Helical Insight 6.2.1 – Release Walkthrough & Feature Highlights

 We are excited to announce the General Availability (GA) release of Open Source BI Helical Insight 6.2.1.

This release brings major performance enhancements across both canned reports & interactive charts/dashboards, newer components & charts in canned reports, newer capabilities in the interactive charts designer module and several UI/UX enhancements across Helical Insight modules.

One of the biggest highlights of this release is the significant performance optimization (when being viewed across pages, especially in case of canned reports) through introduction of streaming response and stream cache strategy implementation. Canned reports have seen a performance upgrade by nearly 85-90% and the interactive charts/dashboards performance upgrade by nearly 50%.

This document provides a module-wise walkthrough of all major enhancements and improvements introduced in Helical Insight 6.2 GA.

 

Major Highlights of Helical Insight 6.2 GA

(A) Performance Improvements

Helical Insight 6.2 introduces major architectural improvements focused on report execution performance and memory optimization (called as streaming cache technique). This is especially useful when we are viewing the reports, across multiple pages, like generally seen in canned reports or tables.

Key Performance Enhancements

• Implementation of Stream Cache Strategy
• Improved handling of large datasets
• Reduced memory footprint during report generation
• Faster page rendering and incremental data loading
• Update option showing streaming cache over

These enhancements make Helical Insight 6.2 more scalable and suitable for enterprise-grade reporting workloads. Further reading : https://www.helicalinsight.com/helical-insight-6-2-streaming-response-enhancement/

 

(B) Email Enhancements

a.      Support of Gmail, Microsoft, Zoho and other email providers

From version 6.2 onwards, Helical Insight emailing functionality has been enhanced. With various email providers like Gmail Microsoft enhancing their email security requirements, from version 6.2 onwards we have also enhanced our emailing features. Hence, if you are using Zoho or Gmail or Microsoft etc vendor as your email provider, you will be able to use the emailing alerts/report scheduling features provided in Helical Insight.

Read more of how to do the same: https://www.helicalinsight.com/email-configuration-helical-insight/

 

b.     Dropdown-Based Selection for Export Formats

The UI through we select the list of formats while doing emailing/email scheduling has been enhanced. Now it is a drop down, thus allowing better visibility and usage across any device.

(C) HCR (Helical Canned Reporting) Enhancements

1. New Components addition (Table, Crosstab and Charts)

From version 6.2 onwards, in the canned reports we have introduced new components i.e. table, cross tab and charts. In terms of charts, right now we are supporting (both horizontal and vertical) bar chart, stacked bar chart, grouped bar chart, pie chart.

Further reading

• Table Component usage in canned reports: https://www.helicalinsight.com/usage-of-table-component-in-canned-reporting/
• Cross Tab Component usage in canned reports: https://www.helicalinsight.com/usage-of-crosstab-component-in-canned-reporting/
• Chart Component usage in canned reports: https://www.helicalinsight.com/usage-of-chart-component-in-canned-reporting/

 

2. Abort Functionality in HCR

Similar to our adhoc charts and dashboard designer module, users can now abort long-running report executions directly from the UI. This gives a consistent user experience across all the modules as well as better resource utilization, improved user control and prevent unnecessary server load by disabling long running queries.

 

 

 

 

3. Image Component of Canned Report Enhancements:

(a) Dynamic Images Support

Canned report now supports dynamic images. From version 6.2, when we use an image component, the image can be of any format

-          A direct URL of the image

-          Upload the image locally and use it

-          Image path can be there in the DB, which can be fetched and used

-          Image can be stored as a BLOB in the DB and used

Usage of image : https://www.helicalinsight.com/canned-reporting-image-component/  

(b) Support of 'Print When Expression' for Image Component

A new conditional rendering capability has been added for image components using "Print When Expression". With this, we can display/hide image based on certain condition.

Use case of print when expression on image : https://www.helicalinsight.com/print-when-expression-usage-on-image/

 

4. Report level and element-Level Property Configuration

From 6.2 and 6.2.1, both report level and individual element-level property configuration support has been added in canned report. There are hundreds of such kind of properties which exists which can be used to specify the behavior of the application, export controls, data options, formatting options etc. These properties can be applied at the entire application level or can also be individually applied at any component level as well.

You can read about those properties here.

- User defined properties : https://www.helicalinsight.com/user-defined-properties-helical-insight-canned-reports/

- System Defined properties : https://www.helicalinsight.com/default-system-defined-properties-helical-insight-canned-reports/

 

C. Adhoc Report Designer (HReport) Enhancements

a. Custom Formatting Support

Apart from the previously present data formatting options, a new custom formatting capabilities have been introduced allowing users to write down any kind of custom formatting that they are interested in and the same will reflect in the analysis. This formatting can be in terms of data, numbers, color etc. Like negative numbers in bracket, positive numbers in green color etc. This format is extremely useful for financial, accounting kind of analysis which is being done.

Read more here: https://www.helicalinsight.com/custom-formatting-in-properties/ 

 

2. Rename & Order By in Field Context Menu

Users can now rename fields and apply order-by functionality directly from the field context menu. Simply clicking on the dragged fields gives you these options. Earlier in order to rename you can double click on the field and rename. For sorting, there was sorting icon in the dragged fields. Those options are also present as well and can be used.

 

3. Tooltip Customization Support

So far, the fields which are part of the rows/columns/marks were only visible in tooltip with no option to control it.

From version 6.2.1, a new "Tooltip" property has been introduced which can allow you to add new fields which can be displayed while the report is being shown. Further whatever fields are being displayed in tooltip can also be controlled, removed, edited as well.

Usage: https://www.helicalinsight.com/tooltip-property-with-configurable-fields/

 

 

4. Stepped Color Options in Existing Color Property

From version 6.2.1, in the color property, a stepped color option is also added. In case if we are using gradient color, the stepped color option allows to specify the number of color steps between the minimum value color and maximum value color.

Read more here: https://www.helicalinsight.com/changing-color-on-a-report-in-helical-insight-5-0/

 

 

 

 

5. Percentage Values in Tooltip for Radial Charts

Tooltip support has been enhanced to display percentage values when radial property is enabled.

6. Text Visualization Renamed to Word Cloud

The existing "Text" visualization has been renamed to "Word Cloud" for better usability and clarity and avoid any confusion.

7. Configurable Drillthrough Default Option

Drill through property allows to click somewhere and open a detailed view in the same frame. There were 2 options present i.e. Drill Through & Drill Through Default.

-          Drill Through : Opened child report based on where we have clicked thus showing limited data

-          Drill Through Default: This opened the child report with all data (default values selected while configuring drill through)

In certain cases, to certain users, these 2 options could cause confusion. Hence, from version 6.2 onwards, there is an option to disable Drill Through Default. Hence it will only show Drill Through option only.

Read more here: https://www.helicalinsight.com/configuring-drill-through/

 

Helical Insight Platform Improvements

1. Removal of Critical Vulnerabilities from HI Application

Security improvements have been implemented to remove critical vulnerabilities from the Helical Insight application.

Benefits

• Improved platform security
• Better enterprise compliance
• Reduced security risks
• More secure deployment environments

Helical Insight 6.2 GA is a major release focused on performance optimization, scalability, reporting enhancements, streaming capabilities, and improved user experience.

The next major version release of Helical Insight will be version 7.0 with which we would be introducing AI module as well (with Bring Your Own LLM option), allowing users to do conversational chat based data analysis as well.

 

 

Please reach out on support@helicalinsight.com in case of any questions, demo, FREE POC. You can also register on https://www.helicalinsight.com/register/ in case of any more questions.