. Began steps to get 17.2 release in the SAS process. Alert management about the end of physical media choice for distributing JMP software.
- Myron: Updated telemetry database to accommodate larger download files. Still reprocessing some updates. Updates to the AWS environment for localization scripts (JMPTOOL-767). Removed OpenAM agent from jmptool's Apache config and installed an SSL certificate; still need to fully connect Azure authentication (JMPTOOL-809). Minor updates to test run processing after Jenkins migration (JMPTOOL-847).
- Jim: AWS instances, JMP Clinical 17.1 rebuild and JMP 17.1.1 builds.
- Shannon: Reviewed Jenkins projects after AWS migration and reported a few issues to Nick R who fixed them quickly. Thanks, Nick! Reviewing various ongoing retirement plans for existing JMP resources - I appreciate the input teams are receiving from across JMP as we seek to streamline and improve resources for new users. Also, reading about Windows Insider programs for various Microsoft products. Microsoft has taken to offering several different tiers or channels of pre-production builds for customer testing. These range from (my personal favorite name) “Canary” daily experimental builds that have undergone little to no testing, to weekly Dev builds that are more stable but still experimental, to less frequently released but much more stable pre-release builds.
Documentation
- Chris B: Worked on the 17.2 Jenkins job and script. Now that EN 17.1 is official, updated the 17.0 indexing and latest-help banner. Fixed a 17.1 help metadata value that Mike Muhlada found. Documented how to update the add-ins.
System/Host Testing-Cary
- Mike M: Lots of image diff noise this week as David Barbour finished moving the image testing over to AWS. Several Header stat issues were also causing noise. I noticed that our testing dashboard wasn’t displaying any HTML results during this noisy time, which Nick H reported and Dave B fixed. Found a meta data issue with JMP 17.0 help. Opened a couple Regression Jiras for Oneway jitter limits and an HTML5 Lines issue with missing/Excluded data. Updated Sikuli tests to remove Tutorials from 18.0 and beyond. Reviewed EA Columns Viewer feedback with Ernest and will open suggestion Jiras for those items early next week.
- Mandy: Did 17.1.1 installer testing; worked on a few TS track issues; worked on testing and verifying JIRA’s and adding test cases where I could. Tracked down a preferences issue with column stats and image test and got that resolved. Submitted Abstract for advanced WFB talk for Discovery US in the fall.
- Audrey: 17.1.1 discussions, evaluations, and prepping for an abbreviated round of installer testing for this limited release (JMPTEST-733). AWS conversions. Intern planning.
- Lisa G: Worked on testing fix to improve readability of stacked Y-axis labels and entered a regression bug and started 17.1.1 testing.
Web Test Team-Cary
- Anna: Testing John P’s new implementation of Contour Plot in HTML5.Testing transform columns with column Switcher. NOT doing installer testing! (Thank you, Audrey). :smiling_face_with_smiling_eyes:
- Josh L: JMP Live AD and New History Report testing. Overseeing the JMP 17.1.1 installer testing and testing fixes.Anna – Working on the HTML5 check list for 18.0.
- Steve Chen: JMP Live and HTML5 frame work and testing. Also reviewing HTML5 code changes.
- Hui: HTML5 testing and now has automation running for HTML5!
Web test Team Jira Status - Beijing / Cary
64 - Stories in Test-Ready
8 - Stories in Testing
14 - Jira’s closed in the last 7 days
11 - New bugs created
System/Host Testing-Beijing
Data Discovery
- Xan: Updating some RowStateRemap uses to avoid duplicate rows in messages. Working around Term re-entrancy issue in scoreLevels. Since scoreLevels()’s threading/progressBar can trigger update events, it’s a good idea to check nLevels before using a Term. If it’s zero, the score vector can’t be trusted.
- Dan S: Column Switcher changes to support broadcast and fix issue with transform columns. Fix crash in LineupRulerBox. Fix launch performance issue related to Group Platform. Continuing initial work on Platform Templates.
- Dave B: Fixed a crash caused by editing Conditional Formatting rules, surface profiler legend work, box plot tooltip fix, and fixed a bug that prevented html image diff images from showing up in the testing dashboard.
- Evan: Working on column substitution for Platform Templates. Improving performance of Match. Looking for unnecessary Send to Report calls.
DOE
- Caleb: Attended the DATAWorks 2023 workshop in Alexandria, VA. It was great to meet up with colleagues in the defense sector and hear about some of the interesting work going on there! I presented a talk on some work I’ve done with Peter Parker at NASA and Derek Young at University of Kentucky.
- Brad: Wrote a script to investigate the possibility of having two zeros instead of one in each half of a DSD. So far, the results are disappointing but may merit further research in different directions.
Host
- John Schroedl: Added function which allows portable dev to override host rules and hide a window’s status bar. Removed Help tutorial menus and related TOTD actions. Persist selected file dialog filter choices across sessions as requested by Airbus and others. Starting investigation of migrating from end of life .NET Framework to .NET Core. Helped with build issues.
Note from Shannon
If you (like me) are disappointed by the lack of karaoke news from both the CDISC workshop as well as the SAS patent dinner, well, you’ll just have to console yourself with memories of performances from JMP reunion and this humorous video about Data Science & Statistics provided by Annie Dudley.
