Version 2.1

The beginning of a new year is bringing some exciting news also in crystal history.

Discover the new features in version 2.1 and see how many amazing opportunities to interact with your data are now available.

Highlights

Disambiguation strategy: how to handle ambiguous requests

When a user asks an unclear question the advisor might need more help to assign it to a single topic: that’s why the disambiguation strategy has been introduced.

In case of an ambiguous request by the user that could lead to a disorientation of the advisor and the retrieval multiple similar topics or filter values, crystal will propose alternatives to choose from. Users will be then be encouraged to choose the option that best fits their needs. Disambiguation will be provided both for when you ask a simple question and when you ask crystal to set up an alert.

The disambiguation strategy will help the conversation between the user and the advisor to be even smoother.

BETA - ​Use any data source you want through the Web Connector

In addition to database connectors available, admins will be able to integrate web services as data sources.

The Web Connector allows crystal to communicate with web services (for example, REST API, Files, or anything). Developers will be able to create new services, using an SDK, to connect to any web data.

This feature is at the moment available only upon request.

BETA ​- crystal knows. Even before you do.

Automated forecasting can be defined as the ability to predict a result without configuring any model.

crystal now allows users to see forecasted values for overtime, single line topics. For example, ”Can you show me total sales up to December 2021?”. Users will be able to apply, if necessary, any dynamic filter to their query.

The system will answer in a few minutes through a push notification with a line chart.

As of now, this feature will be available only upon request and will support only overtime single-line topics. We are working on further improvements for the next releases.

Numerical filters are now available for more operations

Until this moment, in order to apply numerical dynamic filters, you had to specify the exact value. For example, if the value was 100,23 the reference was to be made exactly to that precise number.

With this enhancement, the numerical filters can be specified also through intervals, in a more natural way.

From now on, numerical dynamic filters can be retrieved also with comparisons (e.g. filter all values greater/lower than 100) and with intervals (e.g. filter all values between 20 and 40).

The good news is also that no manual configuration is needed on the Self-Service Console (topic creation wizard): this feature is automatically enabled for all topics with dynamic filters that have a numerical data type.

Advisor

Dynamic filters: apply filter value permissions

The application of filter value permissions has been improved: until now, even if you set a filter value permission for a group, all the users still saw the results without this filter.

Now we can finally retrieve the filtered data. In fact, in the case, a user belonging to a group is asking for a topic and that topic has a filter value permission specified for it or for the group, the data retrieved will be shown with respect to this filter value permission.

Make the best out of crystal through notifications and Siri

An effective dialogue system is proved to be crucial for pushing iOS users to accept notifications without feeling the urge to do so, which may result in a preventive rejection.

That’s why a new onboarding experience will encourage users to turn on notifications through a series of customized messages, to discover the power of crystal related to real-time information. At the same time, users will be pushed to use the integration with Siri, which will make the advisor experience as easy as asking Siri to wake up crystal for some data-related questions.

Working on users’ expectations and try to satisfy them will encourage them to reinforce the connection with the advisor.

Always up-to-date: crystal is supporting iOS11+

iOS13 is live and crystal is ready to support it. By now it's an unspoken standard in the iOS world to just support the current and previous versions (iOS 11 and 12 as of now), and it has to be said that only 5% of all devices are currently using iOS10 and below: being the first virtual advisor, crystal cannot stay behind, therefore it will be running on all the newest iOS versions.

Self-Service Console

A new connector: Amazon Redshift now available on crystal

Fast and efficient, Amazon Redshift is becoming one of the most popular data source connectors and it’s surely great news for all its users to see it available on crystal.

A new connector: IBM DB2 now available on crystal

One of the market leaders, IBM DB2 is absolutely a must-have among data connectors usable on crystal.

One mandatory entity is enough

Until now, the admin was asked to input at least two variations for each Entity when assigning aliases in the train step. From now on, the admin is asked to input only one mandatory alias for each entity.

However, it is highly recommended to assign at least two or more aliases to each entity, to make sure you cover all ways a certain entity is asked in your organization

Intro values are now shown

If intro values were not shown before in the topic preview step of the topic creation wizard, now they are directly visible.

The column type selection has a new value

Along with currency, frequency, mass, number and power, a new option is now available in the column type selection. The percentage option will enable formatting values by showing the percentages in the visualizations.

Note that, in order to use this value, the data behind needs to have a decimal format (e.g., 0.5 → 50%, while 50 → 5000%).

A collection of information for guiding the users

Many of the most complex crystal features might need some explanation to become a frequent option for our users. For this reason, a work-in-progress section of product guidelines and help articles is there to clarify all aspects of crystal, giving advice on how to make the best out of the advisor experience and how to customize your data analysis on the basis of your business needs.

All articles will be published in the Resources section and will be available both in English and Italian.

Project Management Area

Easy project detail changes: a new era for owners

From the Project Management Area owners can now control all their project’s features. They can upgrade or downgrade their crystal plans, decide to add or reduce the seat number and change the billing cycle, from yearly to monthly and vice-versa. All in a single panel!

crystal makes you save money, literally

Owners will be happy to enjoy a discount if they are given a coupon code.

All they need to do is insert the coupon code in the order summary section during the project creation process or to apply it from the Project Management Area, once their project is ready.

The discount will be applied immediately in the first case, or in the next billing if the coupon is inserted after the project is created.

Need help using crystal? Check out the full crystal tutorials here.