6.3 Release Notes

ThoughtSpot version 6.3.1 CU4 is now available. These release notes include information about new and enhanced features.

To see our feature deprecation plans, please see Deprecated and removed features.

For a complete list of issues that we fixed in this release, see Fixed issues.

6.3.1 CU4 New Features and Functionality

This patch release includes many bug fixes for 6.3.1.CU1, including most recent security vulnerabilities. We recommend every customer update to 6.3.1.CU4 as this version also addresses an issue with Google Chrome v92. Earlier 6.3.1.x versions require clusters to be updated to 6.3.1.CU4 for any future patches or fixes related to Nginx.

For a complete list of issues that we fixed in this release, see Fixed issues.

6.3.1 New Features and Functionality

For a complete list of issues that we fixed in this release, see Fixed issues.

For the Analyst

Simplified join creation

This release makes creating and editing joins from a table more flexible and intuitive. Our new joins interface allows you to define and edit a join’s type and cardinality at the table level, where previously this was only possible at the Worksheet level. Refer to Table joins.

For the Business User

Deprecation of Internet Explorer

ThoughtSpot browser support for Internet Explorer is now deprecated. Refer to ThoughtSpot browser access for a list of supported browsers.

Information Center

ThoughtSpot has a new Information Center, accessible from the help icon icon help 10px next to your profile on the top navigation bar. This new help menu contains many useful resources, including a navigation overview, several training videos, and links to more help across the ThoughtSpot product, community, training, and documentation. Refer to More help and support.

For the Data Engineer

Embrace

Embrace now supports Oracle Autonomous Database Beta. This feature is in beta and disabled by default. To enable this feature, contact ThoughtSpot Support.
Embrace now supports security passthrough for Snowflake using OAuth for authentication and authorization. For more information, see Snowflake.

For the IT Ops Engineer

Consumption-based pricing

ThoughtSpot now offers consumption-based (or usage-based) pricing. Refer to Consumption-based pricing. To compare consumption- and capacity-based pricing, refer to ThoughtSpot pricing.

SAML configuration

When configuring SAML authentication for ThoughtSpot, it is now mandatory to map the mail attribute in the IDP metadata file to the email address of the user. If your company cannot meet this requirement, contact ThoughtSpot support. For more information, refer to Configure SAML.

6.3 New Features and Functionality

For a complete list of issues that we fixed in this release, see 6.3 Fixed issues.

For the Analyst

Geo maps

ThoughtSpot now supports geo map visualizations for this new locale:

Netherlands: Province, Municipality, Postcode

Scriptability

This release introduces expanded support for exporting and importing ThoughtSpot objects. Pinboard and Answer Scriptability is now GA. You can also export, import, and update the following newly scriptable objects:

  • Views

  • Tables

NOTE

ThoughtSpot Scripting Language is now called ThoughtSpot Modeling Language.

Linked Pinboard filters

You can now create one filter that filters visualizations based on multiple Worksheets by linking the Worksheet columns, at the Pinboard level.

This is useful when you have a Pinboard built on multiple Worksheets, and you would like to filter on columns that are functionally the same, but exist in multiple Worksheets. Refer to Linked Pinboard filters.

Selective Pinboard filters

You can now configure Pinboard filters to apply to specific visualizations that you choose.

This is useful when you would like to filter some, but not all, visualizations in a Pinboard. Refer to Selective Pinboard filters.

For the Business User

Mobile app updates

ThoughtSpot mobile supports more features that were previously available only through the ThoughtSpot Web app, including:

Pivot table enhancements

This release includes enhancements to Pivot tables. You can now:

  • Drill down on values in pivot tables

  • Show underlying data for values in pivot tables

  • SpotIQ analyze values in pivot tables

For the Data Engineer

DataFlow
New connection types

In this release, DataFlow expands support to the following connection types:

Transformations

In all DataFlow database connections, you can now add row-level formulas that use native database functions to transform your data as it loads into ThoughtSpot.

AWS secret manager using cross account role

When creating a DataFlow connection, you can now retrieve the passwords from two different AWS accounts and use them in the following connection types:

Embrace
SpotIQ Analyze

In this release, Embrace adds support for SpotIQ analyze. Now you can analyze any answer, pinboard vizualization, or data source to generate instant insights, by clicking the SpotIQ analyze button spotiq analyze icon.

Security Passthrough

Embrace now supports security passthrough for Snowflake and Google BigQuery using OAuth for authentication and authorization. This feature is in beta for this release. Contact ThoughtSpot Support for assistance.

For the IT Ops Engineer

Advanced lean mode for cloud deployments

For ThoughtSpot customers who want to deploy their AWS, Azure, and GCP instances with lower data sizes, this release brings enhancements to advanced lean mode configuration.

You can now configure lean mode yourself using tscli commands. No need to contact ThoughtSpot. For details, see Use small and medium instance types.

OpenLDAP authentication

ThoughtSpot now integrates with OpenLDAP for user authentication. LDAP provides security and makes user management more centralized. To enable user authentication through OpenLDAP, contact ThoughtSpot Support^.

We also made this feature available in ThoughtSpot release 6.0.5.

OpenLDAP admin user

ThoughtSpot now supports using your company’s OpenLDAP admin user to SSH into your cluster(s) as an admin, instead of using the local ThoughtSpot admin user, which has sudo privileges.

This feature is only applicable to ThoughtSpot clusters that run on an RHEL image. Refer to Install the ThoughtSpot application on online clusters that use RHEL to learn how to add the three OpenLDAP admin user parameters to your Ansible playbook.

Admin Console enhancements

This release reorganizes the Admin Console, to make it cleaner and more intuitive.

This includes the following changes:

  • The System Overview Pinboard in the Admin Console has been deprecated. You can find visualizations from it on the System Cluster Pinboard and the System Alerts Pinboard.

  • The Total Capacity visualization is now in the System Cluster Pinboard.

  • The visualizations about user activity that appeared in the System Overview Pinboard now appear in the new User Adoption Pinboard.

  • The Relational Data Cache and Relational Search Engine panels that appeared in the System Overview Pinboard now appear in Data  Usage  Data.

  • Many of the visualizations that appeared in the System Overview Pinboard appear in the System Information and Usage Pinboard.

  • The Configuration Events panel that appeared in the System Overview Pinboard now appears in the System Alerts Pinboard.

User adoption and performance Pinboards

This release of ThoughtSpot contains two new default Pinboards for administrators.

  • Use the User Adoption Pinboard in the Admin Console to understand how your ThoughtSpot users are interacting with ThoughtSpot, and how your user adoption is changing over time.

  • Use the Performance Tracking Pinboard, accessible from the Pinboards tab, to understand how your ThoughtSpot cluster performs.

RHEL and Amazon Linux 2 ease of installation

This release of ThoughtSpot makes it easier to deploy ThoughtSpot on an Amazon Linux 2 or RHEL image platform.

  • You can now use a Terraform, or Chef template, or an Ansible tarball, to install OS packages, dependencies, and the ThoughtSpot CLI (tscli), and configure your cluster. Previously, you could only use an Ansible tarball or Terraform template.

  • You now only need 20 GB on the root drive for yum packages and system logs, and 200 GB for ThoughtSpot installation.

  • You can now deploy ThoughtSpot on RHEL version 7.9. You can no longer deploy ThoughtSpot on RHEL version 7.7.

  • If your organization performs automation with a different configuration management tool, you can use the template ThoughtSpot developed for automation with Terraform. You can obtain this template from our Github repository. ThoughtSpot provides templates for alternative tools only as generic guidelines. You should review the templates before using them and make sure that they are safe to use in your organization. In no way can ThoughtSpot be held responsible for any issue arising from their use.

Supported Upgrade Paths

If you are running one of the following versions, you can upgrade to the 6.3.1 CU4 release directly:

  • 5.3 to 6.3.1 CU4

  • 6.0.5 to 6.3.1 CU4

  • 6.1 to 6.3.1 CU4

  • 6.2 to 6.3.1 CU4

  • 6.2.1 to 6.3.1 CU4

  • 6.3.x to 6.3.1 CU4

This includes any hotfixes or customer patches on these branches.

If you are running a different version, you must do a multiple pass upgrade. First, upgrade to version 5.3, 6.0.5, 6.1.x, 6.2.x, or 6.3.x and then to the 6.3.1 CU4 release.

To successfully upgrade your ThoughtSpot cluster, all user profiles must include a valid email address. Without valid email addresses, the upgrade is blocked.