Welcome to the JMP Development Update for January 26, 2024!
JMP 18 EA8 was branched this week. EA8 installers for JMP Pro and JMP Clinical are currently being tested and QA teams in Cary and Beijing hope to sign off early next week. JMP Live will also have an EA8 release for an important customer.
With documentation freeze now in the rearview mirror, the doc team has been focused on generating JMP Help files and verifying that content and formatting are all correct in advance of final installer candidate testing. We are currently planning to use the 18.0 installers from 1/30/24 as our final installer candidates for JMP 18.0.
I appreciate all the work on Jira triage that people have been doing today! I have added a calendar reminder for two weeks from today with details on updating remaining non-closed items that still have Planned Version = 18.0. Items not updated by that point will have 18.0 removed from Planned Version. The step of updating Planned Version is an important part of developers’ process for closing out 18.0. It is also extremely helpful in the planning process for 18.1 for downstream teams. Documentation and localization teams are currently working together to send JMP book content out for translation, and may prioritize work differently depending on what is planned for the near term in the 18.1 schedule.
If you are still planning to add minor new features into 18.1 that were not ready in time to ship in 18.0, please be aware that our Development Feature Freeze date for 18.1 is currently planned for 4/19/24, just before the portable UI string deadline for 18.1. It is crucially important to get any planned feature work done early in the cycle so that we can meet our milestones and ship 18.1 as planned in September.
The JMP Dev meeting schedule for this year is pretty wide open, so please add your name to the volunteer schedule in Confluence if you’d like to talk about new feature plans, share a tool or practice that you use that may be of interest to the group, or share a presentation you’re giving or have given at Discovery or another conference.
Finally, thanks very much to Tonya Mauldin for sharing this week’s report of beta and crash cases with crashes selected!
Beta and crash cases for the week of 1/26/2024 | JMP Live (sas.com)
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 18.0 Final Installer Candidate – 1/30/24
- JMP 18.0 QA Signoff – 2/20/24
- Please visit Confluence for a full list of JMP 18 dates.
JMP Development Updates
Web Testing – Cary
- Josh L: Chris Humphrey and I spent a few hours on a tech support call troubleshooting a certificate issue. The issue turned out to be the wrong root certificate on the server and a corrupt client certificate on the workstation. Refactored some of the JMP Live automated installation scripts to now log some start and stop times. This will help when debugging during release shuffles. Working on verifying a Jira that has improved the deletion experience for JMP Live users. We went from just under 4 minutes to 49 seconds. A lot of code was touched in 18.1 and 19.0 so this verification is taking me a while to complete.
- **Welcome to new tester** Natalie M: Finally received badge and can open doors myself! Yay! Received the office equipment we ordered and made progress setting up Cary office. Met with Beth for more onboarding. I am working through her list. Met with Audrey. Lots of Confluence reading to get familiar with team responsibilities. Started weekly meetings. Completed some JMP training through webinars. Worked with Steve Chen to begin learning the automation framework.
- Anna: Trying to keep up with verifications for all of Praveena’s fixes for Area charts. Everything works now! Helping Paul S track down issues with Fit Curve plot in various browsers. Investigating selection and zoom problems in JMP Live.
System/Host Testing-Beijing
- Da Zhang: (1) Bug verification. (2) Reviewed JMeter load test results. (3) Investigation on TS00122726 and TS00123740. (4) Testing two New HTTP Request features: JMP-20018 and JMP-19933. (5) JMP 19.0 WinAutomation test failures investigation (JMPTESTBJ-2953).
Data Discovery
- Ernest: Pushed rework of left hand table panel. Feedback is welcome, and feel free to ping me with anything that is broken. This panel manages column selection, so subtle nuances can cause unintended behavior changes at distant places in JMP.
- Dave B: Pushed preview for save as pdf dialog and fixed related bugs, fixed blank pages in table of contents and added jsl support for table of contents (outline boxes are used to generate the table of contents).
- Xan: Jitter work and small bugs: nice log scales, SVG export for extreme values, SI examples, degenerate GB cases.
- Dan S: More prototyping for Visual Styling in JMP 19. JMP 18.1 updates for Data Filter and CCB with By-groups.
- Evan: Finished up the second round of prototyping for Visual Styling. Beginning to plan next steps.
- Morgan: Finished up prep work for merging JMP Notebook and Scintilla 5.x into JMP.
Host
- Paul N: Security updates to JMP 19.0 and 18.1: Libcurl to 8.5.0, Zlib to 1.3.1. Updated JMPDtPreview’s copy of Zlib and JMPPreviewer’s copy of Zlib. Fixed JMP-20150 – JMP 19.0, 18.1 - Fix Python Send()/Get() when numpy is installed after JMP launch. JMP will not recognize until next restart. Issue existed since JMP 14, but no customers reported. JMP 14 – 17 package install was always outside of JMP. Also resolved JMP-20140 – JMP 18.0, 18.01, 18.1, 19.0 – Fix module not found error on very first launch of JMP, the site-packages directory did not exist, and Python would ignore looking in the directory until next restart where it existed. Tech support incident reported from EA-7 customer. Put final touches on Python feature page.
- Michael H: For JMP 19, changed the minimum macOS version to macOS 12 Monterey. This required many Mac Host changes to avoid calling now-deprecated OS APIs, mostly to do with the Mac system for identifying file types. If you see any new file type issues (can’t open or save files of a particular type, files don’t have icons, etc.) please let me know. Copy/paste is similarly affected.
- Daniel Powell: Currently, we are testing all combinations of expiration, termination, and renewals as well as improving AWS and Salesforce leading into March’s release.
- John Schroedl: Finished updates to libxml2 including static analysis fixes. Prepping for replacement PC (backups, cleanup, etc.). Working with Evan and Dan on visual styling effort.
Interactive HTML
- John Powell: Added support for displaying the color and size roles in parallel plots(JMPHTML-1401, JMPHTML-2021). Integrated a fix for degenerate HDR ranges into 18.1(JMPHTML-13440). Taught newer team members how to integrate changes from main into 18.1. Integrated a fix for variable clustering into 18.1(JMPHTML-13442) Volunteered my team to write blogs for the launch of JMP 18.0(LAUN-62). Analyzed Interactive HTML Feature Requests with Dieter, Praveena, and Paul S. Fixed an issue with Missing color role showing up twice in parallel plot tooltips with help from Paul S. and Michael Senoyuit(JMPHTML-13482).
- Paul Spychala: This week’s development is about bugs and integrating into 18.1. Some fixes include: Dark Mode issues in HTML (JMPHTML-950). Make unsupported graphs with First View Level option static (JMPHTML-2170). Continued work on fixing wording inconsistencies with missing in HTML (JMPHTML-13486).
- Michael Senoyuit: Fixed JMPHTML-830: Tooltip far away from the corner of the visible seg after use magnifier and worked on JMPHTML-2290: BV: Pinned hoverlabel image remains stationary when zoom | pan chart view.
JMP Live
- Aurora: 18.1: Various bug fixes for audit log records and package access records. Created script to generate REST API document for internal self-hosting. 19.0: Deleted obsolete CLI tools. Removed / replaced unhealthy third-party libraries. Miscellaneous: Recorded online talk for Discovery Europe. Reviewed JMP Marketplace demo.
Statistics
- Jianfeng: Nonparametric exact tests for multi-level (more than 2 levels) and for N greater than 50 (JMP-13863) have been pushed. A progress bar to allow users have control over the computing process is added as well. The feature currently is in the testing process. If the testing goes well, the feature is planned for JMP18.1. Thanks!
- Laura C-S: Fixed issues with the copy options for the SEM diagram. There were 3 different options that were confusing and didn’t work properly. Reduced to one option, made sure diagram didn’t get truncated upon pasting (thanks to Dave Barbour!), that it didn’t disappear in HTML5, that the full tabbed report isn’t copied, and that formatting of edges was retained. Returned to work on customized SEM dialog for new estimation methods.
- John Sall: Integrated into 18.1 fixes for VMedian (JMP-9346), Contour Profiler (JMP-20008), Model Dialog (JMP-19690), Interaction Profiler (JMP-19690), and Bootstrap Forest (JMP-20064). In Response Screening, finished Poisson and Negative Binomial (JMP-19552 and JMP-19559). In Design Spacer Profiler, implemented interactive locking (JMP-18962). In Process Screening, fixed a Limits Table auto-selection issue (JMP-20181). In Fit Model dialog, started the implementation for a Causal Trt personality (JMP-20202).
Stat Documentation
- Michael C: Checked through online help output for 18.0 documentation; reviewed new features confluence page; proposed updates for some control chart entries in the Scripting Index, to be done in 19.0/18.1.
Stat Testing
- Mark B: Attended the 2024 DEI Action Team Kickoff meeting. Creating a new usability study using Choice Design to further understand preferences for the new interactive plot and user help on the Analyze tab of Easy DOE. Met with Mia and the other participants of a Roadmap session for JMP Discovery Summit Europe to plan lightning talks. Testing Torch Deep Learning add-in with help from James to set up a virtual machine in AWS that provides sufficient computing resources to run the add-in.
- Tonya: Working on beta reports, testing various options in 18, looking at Short Run issues brought up by Yusuke, and doing bug verification.
Product Management and Product Marketing
- Bryan F: Sarah Sylvestre and I developed initial requirements for an AI assistant by synthesizing pain points from internal user studies using Parker’s AI Assistant. Planning “discovery” work (i.e., external observational studies) related to JMP 19 efforts to improve data tables and introduce an AI assistant. Held first “Design of Everyday Things” book club meeting with Julian’s group. Created an AWS instance of JMP 18 for testing some Easy DOE design options. Created a proof of concept to show how to send user study results to a Google Firebase database. Updated the banner used on the JMP 18 About dialog to be consistent with the new application splash screen. More logistics related to the JMP Usability Lab for Discovery Summit Europe. Participated in planning for visual updates to JMP Live reports.
Technical Support and Engagement
- Wendy: Case volume is increasing. The Salesforce Support team will be adding some topic updates soon for case metadata. We hope that this update will enable us to provide better categorization and reporting on cases for both Technical Support and Engagement. 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.
- Case Volume by week:
- Case Topics for Engagement queue, total:
- Case Topics for Engagement queue, last week:
Development Operations
- Melanie: Implemented, tested, and enabled auto-integration jobs for quick start to 19.0 and 18.1 branches. Interviewed 2 outstanding candidates for the DevOps program manager position. Collaborated with localization on adding a job they can run to compile the XSTR files after returning translations. Reorganized Help Production Jenkins jobs to isolate old jobs to be deleted from new/current jobs now in use/development. Tested updates to Jirabot assignments. Work on various Jenkins jobs and other Jira update work.
- Jim: Branched 18.0 files for EA #8 for JMP Pro and JMP Clinical on WinOS and mac OS. Perforce support – primarily permissions and integrations. Working on setting up new daily UT machines and tying to Jenkins projects. Numerous software updates for various build and unit test machines.
- Myron: Worked on Stringbot 18.1 (JMPTOOL-1076) and 19.0/main (JMPTOOL-877) configuration and continued to work on the JiraBot UI and support program and database updates.
Localization
- Allison: Delivered localized HTML5 to Doc team; trained with Krzysztof on process for running validations in Jenkins after localized files have been pushed to P4; trained with Krzysztof on process for validating and pulling production source files to create localization projects; processed localized MDC, KS, and DJ and checked that changes were implemented to reflect the updated source English files.
- Krzysztof: Setting up our L10N workflow for v18 Books translations. Dealing with late updates to DJ, Menu Description Cards, Shared Text Insets and Keyboard Shortcuts projects. Updating TermBank (terminology) with the latest UI translations. Refining QA settings for Books projects.
- Sohail: Finished off TermBank scripts and process. Implemented updates to TM Search to run nightly. Preparing for re-training JMP Google AutoML models.
- Trish: Led monthly Doc and Localization Team meeting; localized files needed to build HTML5 help for 18.0 delivered to doc team; meetings with Allison to review over project setup for doc projects; gathering information to send to vendors regarding handoff of JMP User Documentation to translation.
- Sandy: Worked on automating verification for various Jenkins l10n source population jobs. Ran dry run of Big Books source load. Verified various Jira bugs. Began work on Jenkins job for XSTR file compile that is done after processing returns. This will take the place of manual process currently run.
- Howard: Finished migrating l10n Jenkins job to AWS.
Documentation
- Qiana: Closed or moved out open 18.0 Jiras. Reviewed my deliverables in the generated JMP help. Worked on my New Feature items. Made updates to the Automation Reference book and menu description cards.
- Devon: Final review on Multiple File Import for Excel and Wide Transforms docs, various doc publishing tasks and troubleshooting.
System/Host Testing-Cary
- Mandy: Worked on Main(19) changes and chased down several crashes at 19 or 18.1. Several changes at Main for Mac caused a few diffs – had developers make changes there. Reviewed several TS tracks again this week, and reported a crash and a few other interesting issues with Tables > Summary (Local Data Filter) for 18, but will be addressed in 18.1 and 19.0. Met the new tester for Josh, Natalie. Did installer testing for JMP18EA8 for Mac – and reported that I didn’t see issues with it. NOTE: next up will be 18.0 Installer testing – developers will have to keep a close watch on what they are pushing to Main branch, to ensure they don’t break stuff, since all the testers will be tied up with installer testing. :smiling_face_with_smiling_eyes:
- Hunter: More authorization testing with expiration and termination dates as well as a grid of configurations and reported issues to Daniel, tested the installer for several builds of JMP 18 EA 8 for Jim, some doc review, and ran a series of path and file location tests affecting projects and opened one issue.
Note from Shannon
Thanks to (Director of Product management) Dan Valente for passing along this Instagram post from a developer reminding you that the PM team believes in you! (As if you need that reminder. We all know our PM team really does.) Have a great weekend, all!
