Introduction
Xytech is pleased to announce the availability of our 10.4 Summer 2023 release!
This is the 3rd release under our new Media Operations Platform product name. As we announced with our Granite Winter 2022 and 10.2 Spring 2023 releases, we will no longer be using MediaPulse as a product name. We suggest using Xytech Platform, Media Ops, Ops Platform, Xytech, or simply Platform for a shortened name, depending on the context you are in.
As Xytech announced in 2022, our goal is to have a minimum of one general availability release every quarter, if not faster. With our use of Feature Flags, this release includes one general availability and several limited availability variants of Xytech Media Operations Platform:
- Granite Service Pack 2 for customers currently using Media Operations Platform Granite, Media Operations Platform 10.2, or MediaPulse 9.x or earlier.
-
Sapphire/Ruby for customers migrating from ScheduALL to Media Operations Platform including those deploying transmission capabilities for dynamic bandwidth scheduling management. Additional features have been added in the Summer release.
Note: Sites with the original Sapphire Feature Flag who use Transmission features may request to have the Ruby feature set turned on as well. -
Merged Branch Sites for sites previously on a custom source branch of MediaPulse. The Merge Feature Flag allows individual sites to upgrade to the latest Platform Release.
Note: Not all branch site merges have been completed as of 10.4. More will be completed in future releases.
If you are currently on a site branch, please work with your Support Agent for details concerning when an upgrade to the standard Platform is right for you!
While Sapphire/Ruby and Merge Branch Sites are currently only available to select customers, Xytech will
release these features to all customers in our 10.6 Autumn 2023 Release.
Why are Sapphire/Ruby and Merged Branch Sites for limited audiences?
Project Sapphire and Ruby were focused on closing the gaps in features as used by the majority of ScheduALL customers versus features already available in the Media Operations Platform. These new Platform features will enable ScheduALL customers to migrate from ScheduALL to our latest Media Operations Platform. Sapphire was specifically targeted at resource management and scheduling features. Ruby was our project for enhancing our Transmission capabilities. We wanted to enable select customers to validate the features before we released them to all. We have many ScheduALL customers that have migrated to our Platform in production, so we feel confident in making these features available to all in the 10.6 release.
Branched Sites were previously used under prior ownership to allow development of new functionality
sponsored by a site in advance of standard product development. This helped Xytech flesh out gaps that the site required. That program has now come to an end. These Branched Sites need to be brought back to the standard Platform product. But don’t worry; Xytech is fully committed to developing new, and enhancing existing, relevant features that will benefit our user base, partnering with you, as we move into the future.
Summary of Product Variants
Bug Fixes
Xytech has made a firm commitment to improving the quality of our product and that commitment continues with this release. This release contains over 215 defect fixes, 42 of which were reported by customers, but the vast majority were found internally by the Xytech QA team using both Automated and Manual Regression techniques. Our goal is to provide the highest quality product possible to you, our valued customers.
Additions and Enhancements
The 10.4 Summer 2023 release incorporates 14 feature level additions and enhancements which required over 70 unique user stories in the areas of resource management, MetaVault Library, Scheduling, and Transmission.
General improvements include:
- SQL Query Performance and Scalability Improvements
- Ability to apply a Roster Template to multiple resources at the same time.
- Language Pack refresh
- Teams Integration enhancements
- Schedule Book usability and configuration enhancements
- REST API written documentation for system integrators.
- Sapphire/Ruby limited availability improvements and new features include:
- Transmission
- Approx Out & Goodnight functionality
- Parameter Named Fields
- Dynamic Slots Optimization
- Additional Webhook features to enhance low-code integration capabilities.
General improvements are available to all, while Sapphire/Ruby improvements and new features are available to a limited set of customers.
It is worth stating again that Sapphire and Ruby features will be available to the full Xytech customer base as an upgrade opportunity with the 10.6 Autumn 2023 release targeted for Dec 2023 pending final quality. If you require access to these features earlier, please contact your Xytech Support Rep to explore your options.
Release Highlights
Please review the release highlights for the release you’ll receive based on the descriptions above. If you’re curious about the other variants, you can view the highlights in the named sections below.
Documentation for System Integrators and Administrators
Written reference and configuration documentation is now available for the following Media Operations
Platform topics. Guides are available upon request from your Support Agent in PDF form and will soon be
available as articles in the Xytech Support Zendesk Guides:
Chat Integration Setup
Primary Audience: System Integrators and Administrators.
This guide walks the reader through configuring effective use of Chat within the Platform. Integrations with both Teams and Slack are supported. Parameters required for each are covered in detail, along with a section on how to use Chat within the Platform.
Filtered Drop Down Fields
Primary Audience: System Administrators.
This guide explains how to configure Filtered Drop Downs (AKA Data Binding) with a step by step process to achieving effective use of filtering drop down lists based on other fields.
Google Calendar Integration Configuration
Primary Audience: System Administrators.
This guide explains in detail how to configure the Platform and the Google Calendar App to work together, allowing you to expose resource schedules in the Google Calendar by way of invites. The guide includes examples of Event Triggers as well as configuration parameters.
Group Class
This guide walks the administrator through configuring the new Group Class feature in the Platform allowing an administrator to effectively manage security permissions on Classes of Scheduling Groups.
REST API Reference & Postman Collection
Primary Audience: System Administrators
This document describes the Xytech Media Operations Platform implementation of a Representational State Transfer (REST) service interface, and it provides information on the operations available through the REST-based application programming interface (API). Included are explanations of:
- The differences between the Platform’s REST API V1 and V2.
- The supported REST calls along with detailed information on authentication, headers, and parameters.
- The use of clients such as Postman and cURL are addressed.
Throughout the guide are references to the Xytech Postman collection which illustrates the usage of the API against the hundreds of documents available in the Media Operations Platform.
Webhooks User Guide
Primary Audience: System Integrators
A new feature from v10.4 allows users, through the platform UI, to configure triggers that send API payloads to external Web service endpoints. This mechanism allows external systems to initiate workflows based on Xytech generated messages and make calls back to the platform API to retrieve additional information.
This feature enhances the existing Event Trigger functionality by adding a new notification type. New setup items now exist to define external host URLs and their endpoints. Each trigger specifies the fields used to dynamically generate the JSON payload, and the external endpoint to which the payload will be sent.
The guide walks the reader through the concepts of setting up webhook recipients, configuring event triggers, and auditing the integrations.
Granite SP2
See the 10.4 Summer 2023 Release notes for details on significant defect fixes available in this release.
General Enhancements
SQL Query Performance and Scalability Improvements
We have spent considerable effort to review our Database processing and have made improvements that will improve the scalability of calls to the database (handle more calls at same time) and in some areas we have also made improvements to the speed of specific queries. Database Queries are just one component of end-user perceived performance and are often less impactful than transporting and rending the data. Your users may not notice significant changes in their day-to-day, but overall, the responsiveness of the application will be improved, especially as more users are interacting with the system at the same time.
in conjunction with the SQL Query enhancements, a default configuration CHANGE has been made with regards to the way changes to setup tables and lists are broadcast to other users. By default, the system now defaults to not broadcasting these changes to all users when a setup value is added or changed. Users will receive the change the next time a particular Maintenance Document or Search List is opened. This feature can be overridden via an Application Server configuration override.
Webhook Improvements
The ability to view a log of past payload communications has been added. When Export Adaptors are set up with logging enabled (enabled by default) all external communications will be logged into the Export Adaptor Log.
The user may then access the log from the navigator: System > Export Adaptor Logs. The logs are also accessible from any document displaying filtered logs related to the document item. This makes viewing logs simple without involving access to backend log files.
Parent Scheduling Groups
Parent Scheduling Groups allow a site to create a collection of Scheduling Resource Groups to improve the organization of resources, scope the selection of resources, and provide a higher-level abstraction when initially creating a placeholder for later resource assignment.
Parent Scheduling Groups are an optional feature; if no additional grouping or organization is necessary, Parent Scheduling Groups do not need to be configured or used. These groups are added and modified under the Scheduling module. Each Parent Group contains one or more Scheduling Resource Groups, and each Scheduling Resource Group can belong to zero, one, or more Parent Scheduling Groups. This, in turn can be used to organize items based on physical, geographical, business, or conceptual relationships; for example, multiple transponders (Resource Scheduling Groups) can be grouped by their parent satellite, by capability, or by region/market.
A Parent Scheduling Group can optionally be assigned to a Work Order Transaction to limit the Scheduling Group and Resource assignments for that transaction.
In a future release, Xytech intends to expand this to enable assigning Parent Scheduling Groups on Media Order and Transmission Order Transactions.
Schedule Book Usability Improvements
In the Schedule Book, if one or more bookings are stacked on top of each other they will now display a special icon in the upper left of the bar. Clicking the icon will send that bar to the bottom of the stack, revealing the other booking(s). Each booking in the stack receives the icon so multiples can be sent to the bottom when appropriate. This sort order does not save, meaning if the Book is refreshed the bookings will revert to the natural stack. The new icon is meant a) to show that other bookings exist beneath the one that is seen and b) allow the user to shuffle the bars to see the others in the stock.
The Cancel button has been removed from several pop-up windows in the Schedule Book as it is redundant. The ‘X’ in the top right corner of each pop-up serves as close and cancel.
Apply Roster Template to Multiple Resources
Roster Templates may now be loaded for multiple resources at once from the Scheduling Resources search list.
This follows the same logic as seen in Scheduling Resource maintenance but allows for it to be done for multiple resources at once.
Dynamic Slot Optimization
In the 10.2 Spring 2023 release Xytech introduced the concept of Dynamic Slot assignment. The innovation now continues adding an 'Optimize' flag to transactions for dynamic resources. When this flag is checked, the system optimizes the placement of the transaction by positioning it at the lowest available frequency/frequency offset on the dynamic resource. The system will ask for a bandwidth value if doesn't already apply to the transaction. The system then calculates the minimum and maximum offsets, and uplink and downlink center frequencies.
Any time or bandwidth changes will automatically recalculate its optimal position of the transaction, so long as the Optimize flag is selected. If the ‘Optimize’ flag isn't set the frequency offsets will remain unchanged and the user must manually change them.
Transmission Parameter Fields
A specific list of fields has been identified as common parameters for transmission orders. These values are typically defined at multiple levels. Within the Platform, these levels have been defined as the order, service row, operation/transaction and resource. A new, separate table of fields has been specifically defined for these parameters and the ability to set values as well as which levels a value might apply. Meaning, not all fields must be defined at all levels and a site need not use all fields. Once defined, fields can be added to layouts and in the Schedule Book and Calendar Gadget similarly to Document Customization fields. Within a Transmission Order, fields at different levels can inherit from higher levels, e.g., service row inherits from order, operation inherits from service row, etc. Common Transmission module searches -- MCR List, Service Row Search, Operations List, etc. -- have been coded to use these values. This functionality has only been defined for Transmission Orders.
Approx Out and Goodnight
Fields and functionality have been put in place to record an "approximate out" (Approx Out) time for orders. Initially, Approx Out is a value, in minutes, that extends beyond the Order End, similar to a bumper. This value can be displayed on bars in the Schedule Book and can affect the billing amount on pre-invoices as Billing Codes can also be set up to know how to bill for Approx Out time.
A "goodnight" action and accompanying fields have also been added to the orders. When an order is
‘goodnighted’, its Order End is updated, along with matching transaction times. Goodnight will also actualize any transaction with a Billing Code setup for Approx Out, setting the actual units based on the initial Approx Out value, the actual time between the original end time and the goodnight time or the closest increment to the latter. If the Billing Code has been set up to adjust billing units based on actual units, appropriate adjustments are made for final billing.
The order retains a pre-goodnight date, the time of the goodnight, the user who goodnighted the order, the original Approx Out and the actual Approx Out after goodnight.
Summary
The 10.4 Summer 2023 release is another exciting release for Xytech and our customers. It continues a
consistent cadence of quarterly releases, addresses significant product and quality issues for 100s of customers, enables an even larger set of ScheduALL customers to start their migration to the Xytech Media Operations Platform. and expands our Webhook capabilities allowing Xytech to continue to employ agile methodologies in addressing our customers’ needs, reducing our time to market, without increasing risk to our clients.
To request this release, please email support at helpcenter@xytechsystems.com with the words 'Summer 2023 Release' in the subject line.
Thank You for being our customers and partners.
-Dave White, Chief Product Officer, and the entire Xytech Team