Release Notes: Here's What's New in Your Ontic Platform (v16.6)
Release Date: October 15th, 2022
TABLE OF CONTENTS
New Features
Incidents
Task template support for incidents & signals
What it is: Ability to configure templates that can be selected when assigning tasks within Incident and Signals.
Why it matters: Broadens the scope and flexibility in task assignments, which can be used in workflows and as a part of automation.
How it Works:
In the Administration Menu, under tasks a new option for Signal / Observation will be available
Select Task Template to create the task, with the appropriate flow and attach any necessary forms
Once a template has been created, it can be selected along with standard templates for Incidents and Signals
Real Time Threat Detection
Wildfire Layer
What it is: An advanced layer on the Geo Risk dashboard that can be toggled on to display new and active wildfires and wildfire warnings.
Why it matters: Previously, Ontic could surface signals when there is a known wildfire occurring. Now Ontic can surface known, active, and forecasted wildfire warnings per the local government reporting agencies. This will help clients gain situation awareness and help with business continuity planning.
How it works: Open Geo Risks -> Click on Advance layers -> Select Wildfire. Wildfire hotspots will be visible on the map. Hotspots confirm the active wildfires. Clicking on the hotspot will display additional details such as reported time and impacted burn area.
Note : the Wildfire layer may take a few moments to load. As you scroll along the map or interact with signals and principals the wildfire layer will display.
The map can show three types of hotspots -
Hotspot with no burnt area
Zooming in on such hotspots will show the wildfire signals only. Two types of signals are being received on map:
Point Signal - Gives exact location where wildfire has taken place
Region of space - Area where a wildfire has spread.
Click on to see signal detail. The radius can be increased to see the list of principals in the area. The radius can be set only for point signals.
Hotspots attached with burnt area
Burnt area shows the area which is sufficiently affected by fire to display significant changes.
Slider to select a radius will be visible only for those signals that have point data. In above image it is not a point data instead it is a region hence no slider visible for this signal.
Affected principal within a burnt area will be displayed.
Only Burnt Area
Click on a burnt area to see the details of the burnt area and nearby principals.
“Storm Potential” layers
What it is: Advanced weather forecasting and weather layers with predictive analysis provided by Accuweather meteorologists.
Storm Potential Outlook will display visuals for potential storms approaching within 6-10 days.
Storm Potential Notice will display visuals for potential storms approaching within 5 days.
Why it matters: Storm potential data will provide information clients can use to proactively assess potential severe weather incidents to prevent weather-related losses.
How it works: Open Geo Risks -> Click on Advance Layers -> Select Storm Potential
Clicking on the visuals will display details of the storm potential impact. The right pane will show the potential impacted area, expert analysis, and any principals who may be impacted by the weather event.
Enhancements
General / User Experience
Cloning dashboards, feeds & metrics widgets
What it is: Ability to clone dashboards, feeds & metrics widgets.
Why it matters: Currently, cloning capability is not available for dashboards, feeds, or metrics widgets. Cloning helps users in copying all filters and settings into a new dashboard which saves users time to create a dashboard from scratch.
How it works:
In Dashboards: Open any dashboard. Click on three dots on top - right corner of dashboard -> click on Clone Dashboard
In Metrics: Click on three dots of any widget on a dashboard. Click on clone.
In Feeds: Click on three dots of any feed. Click on “Clone”
BOLO Template Builder - Add associated Principals
What it is: BOLO Template Builder has been upgraded to have associated Principals.
Why it matters: Quickly create BOLOs, with associated principals as a part of the template.
How it works: Go into the BOLO Template builder. Under ‘Report Content’, scroll down to the end of the list, and enable ‘Associated Principals’.
Display number of users below the user list
What it is: Admins can quickly see the number of users in the Ontic platform
Why it matters: Currently, admins have to use workarounds to get to this number, yet it can be critical information for procurement, financing, and SecOps teams.
How it works: Go to the ‘users’ section within Ontic Admin. On the bottom left of the screen, you’ll easily see the number of users (ie items);
Advanced time filters in metrics widgets
What it is: Ability to set the time filter for individual widgets on a dashboard. Users can have time filters be either persistent or transient.
Why it matters: Currently, if the dashboard filter is changed then it is applicable for all widgets on that dashboard. Users could not set separate widget level time filters to visualize the data.
How it works:
Persistent – the widget will always have the view of that time period, for all users.
Go to the widget editor, scroll down to ‘Time Duration’. Choose the time duration and click save:
Transient – the user can change the time period on the fly, without going into the widget editor. Other users do not see the change, and refreshing will make transient time filters disappear.
Click the calendar icon on the top right of the widget. Change the time duration without going into the widget editor:
Visual indicator to represent Principal type
What it is: Unique indicators for Principals based on the type of Principal.
Why it matters: To help differentiate when looking at the map or when looking at signal impact.
How it works: Whenever a Principal card is displayed the new indicator will be present.
Types of principals and associated indicator:
Samples of principals with new indicators:
Permission control - Object restrictions by role
What it is: Ability for account Administrators to specify what roles should have the ability to mark Entities, Investigations, or Principals as restricted.
Why it matters: Account Administrators now have the ability to define which user roles will have the ability to restrict access to Entities, Investigations, and Principals. Previously all users have the ability to restrict one of these objects to a single user or multiple users if they restrict it. Administrators can now define the roles that should be allowed to restrict those objects.
How it works: Navigate via Administration-> Roles. Once in a specified Role navigate you will be in the primary tab which is the Action (Permissions) Tab.
Navigate to each section for Entity, Principal, & Investigation and confirm the status of “User Visibility Restriction”
If the box “User Visibility Restriction” is checked then the users of that role will be able to restrict those objects to a single or multiple users.
If the box “User Visibility Restriction” is not checked then the users of that role have no ability to restrict access.
Entities
Tool Tips for threat levels
What it is: Clients would like to have configurable Tool Tips over the threat levels.
Why it matters: Threat assessment teams oftentime want to communicate to other users across the org their explanations on how they define threats as LOW/MEDIUM/HIGH etc.
How it works: Administration-> Fields -> Entity -> Standard fields . Edit Threat Level and Click on three dots of any threat level and add a tooltip. After the Tool Tip is added, you can easily edit or remove that tool tip.
Ability to edit ‘associated Principals’ from entity header
What it is: Clients would like to add associated principals from the header.
Why it matters: Currently, users can edit the threat level, RFI, and entity tags from within the header, but they cannot associate principals. This upgrade is intuitive and will save clients time.
How it works: Go into an entity. In the entity header, you can now edit the ‘Associated Principals’ from directly within the header. Click edit, associate the appropriate principals, select the relationship with the entity.
Investigations
Custom name and sequence
What it is: Ability to configure the naming convention. Identifiers could be configured for any object (entity, incident, investigation, principal & tasks) and any object category. For example, Investigation having a category of ‘case’ can be configured to have the identifier as CAS-123 or at a workspace level.
Why it matters: Enable users to configure the identifier as per their business requirements which will help in easier tracking of data. Also, it will help in distinguishing the objects (entities, incidents, investigations, principal and tasks) which have been shared from another workspace from the objects which are local.
How it works: Client needs to give the confirmation to configure the identifier and it will be configured from the backend by the Ontic’s dev team via a ticket request.
Export investigations dashboards
What it is: Ability to export business object data that clients have entered into investigations in two formats via Excel or PDF.
Why it matters: Provides exposure and export capability to additional investigation based data that clients can view in Ontic and then need to export. The export can be done in two formats one for easy digestion (PDF) and another for analytical purposes (Excel).
How it works: Within the Investigations Dashboard, configure the dashboard with all of the necessary fields exposed in the dashboard.
Additional fields can be added to the dashboard by selecting the cog gear icon in the upper right corner. Use the slide bar on those fields in gray to expose them in the dashboard.
When all fields have been added to the dashboard. Select the three dot icon in the upper right corner, and select Export Dashboard.
The export can be in pdf format for ease of digestion, however only 5 fields can be exposed. The Excel export format will include all fields selected for richer analytical purposes.
Real Time Threat Detection
Real Time Threat Detection (RTTD) with “Geo Risks” is a premium feature. To learn more about RTTD and Geo Risks, please contact your account manager.
Show entity details regardless of entity update time
What it is: Ability to keep entities displayed on the map regardless of time filter selected for the dashboard. Note: This is not available for the standard dashboard.
Why it matters: Previously, entities will only display on the geo risk dashboard if there has been an update to the entity record within the time and date filter for the entire dashboard. Now users can create custom dashboards to show entities on the map whether or not the entities were updated within the timeframe filter.
How it works: In the custom dashboard configuration settings users can set a fixed time duration filter for the entity feed.
Entities will display in accordance with the Principals selected to populate the dashboard.
From Map Layers in the Geo Risk dashboard users can hover over the Entity time icon to show how the time filter is configured.
Configurable refresh rates
What it is: The ability to set the rate at which the Geo Risk dashboard will update while the map view is open in a user’s browser.
Why it matters: Previously the dashboard would update every 5 minutes, even though signals are being captured in the platform more frequently. Now users can make sure the map view is up to date as they interact with the map.
How it works: When configuring the settings of a custom Geo Risk dashboard, after clicking Configure Custom Preferences users can set the refresh rate. The current available options are 5 minutes, 1 minute and 30 seconds. This will control the frequency of the “What’s New” updates.
