Welcome to the JMP Development Update for October 11, 2024!
As work continues on JMP 19 features in preparation for freezing EA4 on 10/25/24, I wanted to let you know that we have moved our date for initial JMP 19 string handoff from January to December 2. If you have JMP 19 features that are nearing completion, please consider finalizing your strings soon (in consultation with a JMP writer as needed) so that they can be included in this handoff.
Thanks very much for the birthday wishes on Wednesday! I enjoyed my virtual card that so many of you signed and it was great to see people at the company update session that morning too. Let’s just say this October 9th was a “9 birthday” and leave it at that. Happy birthday wishes also go out to Jim Borek and Elizabeth Claassen, who both celebrate their special days on October 13!
Speaking of the Q3 company update, there was a lot of good news from sales about continued successful contract transitions and the closing of key deals that helped us reach our goals! You can read all the details in the Inside JMP article here: Key highlights from Q3 here on Inside JMP (Spoiler alert: 'It was good!'), including big congrats for our Q3 JMP Spotlight winners, including Audrey Shull and Clay Barker from development!
As John Sall noted, however, this is also time of great challenge for communities impacted by the recent hurricanes. I very much appreciated the opportunity Robin Betters provided for local JMPers to share relief supplies when we gathered for JMP’s 35th anniversary last week. The Red Cross, World Central Kitchen and many other organizations are working now in western North Carolina, Florida, and other impacted areas. Also, the YMCA (SAS Championship partner) has shifted their tournament donations to hurricane relief, so please see the end of the update to learn more about ways you can contribute to the recovery efforts there.
Last week I didn’t write a development update because we celebrated a rest and recharge day, but we did have a dev meeting Thursday! Thanks very much to Xan Gregg for presenting on JMP 19 improvements to the popular Graph Builder platform. This week, Sarah Sylvestre and Sarah Musa presented on the JMP Wish Lists process and recent improvements they’ve made to it, and Ernest Pasour shared details on the new Column Tags functionality in JMP 19. If you missed either of these meetings, you can find a recording of Xan’s talk from last week here or this week’s joint session with PM and the Sarahs here.
Speaking of the PM team, in the past couple of weeks, product marketing has held two sales enablement trainings, one on the new JMP Marketplace and the other on JMP Pro. The JMP Marketplace is having a soft launch prior to JMP Discovery Americas and will be highlighted at the conference so the training was intended to introduce sales teams to ways in which they can use JMP Marketplace to elevate their sales conversations. The JMP Pro training provided sales with new strategies to sell the product and made sure to emphasize that JMP Pro is a low-cost, high-value product. If you are interested in watching recordings from these training sessions, please visit the training section of the JMP Marketplace Sales Sheet in the Sales Enablement Library or the JMP Pro Sales Sheet in the Sales Enablement Library. If you are interested in any other trainings that were held this year, please visit the training series schedule to watch the other recordings and reach out to Kaylee Warren if you have any additional questions!
Thanks to Shannon Leslie for sharing the following details about some of our favorite daily use software products (besides JMP products, of course)!
October 8 Atlassian product changes for Jira/Confluence
On October 8, Atlassian rolled out changes to our Jira and Confluence Cloud sites. A list of relevant changes along with some highlighted details and documentation can be found here.
The changes include:
- Clear all selected filters in the Automation audit log with a click of a button
- Board and backlog insights now available to all Jira users
Please contact Shannon Leslie or any of the other JMP Atlassian admins with questions. And check out our JMP Atlassian Q&A Teams channel, for this and other Atlassian updates.
Finally, last but not least, thanks to Tonya Mauldin for sharing the beta/crash cases from 9/20/24 until today with crashes selected.
(Tonya noted that she got a connection error trying to post this to JMP Live.)
General Announcements
Important Upcoming Dates
- JMP 19 EA4 Code Freeze – 10/25/2024
- JMP 18.1.1 Security Freeze – 11/1/24
- JMP 18.1.1 Final Image Candidate – 11/4/24
- JMP 18.1.1 QA Signoff – 11/14/24
- JMP 18.1.1 Release in MyJMP - ~11/19/2024
- Please visit Confluence for a full list of JMP 18 and JMP 19 dates.
JMP Development Updates
Statistics
- John Sall: For Response Screening, add options for "Kruskal Wallis Test" (JMP-23280) and Quartiles by Group" (JMP-23344). For Alignment Grid, support different fonts (JMP-22703).
These options are combined with a hidden option for this kind of report using an alignment grid.
- Laura C-S: Added functionality to handle fixed parameters in SEM equations with MIIV-2SLS. Fixed a bug with higher-order MIIV SEM models. Fixed a bug when removing latent variables in MIIV-2SLS. Reviewed doc example for summarized data in SEM. Writing JSL for a customer who requested SEM functionality in the community that we don’t yet have.
Stat Testing
- Mark: Investigated the impact of increasing the font size on Easy DOE with Jacob. Reviewing the Statistics Platform Guidelines. Researching the newer simulator, IndPenSim 2, for testing new Bayesian Optimization with Chris. Answered questions in the JMP Community.
- Jacob: Working on new unit tests for Custom Design. Preparing and recording an updated EA video for Categorical. Testing Easy DOE with Mark Bailey, testing how font size changes and dark mode impact Easy DOE.
- Tonya: Testing the new sort by row order functionality in CCB and updating unit tests.
Life Sciences Updates
- Richard: Participated in a webinar Streamlining Clinical Trial Review, Analysis, and Reporting with JMP Clinical which had more than 180 registrations and gave a sneak peek of the Recurrence Report and the Nearby Occurrences (NO) report. The NO report makes it easier for anyone to create SQL queries to identify occurrences preceding or subsequent to reference events and will be demoed to the dev team soon. Continuing to work through some complexities for dynamic survival, which I also hope to demo soon.
- Drew: Made lots of progress on the three-line RTF table generation add-in that will take any JMP Tabulate report and use the Python integration, saspy package, and proc report/ods to generate a three-line table - a layout that is a widely used standard in the pharma and other industries. When complete, this add-in will be offered on the JMP Marketplace. Continued feature/bug work on JMP Clinical 18.2 and 19.0.
Product Management and Product Marketing
- Bryan Fricke: Continued working on the logistics and scripting for the Discovery Summit JMP Lab, specifically working on our capability to automatically gather usability feedback via AWS. This includes collecting metadata, user input, and data files. Our plan for this year is to host the scripts on AWS and collect data via S3 on the backend. Additionally, we will continue to use MS Forms to gather more general feedback. DOE is using the usability study add-in study to run a test more along the lines of a choice experiment. I also took part in discussions regarding the design of JMP Live.
Technical Support and Engagement
- Wendy:
- This week, Tech Support would like to share our appreciation of David White for help with a performance issue related to large table updates and Dave Barbour for display tree scripting help. Thank you!
- Here are the TS JMP Live reports and the link to the Jira filter showing the tickets reported by Support for the last 14 days.
- Below are the usual graphs for case volume as well as topics for both Tech Support and Engagement.
Technical Support Case Volume by week:
Case Topics for Technical Support queue, last week:
Engagement Support Case Volume by week:
Case Topics for Engagement queue, last week:
Development Operations
- Bob: Updated Visual C++ Redistributables in Windows installers for version 19 (JMP-35). Thanks to Roger Alford for assistance moving NIST and Installer Validation files for JMP 18 from sas.com to jmp.com (JMPWEB-1354). Completed clean up of Python file location in JMP 18.1.1 Windows installers when updating software (JMP-23158). Working on adding new font to JMP 19 Windows installers (JMP-21785). Created JMP Student Edition 19 Windows installer (JMP-23298).
- Shannon L: User support for Atlassian products - reporting bugs to Atlassian, helping with Jira best practices; making improvements to the R&D Feature Request workflow in Jira; dev meetings on Builds, StringBot migration, UT testing improvements; curated list of Atlassian October release changes affecting our Jira and Confluence sites; worked with procurement on Bitbucket renewals.
- Myron: Worked on resolving issues with processing/symbolization of Mac files (JMPTOOL-1374). Also monitored AWS Stringbot on jmptooldev and set up AWS stringbot on jmptoolprod (JMPTOOL-1183).
Localization
- Krzysztof: Prepared localization project for JMP Live 18.2 (webjmp and Installer). Handled Chinese return of JMP Live 18.2 and Clinical 18.2. Discussed security of our external facing aws machine with Travis. Testing new L10N automation features. Designing new localization query system.
- Sohail: Implemented and tested rate limiting security fixes for TM Dashboard, provided error handling pages, and general bug fixes for tags highlighting, data mismatch, etc.
- Sandy: Adding code to commit job to automate the commit of new source to P4.
Documentation
- Khawar: Talked to Devon about adding images to the Essential Graphing book; Created images and added them to Chapters 3 and 6. Almost done with adding content to the Sample Index spreadsheet; up next: categorizing the issues. Discussed the SnagIt theme and callout images for Oxygen with Chris B. Finished the compliance trainings.
- Devon: Working on converting a ZH translated version of the Discovering JMP book from FrameMaker to XML for the L10N team to review, continuing the JSL course in the JMP Community, helping Khawar with adding images to the Essential Graphing book.
- Qiana: Interviewed the final candidate for the Technical Editor contract position. Planning for FrameMaker update. Oxygen project work.
- Susan C: Caught up on emails, took mandatory AI training, worked on dates & Jiras and reviewed Khawar’s EG images. Here are a few pictures of the aurora as seen from here in Scotland!
System/Host Testing-Cary
- Mandy: I believe I might hold the world record for beta cases at one time – like 14. :smiling_face_with_smiling_eyes: Glad folks are trying out the new Data Table changes, Column tags, and even Forced Values – reviewing feedback, filing JIRAs and answering questions. Watched and monitored the chat for Ernest’s Dev demo– which was great, and learned some new stuff myself – lots more testing to do there. Beginning to write JSL tests for tags assignments and Workflow builder Find/Replace dialog, among others – the developer gave me JSL to test the movement and location of WFB find/replace dialog, for internal use only. Attended Women’s WiRE event Monday here at SAS, on Tuesday attended the Women’s Event for SAS Championships at Preston – both were really inspiring.
- Hunter: Worked with Aaron updating the status of several project defects. JIRA verifications. Responded to one JMP 19 EA 3 case. Applied Sequoia 15.1 Dev. Beta 6 to the host testing Macs in the lab. Reviewed more localized documentation PDF files. Completed the required security and AI training courses.
- Audrey: Talking with developers about Snowflake needs and learning about Snowflake; requested access to a Snowflake server for testing new work on data connectors. Continued tooling work related to the parallelization of the testing streams.
Web Testing – Cary
- Natalie: I have almost completed the necessary updates for our Interactive HTML automation due to 19.0 UI code updates with Fit to Window turned off. I will continue with this coverage adding testcases with Fit to Window turned on.
- Anna: Verifying fixes for HTML5 & JMP Live issues, testing Add-Ins, verifying Paul's resize enhancements, verifying new Triage functionality for CCB in JMP Live, adding reports for JMP 19.0 HTML5 New Features.
System/Host Testing-Beijing
- Da Li: (1) Verify and close 5 JMP bugs, add corresponding UT cases. Verify and close 4 JMP Live bugs. (2) TS: 00168284, MFI performance issue for File Path calculation, JIRA created [JMP-23322] TS: MFI: Suggest to add switch to disable importing "File Path" and "Short File Name" columns. (3) TS: 00168633, triple-s import issue, which is coming from Japan pre-sales Kyoko, do some investigations and provide comments. (4) DONE: Training Acceptable Use of SAS Systems and Networks (ACT-Now). (5) DONE: Training Regulating AI: Understanding SAS’ Role (ACT-Now).
- Nan Wu: (1) JMP 19.0 bugs regression testing. (2) Investigation on the Mac DataTable/SQL/ tests DNC issues and provided feedback – (JMPTEST-1385). (3) Technical support investigation and provided feedback on: Case Number 00165338 and 00167162. (4) Found the SQL Server of blackfin.na.sas.com was inaccessible recently, which would cause the unit test DNC for …\tests\DataTable\SQL\testQueryBuilderDefects.jsl, sent notification to the server owner for help to check the status of the server.
- Da Zhang: (1) Bug verification. (2) Added E2E tests for data refreshes from PostgreSQL using Data Connector (JMPTESTBJ-3164). (3) New feature testing for WEBJMP-6132 in JMPTESTBJ-3165. (4) Completed two trainings – Regulating AI: Understanding SAS’ Role/Acceptable Use of SAS Systems and Networks.
- Lily Meng: (1) Bug verification. (2) Freely exploring and using the Connect-JMP to gain a deeper understanding. (3) Win Automation: investigating an issue related to verifying the LockColumns's behavior (JMP-23323). (4) Training - Regulating AI: Understanding SAS’ Role (ACT-Now). (5) Training - Acceptable Use of SAS Systems and Networks (ACT-Now).
- Nala: (1) Discussed the feature “refreshing a data on JMP Live for a table imported from PostgreSQL via Data Connector“ with Mike and Da Zhang.
Core
- Dave B: Jmprunner bug fixes (hung because of missing files, better test to exclude tooltip windows). Fixed one text size and placement issue and investigated a solution to a second related problem. Worked with Arn and Dan on a customer reported xpath problem. Reproduced a jsl Schedule crash Stan reported. Work some on updating add-in builder.
- Dan S: Working on stretching options for the Data Filter and unsaved document fixes for Projects. Added progress/cancel ability for broadcast actions, and a small tweak to PanelBox behavior in journals.
- Evan: Looked into text contrast issues in Dark Mode (see Text Contrast Study). Working on improving Windows emoji support for Column Tags.
- Xan: Implemented Karen Copeland suggestion for a footnote on smoother constraints. Stat Speaking presentation practice.
- Morgan: Fixed some small bugs in Script Editor and added Undo/Redo capabilities to most actions in Notebooks.
DOE and Reliability
- Caleb: Participated in the Fall Technical Conference (FTC) held in Nashville, TN. It was a great conference and I was able to interact with a lot of colleagues and new people. A couple new ideas for JMP DOE too! I presented on joint work I’ve been doing with Brad Jones and it was very well received! JMP had a great presence there with six staff members participating. Outside of that, I’ve been helping Russ Wolfinger and Dan Valente with creating graphics for the interactive wall in JMP Discovery. I’ll also be participating in the opening plenary, so I’ve been preparing for that as well. Apparently I’m going to be more involved in Discovery than I initially thought - I’m now helping with a talk and the roadmap session as well!
Hosting and Interfaces
- Will: Fixing up a few quality-of-life changes for the SharePoint data connector. The Python code for that is now complete. I have begun fixing some bugs on the C++ side. Fixed an issue with the dropdowns stretching when they should be static. I am now working on an issue with setting the mouse focus when selecting data connector configuration options.
- John Schroedl: Making a lot of progress on Dark Mode which includes general host control changes to better match Fluent UI styling. Consulting with Evan on incorporating DirectWrite for better emoji/text drawing in the canvas.
- Brian: Preparing lightning talks for Cary, Japan and a 30-minute talk for Korea.
Interactive HTML
- John Powell: Added tooltips support to Interactive HTML Scatterplot 3D (JMPHTML-14132). Finished our second JMP 19 Feature Sprint and demoed our progress. Participated in a Sprint Retrospective. Planning our next Sprint. Performed Whitebox testing and reported issues. Completed the Act Now Compliance training. Addressed a static analysis warning.
- Paul Spychala: Change Fit to Window and resizing to better match JMP when Fit to Window is set to Auto [JMPHTML-14138]. Change Fit to Window algorithm to try fit windows more equally instead scaling linearly. Fix Fit to Window to handle closed Outline Boxes [JMPHTML-14148, JMPHTML-14121, JMPHTML-14145].
- Mike Stickles: Did whitebox testing, finding three new HTML bugs, discovering additional information on two existing ones, and finding a new JMP bug. Participated in sprint planning for the next HTML5 sprint. Continued work on JMPHTML-1407 (Legend setting on size role does not work on HTML5), discarding two approaches that did not work for all combinations of legend/size item direction.
JMP Live
- Aurora: Control chart warning improvements (write fewer audit log records by using multi-warning records, clarify wording around an old group "wants warnings" feature, help with preparation for Discovery Usability Lab, various meetings). Third party package updates.
Note from Shannon
SAS Championship host charity YMCA of the Triangle is shifting tournament-related donations to hurricane relief. You can drop off essential supplies in drop boxes located in SAS cafes and lobbies (including buildings A and C). (And if you already donated school supplies earlier in the drive, those will still be shared with local teachers.)
You can donate virtually using this link: American Red Cross for Hurricane Helene relief, or text HELENE to 90999 to donate. QR codes linking to the site 
will be available near the 1st and 10th holes of the course and at the SAS Championship Fairway to Fun and Food Truck Friday family events on Friday, Oct. 11, from 4 to 8 p.m. Participants at Fairway to Fun are invited to bring a hurricane relief item or contribute to the Red Cross.
As always, please feel free to send corrections and typo checks my way and I will make sure they get into the online version. Have a relaxing weekend!
