Special announcement: During the weekend of March 1-2, SAS IT is planning to update the server OS version on jmpsi. JMP DevOps expects Perforce to be unavailable on Saturday, March 2, and possibly the outage may extend into Sunday, March 3. Stay tuned for more information coming next week.
Welcome to the JMP Development Update for February 23, 2024!
This week, we paused testing of JMP 18.0 final installer candidate #3 in anticipation of receiving updated translated license files from legal to be included in JMP 18.0 final candidate #4, planned to be built early next week. Special thanks to Bob Hickey for working with testing teams to triage issues found with the license text, and to the JMP legal team, who in turn worked with their translation vendor to obtain required revisions. In past release cycles, special click-through agreements were contained within trial installers with trial-specific language. Now that the JMP installer process has been greatly simplified by building only a single installer per product/OS combination, the license text shown must also cover non-evaluation scenarios. If a final round of testing in Sunday night’s 18.1 installers reveals no further issues with translated license text, we anticipate that JMP 19 FC#4 installers will be built Monday.
As I mentioned in the JMP Dev meeting on Thursday morning, we have a 18.0.1 “dot-dot” track intended primarily for security fixes to third party libraries. 18.0.1 is planned to ship in mid-May, two months after 18.0 ships. The 18.0.2 track will be created when 18.0.1 freezes and will be planned to ship in mid-July. After that point, 18.1 (planned for mid-September 2024) would likely be the next opportunity for us to release security related fixes. JMP security champions and third party library owners should already have permission to push needed fixes to the 18.0.1 track. JMP will be fixing critical and high security related issues only in dot-dot releases, per Brian Corcoran. Medium and low priority issues that are detected in JMP 18.0 will be addressed in the next dot release (e.g., 18.1) and of course also in the next feature track (19.0).
Development and QA managers will evaluate issues that impact other areas of JMP code as they come up to see if any are important enough to possibly merit inclusion in a dot-dot release. Bugs holding up large customer deployments, widespread crashes, and numeric issues will have priority. Any non-security code change request will need to be vetted first with a developer’s manager, reviewed, and sent to JMP Approvers to secure 4 approvals per our usual process. As a reminder, there will be no feature changes, documentation updates, or string updates allowed in dot-dot tracks because of the very short 2 month release timeframe. Once we freeze 18.0.1, there will be an 18.0.2 track created with a similar timeframe and setup.
As a reminder we have a Feature Freeze date on the schedule for JMP 18.1 – Friday, April 19. I have added a JMP 18.1 Features page in Confluence to track feature related items planned for that release. Please add a section to that page for any Story type item that you are working on or are planning to work on in the 18.1 track. I’ll send out an Outlook reminder soon with further details.
Thanks very much to Drew Foglia for sharing JMP Clinical 18.0 new features Subpopulation Builder and JMP Clinical Recoder at this week’s JMP Dev meeting! If you missed the meeting, you can find a recording here. There was a lot of good discussion in the meeting and the Teams chat about the ways in which JMP Clinical works to leverage JMP features in customized ways that better meet the needs of their specific customer personas.
Finally, thanks very much to Tonya Mauldin for sharing this week’s beta/crash report with crashes selected.
Beta/crash report for the week of 2/23/24 | JMP Live (sas.com)
General Announcements
Important Upcoming Dates
- JMP 18.0 QA Signoff, FC #4 – TBD, early March 2024
- Please visit Confluence for a full list of JMP 18 dates.
JMP Development Updates
Product Management and Product Marketing
- The PM team had several onsite meetings this week as we were fortunate to have Sam Gardner, Sarah Gilyard, and Mia Stephens in the office this week.
- Sam: We had a great roadmap planning session this week for the Life Sciences team! We decided on several priorities for genomics related features and tools including SAM and BAM file import support and Genomics Normalization. Notes from the JMP Clinical 19 Roadmap session can be found here in Confluence.
- Bryan F:
- Sarah Sylvestre and I had a conversation with Syensqo regarding an AI Assistant usability test. It is exciting as the plan is to conduct real world usability tests on a prototype. The findings of the usability study could help inform the implementation or a go/no go decision. While usability studies are a micro activity, in this case, they are in support of a strategic initiative at the business level to enable engineers.
- Facilitated another Design of Everyday Things Book Club meeting with Julian’s group where we started to discuss potential applications of various aspects of the Design Thinking process to their upcoming work.
- Began the development of “showcases” of potential future JMP features at the JMP Lab at Discovery Europe. We intend to capture attitudinal data, rather than usability data, to help determine how viable and desirable some potential future offerings may be.
- Worked with Sarah Sylvestre on a survey to send to SEs regarding customer pain points with data tables.
Technical Support and Engagement
- Duane: Customer care teams are preparing for the support of My JMP and JMP 18. We have been involved in testing My JMP Authorization, and the flow/functionality within My JMP. Additionally, we are happy to see legacy GIDB account information being processed into Salesforce. Restricted party screening (RPS) related cases are on the rise and will continue to do so as more of our users start utilizing My JMP (which has integrated RPS that screens users for potential bad actors on various watch lists). Support is also working with Taylor investigating/reviewing better ways to build and share support case data. More to come on that later on!
- 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: Investigated issues with Run_JMP_JiraDefects job - discovered what was killing the job when it ran at 12:03am (thanks, Jim Borek!). Worked with Audrey to add some logging to the console for better troubleshooting in the future. Audrey moved the job to run slightly earlier, ending the conflict with the other job and it now runs successfully! JMP Help: Scheduled a meeting to discuss what we want to set up for JMP 19 in light of timeframe for EAs and doc moving to a different authoring software; entered issues for work for updates needed for JMP Help 18.1. Mac Crashes: Participated in a Friday scramble to get the Mac crash symbolize job working again. (Thanks to Shannon, Myron, and Nick!) Windows Crashes: Discovered the symbolize job has been stuck for 3 days; added a timeout so we’ll know in the future when the debugger gets stuck. Goals 2024: Working on adding goals into Workday. Stringbot: Investigations for future work.
- Nick: Worked on the AWS build server machine; will meet with Bob and Jim early next week to finalize that process. Updated several Macs and Windows CI machines, and will do a Jenkins server update this weekend which will update the server OS, Jenkins itself, and all available plugins as well as increase available disk space. An AMI snapshot will be made prior to updating and there is no expected downtime.
- Shannon: Resume review and interviews for open R&D program manager position. Met with team members to discuss 2024 goals and manager survey results. Discussions with Geoff and various life sciences team members about JMP and JMP Clinical release processes and retrospective work the team will undertake in preparation for the 19 cycle. Assisted with JMP crash and baseline test failure investigations. Crash system failure investigations with Myron, Melanie and Nick.
Localization
- Krzysztof: Pushing doc translations and Labeling translated files in P4 for the Doc team. Working on documentation of the Labeling process for localizations. Correcting spacing and tag issues in DJ translations. Discussing with dev a syntax change in menuItem//Tooltip constructs in PortableUI. Further enhancing Terminology process and our TermBase.
- Allison: Resolving tag issues in localized JMP Live/Public help 18.0; validating production kits of Bigbooks projects, launching the projects in memoQ and creating outgoing packages and word count reports to send to vendors; and last but not least, going over Localization team goals for 2024 with Trish and drafting my individual goals.
- Trish: Discussed manager survey feedback with all team members during our 1:1’s. Continued conversations with the team regarding individual goals for 2024. Led monthly doc/localization team meeting. JMP Live help redelivered to the doc team.
- Sandy: Finished work on Jenkins job to automate xstr language file compilation.
- Started work on programmatic validation of source file areas we use for processing.
- Howard: Bug fixes. Release Dashboard APIs for product depot/git information which helps centralize the configuration of l10n related Jenkins job (JMPLOCTOOL-425).
- Sohail: Fixing a bug in TM Search interface (dealing with variant translations). Preparing data for MT models re-training.
Documentation
- Susan C: Finished creating the JMP Live/Public localized help and sent for testing. Big thanks to the localization team for all their help fixing issues! Chasing up few remaining issues with HTML5 help. Met with Qiana and Chris to discuss UI string guidelines.
- Qiana: Updated the JMP 18 Installation Validation doc and sent for review. Working on the Group Policy Object doc. Met with Chris and Susan to discuss creating JMP string guidelines and tips for R&D. Attended the monthly Doc and L10N meeting.
- Chris B: Created the 18.0 Doc Library PDF and the Documentation Add-in. Compliance training. Short week coming off covid.
System/Host Testing-Cary
- Mandy: Tested installer candidate #3; testing is currently paused and we will get a 4th installer candidate early next week. Worked on JMP 19 Tabulate change to use the standard role UI for dialog and buttons (JMP-20499) - here is a screen shot and you can check it out if you are curious. Also working on TS tracks as they arrive – reporting issues when needed.
- Nick H: Worked on adding some HTML testing to the framework for Platform Presets, trying to ensure that our sample presets maintain interactivity when exported to HTML. Unit tests were added to ensure interactive export to HTML as well as image tests for each of the sample presets. Responded to a couple of EA tracks, one for a bug with the RGB Color function, which was quickly fixed and another for a future enhancement of platform presets. Filed a bug specific to Mac where the Quick Start Menu remains open on top of other applications when Stage Manager option is used. Lastly, I revamped a nightly process that writes out data tables for testers to show Jira issues associated with their current 19.0 failures – this can help testers identify issues lacking 19.0 in the Affected versions field of their Jiras which is required to ensure proper ‘known’ issue tagging by the test framework.
- Hunter: Final installer testing with the JMP 18 RC 4 builds before stopping to test with special JMP 18.1 builds Bob provided containing updated the license agreement files. Updated and closed two JIRA items we discovered were related to the telemetry server being offline (JMP-20487, JMP-20573). Responded to JMP Early Adopter cases.
- Audrey: Jira admin tasks, testing for 18.0 and 18.1 license files and installers. Working with Melanie to solve mysterious Jenkins failures for QA jobs.
Web Testing – Cary
- Josh L: Installer Testing and waiting for the next JMP installer for retesting. Customer support and meetings about how to make the customer’s JMP Live installation experience easier and faster. Jira verifications mainly around the Vue 3.0 upgrade in JMP Live 19.0 - there were a lot of breaking changes so it is great that we did this in advance!
- Anna: Testing Xan's new SHP file simplification functionality for maps. Verifying HTML5 tooltip display and zooming | panning fixes. Checking Andrew’s legend value formatting changes. Testing fill pattern fixes for HTML5. Verified CCB column switcher issue for control limits.
- Natalie: 18.0 Installer testing on and off. Completed all Compliance training. Continued setting up the automation framework on the dev/test machine I will use.
Web Test Beijing / Cary Jira Status
Test-Ready 70
Testing 7
Created Last 7 Days 24
Closed Last 7 Days 119
System/Host Testing-Beijing
Data Discovery
- Dan S: Updated Tab Page to use internal padding, working on Panel Box and Tab List Box. Fixed LineUpBox to work correctly with alignment and stretch-to-fill options. Fixed Scroll Box to work correctly with children that have padding/margin. Deprecated the old <
- Parker: Improved performance for circle drawing algorithm on bubble plot by over 200%, resulting in an overall framerate increase of 5%. Learned to use profiler, ran successful image tests, and preparing for final code review. (JMP-20597)
- Morgan: Continuing work on the Metal bug, and I’ve fixed a few minor visual bugs in Script Editor and JMP Notebook.
- Xan: RowStateAbility refactoring and unit tests
DOE
- Caleb: Continued work on the Sample Size Explorer conversion, adding One Sample Proportion to the mix. It is now undergoing active testing!
Host
- John Schroedl: Pushed visual styling updates to buttons and working through the fallout of that change. Thanks to Evan, Dan and Laura C-S for reviews and help there. The change did reveal that we have 48 icons stored with 72 dpi (Mac default) instead of 96 as Windows expects - will work on converting these. Telemetry server was down after an OS update which impacted JMP shutdown in some cases so that’s being addressed. Fixed broken server watchdog task (thanks BeyondTrust! grr). Project updates for Russ. Reviewing Group Policy docs.
- Paul N: Preparing to give a portion of Manchester keynote, and lightning talk run by Dieter. Working with Aaron in investigating a rare file corruption issue with JMP projects. Reviewing Python work by Evan Carr in adding support for cell_height property to jmp.DataTable object and display_width property to jmp.DataTable.Column. Asked him to research alternatives in passing Date/Time values between JMP and Python.
- Kristen: This week’s development was focused on promoting phase 1.0 of the JMP Marketplace MVP to a staging environment to allow a stable environment for demos and security testing. Some updates include: updating downloads to use predesigned urls JMPMRKT-42, setting up user profiles JMPMRKT-46, & setting up staging infrastructure through terraform (IAC) JMPMRKT-41.
Interactive HTML
- John Powell: Fixed colors of markers for Short Run Control Charts with a Phase role (JMPHTML-2405). Prevented displaying heatmap labels in cells that are too short (JMPHTML-13433). Fixed incorrect marker sizes when overlay and color roles are both applied (JMPHTML-2441). Integrated fixes into 18.1 (JMPHTML-927, JMPHTML-2360). Created a bug for losing Where clause font customizations when redoing analysis(JMP-20530). Prepared samples with the Interactive HTML team for What’s New in Interactive HTML in JMP 18 for SE Training(New in 18). Reviewed Feature Requests with Dieter and Paul. Discussions with Julian and Dieter about platform preset samples on JMP Live. Completed first module of the Act Now compliance training.
- Paul Spychala: This last week was spent skiing, however the previous week I worked on bug fixes that are intended to be integrated into 18.1. These include Graphs that cannot reset all the axes after using the magnifier tool in JMPLive (JMPHTML-13498). Multiple selection issues with lines and areas (JMPHTML-13472). Several bugs with the drawing order of segments when we start selecting rows (JMPHTML-689, JMPHTML-13531, JMPHTML-1883, JMPHTML-2410, JMPHTML-13532). Lastly a bug with missing fill pattern that are lost in Treemaps (JMPHTML-13396).
JMP Live
- Aurora: 18.1: Bug fixes for record access by space admins. Improve data post history tab performance. Investigate audit log filter count performance. 19.0: Working on removing dependence on pg-large-object. Third party library review and updates.
- Michael G: 18.1 pushed change to allow sitewide space admins to view admin user and group tabs. 18.1 working on improvements when embedding reports on other pages. Package updates & Vue 3 bugfixes.
Stat Documentation
- Michael C: Worked on Scripting Index updates for multiple personalities of Fit Model and did some clean-up for some CCB entries in the Scripting Index. Added a new Jira component in the JMP project for stat content updates/bugs in the Scripting Index: “Scripting Index - Statistics Content”.
- Karen: Updated the compare design material to algin with structure of other material. I also helped Gail with a CSALT blog.
Stat Testing
- Mark: Testing the Torch Deep Learning add-in. Prepared my introduction to XPath in JSL with Tonya for next week's statistical testers and writers meeting. Prepared my lightning talk for the JMP Discovery Summit Europe with Jacob. Assisted Chris with the chemistry background for gas chromatography analysis using the new spectral data tools in FDE. Writing a full-length article for the 2024 HCI International conference with Jacob, Ryan, and Joseph. Also researching the nature of the utility function used in choice design modeling. Completed the required "SAS Code of Ethics" training.
- Jacob: Preparing Easy DOE Lightning Talk presentation for Discovery Europe. Writing paper on latest Easy DOE usability study for HCI International 2024, with Mark Bailey, Joseph Morgan, and Ryan Lekivetz. Investigating unit test failures and verifying Jira tickets.
- Tonya: Working on bug verification, unit test cleanup and an xpath presentation for testers.
Note from Shannon
Thanks to Mandy Chambers for sharing the details about these upcoming SAS International Women’s Day Activities! Hope you all have a great weekend!
Leap: Why It’s Time to Embrace Change in Your Career
Virtual Event: Thursday, March 7 | 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. ET
Today is a unique moment in time with an unprecedented number of women re-evaluating their career trajectories and considering major changes.
For International Women's Day, WIN is joined by Jessica Galica, Career Development Coach and Best-Selling Author of Leap: Why It's Time to Let Go to Get Ahead in Your Career, to learn and discuss how women can embrace change to reach the next level in their career and achieve their most ambitious, authentic goals. Hailed as "truly a gem" and a "motivational testament to the possibility of career-minded women taking risks," Jess and her best-selling wisdom from Leap are not to be missed. This virtual event is open to the public, so please register and invite your network to attend.
https://www.sas.com/en_us/events/24q1/international-womens-day.html
Wear Purple and Come to the JMP-Sponsored Watch Party and InterAct Donation Drive
The JMP DEI Action Team is hosting an in-person watch party for the Jessica Galica event in A1030. Registration is required, but all employees in Cary on Thursday, March 7 are invited for light refreshments and networking beginning at 9:15 a.m.
To put our support into action, we will be partnering with InterAct, a non-profit based in the Raleigh-Durham area dedicated to ending the cycle of domestic and sexual violence. Now through Friday, March 8, you’re invited to donate essential items noted below. Donation bins will be available at the watch party and in Building A breakrooms on the 4th and 5th floors. Contributors are asked to write their name, date and a description of donated items on the sheet attached to each bin.
- Breakfast items: boxes of cereal, instant oatmeal, instant grits, cereal bars, granola bars, fruit cups
- Meal items: canned tuna, canned chicken, Hormel Completes, microwaveable mac and cheese bowls, ramen noodle bowls, family size pasta and pasta sauces, canned Chef Boyardee pastas
- Cleaning supplies: laundry detergent (sheets), dish liquid detergent, paper towels, toilet paper, kitchen trash bags, tissues, all-purpose cleaner
For those outside the Cary area, please consider supporting a local women’s initiative or community organization.
Book Club: Keeping the Conversations Going
Let's keep the celebration of International Women's Day alive well beyond March 7th! We invite you to engage in an enriching dialogue centered around empowerment and career advancement by participating in our discussions on Leap: Why It's Time to Let Go to Get Ahead in Your Career by Jessica Galica. This insightful book is thoughtfully divided into three sections, aligning with three engaging discussion sessions we have planned.
Led by esteemed members of WIN, each session offers a unique opportunity to delve into key themes and insights from the book. Whether you can attend just one session or join us for all three, we warmly welcome all SAS employees to be part of this empowering conversation.
Don't miss out—secure your spot by signing up here and be a part of our collective journey towards professional growth and empowerment.
