Changelog

Ellie 5.0

This is a big release for us, and it contains all kinds of fixes and quality-of-life changes in the UI as well as lots of rewriting under the hood. The changes are listed per feature below.

• Conceptual Modeling Canvas

  • Edit/View state: separate Edit/View states have been removed. There is now only one state; if you have edit access, you can edit!

  • Search/create: choosing entities from search or creating new entities now immediately adds them to the canvas instead of the sidebar list. The sidebar list has been removed entirely.

  • Deleting entities from the canvas: deleting entities from the canvas now removes them completely from the model. Previously, this would simply remove them from the canvas and add them to the sidebar list, which no longer exists. If the entity belongs to no other models, the user is prompted if they’d want to completely delete the entity from the Glossary as well.

  • Sidebar information: model information, entity types, and relationship types are all now listed on the sidebar. The model name and description can also be directly edited from here. Previously, the sidebar information would change depending on the Edit/View state, which no longer exists.

  • Model history: The history of changes in the model is displayed in a more compact form in the sidebar.

  • Conceptual models can now be directly exported from the canvas with the Export button (similarly to Logical models). PDF exports are also directly available from here. Previously, exporting conceptual models as files was done via the Reports functionality, which has now been completely removed.

  • Zooming in and out now works with mouse scroll also on the conceptual modeling canvas (previously on logical models only).

  • Area selection is now available on the conceptual modeling canvas with shift-click & drag (previously on logical models only).

  • All relationship notation styles (crow’s feet with or without the maximum cardinality, plus the arrows) are now available to select from the same menu when editing a relationship’s end. Previously, there was a separate user-specific setting to display different styles.

  • Added “Fit to view” option to toolbar (previously on logical models only).

  • “Draw as”/”View as” options removed from the toolbar.

  • Updated the right-click context menu of an entity: e.g. the on-canvas “Edit” menu has been rewritten.

• Logical Modeling Canvas

  • Recursive relationships (a relationship from an entity back to itself) can now be created on Logical Models as well (previously on conceptual models only).

  • Relationship line ends can now be moved freely along the entity’s edge (previously worked only on conceptual models).

  • The overall behavior of the entities, relationships, and relationship elbows on the logical modeling canvas has been tuned and made more consistent with the conceptual modeling canvas (snapping, resizing, etc.)

  • PDF exports are now also available for logical models from the export button.

• Glossary List

  • The selections for showing more info about the entities have been simplified. “Show attributes” and “Show models” are now toggles on the side, affecting what you see on the entity cards in the List.

  • Import/Export functionalities are now available directly from the Glossary List (previously this was an admin-only feature).

• Export/Import Glossary via Excel files

  • The entire Export/Import Glossary functionality has been rewritten from scratch. This used to be an admin-only feature, but now it’s been made available to all write-access users. The UI and the workflow have been rebuilt so that errors are checked more thoroughly and communicated to the user more clearly. See the update guide here.

• Single entity view

  • The “Relationships” tab now shows all relationships the entity has with other entities - including different kinds of relationships with the same target entity, where either the cardinality or the relationship description is unique.

  • The “Relationships” tab now also shows all description texts from every relationship - meaning that if there are multiple descriptions attached to different elbows along the relationships line, they are all listed.

  • Loading speeds in this view have been greatly improved.

• Sandbox

  • The old Sandbox feature has been removed. It was not compatible with the new technological solutions in use for the new Conceptual Modeling canvas, and we recognized it was also lacking many features such as “publishing” models from the Sandbox to “real” Ellie, and being able to draft also logical models. Overall, the Sandbox feature had very few users.

  • We will be releasing completely new “drafts” functionality later!

  • If you had something super important in your old sandbox, please contact support@ellie.ai and we’ll get it back to you - no worries!

• Reports

  • You can now export conceptual & logical models directly from the canvases. The exact same CSV files for entities, relationships, and attributes, as well as PDF versions of the diagrams, are directly available for each model there. Thus, the old Reports functionality has been removed. This makes the manual export a lot more straightforward!

Ellie 4.7

New features

• You can now convert conceptual models to logical models!

  • Added a “Convert” button in the toolbar on the Conceptual Modeling Canvas

  • This generates a new logical model, with all the entities, relationships, and entity attributes copied to the model

  • The logical model diagram itself is automatically drawn (you can edit this to your liking afterwards, of course)

  • All logical entities in the new model are automatically mapped to their conceptual counterparts

• Added “updated at” timestamp for conceptual entities in the JSON exports that you get via the Glossary & Model Export API endpoints. This will update every time the entity’s metadata is changed.

  • Note that for currently existing entities, this is by default set equal to “created at”. It will update properly the next time an edit is made.

  • An “update” in this case means the following: the entity name is changed, the description or any other metadata field is updated, or any attributes of the entity or their metadata are updated.

Ellie 4.6.1

Bugfixes

• Glossary API: fixed an issue with update calls to attribute metadata, where the attribute metadata information was in some situations deleted instead of updated.

Improvements

• More reliable auto-drawing functionality when importing logical models via the new API endpoint.

Ellie 4.6

New features

• New Model Import API endpoint!

  • Now you can import logical models into Ellie via the POST /models endpoint!

  • Simply format your tables & columns into our JSON structure and feed that into the endpoint - a new logical model is automatically generated for you.

  • Currently only supports logical models - conceptual model import coming later!

  • See API details here: https://ellie.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ELLIE/pages/783745025/API

Improvements

• Added a notification text for the upcoming removal of the Reports functionality, with a link to the documentation explaining how model export from the UI will work in the future.

Ellie 4.5.3

Bugfixes

• Okta OIN implementation: missing usernames fixed

Improvements

• Behind-the-scenes support for new user onboarding workflow - coming soon to new Ellie trials!

Ellie 4.5.2

Bugfixes

• Model Export API: Exported file now correctly displays relationships between entities if the relationships have no elbows.

• Model Export API: Exported file now correctly displays relationships in situations where there are multiple relationships between the same two entities.

Improvements

• Okta implementation for OIN

• Breadcrumb updates: “New Conceptual Model” is fully displayed, “Organization Settings” is fully displayed, and “User Settings” capitalisation matches the Avatar User dropdown menu “User Settings”.

• Model List View: Progress bar has reduced padding on the right of it.

Ellie 4.5.1

Improvements

• Improved stability and timeout handling

• Reset password -button now behaves more nicely if the email address has already been filled in on the login page

Ellie 4.5

New Features

• Okta integration - an opt-in feature for user management via Okta (ask for details or enablement via support@ellie.ai)

• Distributor Admins can now set a suborganization to either offer AAD or Okta sign-in.

Improvements

• When creating a Collection but leaving the Collection title empty, the error now says "Name cannot be empty".

Ellie 4.4

New Features

• New Ellie logo!

• New Ellie Favicon!

• Administrators can now create multiple API tokens. Why? Because:

• New Glossary API!

  • You can now fetch the full content, or a specific Entity ID or a specific Entity Name from your organization using an API endpoint.

  • You can now Create, Modify and Delete Entities by using using API endpoints.

  • You can now Create, Modify and Delete Attributes by using API endpoints.

Improvements

• Model List View: LM Deletion dialog can now be exited from by pressing Esc.

• Global organization settings (Custom Entity Type page) is more user-friendly when the browser window is smaller than expected.

• LM: Pre-existing Entity deletion dialog can be exited by pressing Esc.

Bugfixes

• Navigating from a LM to another LM from Search bar results now opens the second LM.

• The Glossary Index List now correctly stops showing an Entity that has been deleted from the Entity Detail View.

Ellie 4.3.1

New Features

• The browser tab now tells you where you are (Ellie | Glossary, Ellie | Models, Ellie | Reports, Ellie | Entity name, Ellie | Model name, Ellie | User Management, Ellie | API settings, Ellie | Sandbox, Ellie | User Settings, Ellie | Organization settings, Ellie | Client organizations)

Improvements

• Login page Password textfield now has the Show/Hide password eyeball for showing or hiding the password.

• User Settings now introduces Show/Hide password eyeball for showing or hiding the password.

• Empty Logical Model will no longer have the Export button enabled.

• The page for copying Models across Organizations has Models sorted alphabetically.

• Expired Forgotten Password link copywriting tweaks to better reflect what happens on the page.

• LM: Pressing Enter while having the Delete Entity Dialog open no longer highlights the Trashcan icon behind the dialog.

• Right-clicking on the "Click Here" link on the 404 not found page now re-directs you to the Dashboard instead of giving an error.

• Model List View: Sidebar text and tickboxes are now more cohesively placed across Safari, Chrome and Firefox.

• Model List View: Pressing Esc in LM Copy Dialog now closes the Dialog.

• When viewing Collection details in Model List View, the CM and LM content hamburger "…" now visually lines up.

• LM: Opening a Delete Entity Dialog no longer shifts the topbar down visually.

• LM: Pressing Enter in Entity Edit Dialog while the cursor is on a Glossary Link textfield which is empty, will save the LM Entity.

• LM: Pressing Enter in Entity Edit Dialog on Title or New Attribute will save the Entity.

• LM: Entities and their attributes now automatically filter out leading and trailing whitespace instead of giving the user an error.

Bugfixes

• Copying a CM or a LM with an ultra-long name will no longer needlessly show errors in the dialog, instead, the name gets cropped at 255 characters.

• When a Distributor Admin edits the AAD settings of an Organization, the Add Group button is correctly enabled after inputting the Group ID, Group Name and Access Level.

• New Entities added to the Organization via the Import function will no longer be displayed as 404 before User presses refresh, and will be displayed in search results during CM edit.

• LM: When you have selected an attribute for deletion by ticking the box on its row, and you add a new Glossary Link, the selection is no longer lost.

• When exporting a Conceptual Model via the Ellie API, the elbow descriptions are now shown in the correct order (from Source Entity to Destination Entity).

• When the Delete LM Entity Dialog is open, selecting text no longer moves the entities on the canvas below the Dialog.

Ellie 4.3

New Features

• Custom Entity Types can be set up by an organization Admin

• Any Custom Entity Type can be set to be the Default Entity Type

• Custom Entity Types can be reset to Ellie Originals

• Entities now support Custom Entity Types

• CM Entity Dropdown menu allows for changing Entity Type

• Entity Types are now displayed in CM View mode - instead of Explanation

Improvements

• LM: Primary Keys (PKs) are now in Bold both on the Canvas and on the Entity Edit dialog

• LM: Foreign Keys (FKs) are now in Italics both on the Canvas and on the Entity Edit dialog

• LM Creation page now clearly states if the Model title has leading or trailing whitespace, and the red triangle is displayed when the Model title is missing or has issues

• LM Creation page is now visually closer to CM Creation page

• LM Zoom buttons are less widely spaced, similar to CM Zoom placement

• LM Entity resize hotspot size has been increased

• LM Edit info dialog has more accurate titling such as Edit Logical Model Info, Logical Model name, Logical Model description

• Distributor Admin: AAD / API texts are now easier to read to quickly see if AAD is On/Off or if API is On/Off.

Bugfixes

• Create CM page now tells you that the Model name you are using already exists, instead of being silent.

• Create Collection page now tells you that the Collection name you are using already exists, instead of being silent.

• LM Edit Info dialog now correctly references models instead of collections for model name and model description

• Creating a Duplicate Collection Name will now shoot an error

• Renaming a Collection Name to a Collection that already exists will now shoot an error

• Exported Model Attributes are now shown in the right order

Ellie 4.2.1

Improvements

• LM Undo now supports Ctrl-Y and CMD-Y and Shift-Ctrl-Z and Shift-CMD-Z

• Relationships / Logical tabs now show models in alphabetical order

• LM Glossary Link search shows more than 10 results

• When creating or editing LM Entities, the attribute row now shows more characters

Bugfixes

• LM Relationship creation and undoing now works more reliably.

• When CSV exporting Reports with Supertype/Subtype connections, the SourceID and TargetID used to be reversed. No longer.

Ellie 4.2

New Features

• When creating Entities in Logical Models, you can now link pre-existing Glossary Entities from Conceptual Models.

• When editing Entities in Logical Models, you can now link pre-existing Glossary Entities from Conceptual Models.

• The Glossary Entity view has been updated with a new tab that shows Logical Entity relationships

• Logical Models can now have Textboxes

• Logical Model Entity Attribute rows can be dragged up and down to reorder

Improvements

• Close / Create buttons always displayed when creating a new LM Entity - no matter how many PK/FK Attributes you have created.

• Opening Edit Model Info in Logical Modeling now autofocuses on the title

• You can now exit from Edit Model or Add Entity or Edit Entity in LM by pressing ESC

• All places that offer a possibility of emailing, now email to support@ellie.ai

• Logical Model Name is now capped to 255 characters

• Read-only users see "Show model info" while viewing LM, instead of "edit model info"

• Read-only users do not see Entity/Collection/Model restricted locks since they are meaningless to them

• LM Create Entity "Delete selected attribute" function is disabled until something is selected

• LM Edit Entity dialog has been visually improved in numerous ways

Bugfixes

• Opening Edit Model Info no longer shifts the topbar slightly visually

• The shortcut CMD-Z (for Undo) did not work in Logical Models

• Ctrl-clicking on a Relationship in LM did not open a context menu

Ellie 4.1.1

Improvements

• Relationships in a Logical Model now snap at 90 degree angles

• Logical Model Relationships now point to the closest entity edge

• Distributor Admin: Sub-organizations now display the count of Admin, Read and Write users.

• AAD User is now able to log in directly from Model link and is taken to Model after successful login.

Bugfixes

• AAD Group members with access to a restricted Collection were not able to edit models in the Collection.

Ellie v4.1

New Features

• Restricted Collections: Admins can set Collections to restricted, and they can add/remove editors from the Collection. Any model added to a restricted Collection, and it’s Entities, will no longer be editable by non-editors. You will see a lock in the Model Edit View.

Changes

• Models (both Logical and Conceptual) can now be in only one Collection at a time

Improvements

• Logging out is now noticeably faster

• Relationship endings in Logical Models will now display a circle when you hover over them

• Top right menu now displays a link to the Top Tips article on Ellie Confluence

• The Dashboard will now display Logical Models and their color will be grey instead of blue.

Bugfixes

• The Sandbox option is no longer shown to Read users from the top right corner menu.

• Report Entities CSV Export now shows the right URL (ellie dot ai instead of ellie dot fi)

• A deleted or non-existing Logical Model URL will now show a 404

Ellie v4.0

New Features

• Logical Modeling - new model type & canvas for creating Logical Models.

• Logical Models are shown in Model List View.

• Logical Model data can be exported directly from the Model.

• Logical Models can be filtered from the Model List View.

• You can create Logical Models or Conceptual Models in Dashboard

• Logical Model icons have a different colour than Conceptual Models in Model List View

• Logical Models available via Model Export API

Improvements

• Model ID is displayed while viewing a Model

• The Password renewal link in the email will now expire in 60 minutes instead of 30 minutes

• The Password renewal email has also been tweaked to inform the recipient about the time limit

Bugfixes

• Exporting Entity names as CSV was not possible if no attributes in the Entity

• Dragging entities into a Conceptual Model using Safari no longer selects the whole page

• New organizations were not properly initialized, new entities with attributes were not successfully created

• It is now possible to create an empty collection with no models

• Distributor Admin can toggle API on / off per organization

Ellie v3.8

New Features

• Model Export API

Improvements

• If you have nothing selected in Show Fields, now says "Showing basic info" instead of "Showing nothing".

• When deleting an attribute, the dialog now says "Delete Attribute" and "Delete This Attribute" instead of "Delete this item".

• When changing your password, the error now informs you that the current password was wrong.

• Glossary Index List: If an Entity is in no Model, now says "Not used in a model" instead of "Not set".

• User profile name is now capped to 50 characters, instead of showing you "too long" in an unceremonious fashion

• Distributor Admin: Organization Metadata titles are now capped to 50 characters, instead of showing you "too long" in an unceremonious fashion

• If you attempt to change your password to the same as your current one, you get warned

• Report View no longer becomes difficult to use if you have reports with extremely long names

• Entity View: When you click on Delete to delete an Entity, you will be asked if you are sure.

• No Results will match in colouring everywhere - grey always, blue never

Bugfixes

• After changing your password, you are now able to get back to User Settings from the topbar

• Distributor Admin: When adding new Attribute Metadata fields, "Textfield" is no longer automatically selected, so you can actually select it.

Ellie v3.7.1

Improvements

• When adding an Entity to a Model, no longer show Entities that are already in the Model - just Entities that are in the Glossary but not already on the Model.

• When adding Models to Reports, no longer show Models that are already in the Report.

• When Sorting By Model on Glossary Index List, no longer show Models that are already selected as Sorted By when searching and adding Models.

• Explanation rectangles in Model View no longer change the cursor to a hand when hovered over the rectangles in Safari.

• Model List View now shows "No Results found", if no Models found, instead of no text.

• Newly created organizations have "Format" set as one of the default Attributes for Entities, instead of "Data Type".

• The "Metadata" tab in the Entity Glossary View has been renamed to "About".

• The "Data Type" default Metadata attribute has been renamed to "Format".

• The email support@ellie.ai has been added to all pertinent places that require contacting us

Bugfixes

• Editing an already created report would not correctly fetch the list of models in the report.

• The Organization Expiration date would accept invalid months (13->) and invalid dates (32->).

• Microsoft Edge users would see a selected tickbox as grey instead of blue.

• Pressing Cancel in Edit Elbow dialog would save the Elbow edit.

• When renaming a model and then closing the sidebar, you would get a white screen with errors on the console.

• Pressing the Delete button while editing the content of a Text Box would delete the Text Box instead of a character of the text.

• When travelling to and fro in the Top Bar Breadcrumb view, if entering the Glossary Index List from a Model, the Model would no longer be correctly selected in the Sort By Model segment of the Sidebar.

• When successfully Logging Out and then trying to Log In with an invalid password, the green "You've been Logged Out" banner would not be cleared.

• When Logging Out and Logging back in, errors of the previous session would not be cleared.

• When unticking Entities in Model, Collection details would be hidden.

Ellie v3.7

New Features

• Microsoft Azure Active Directory support.

• Parent-entity / Sub-entity relationships now shown in Entity Relationship tab

• Parent-entity / Sub-entity relationships now shown in Relationship Export

• A Distributor Admin can delete an organization.

• A Distributor Admin can configure Microsoft Azure Active Directory features and groups.

Improvements

• Reset Password page now has links to return back to the Login form.

• When deleting an entity, no longer show 404 entity missing error after deletion.

• Missing Models, Entities, Reports now have a different 404 error page with more information and a better graphic.

• Model List View can be filtered by Model Status (Work in Progress, Waiting for Approval, Approved, In Production)

• New, more visually appealing Password Reset Link Sent page.

• Editing an elbow now has autofocus on Elbow Description in dialog.

• Logging out no longer briefly shows the Dashboard before returning back to the Login form.

• Cosmetic: Delete is now rounded when selected.

• Added missing roundings to Report Adding dropdown menu.

• Split dialog text to two lines for Delete Entity, Delete Report, Delete User.

• Visual spacing in Edit Collection fixed

• Logging out refreshes the login form.

• Editing Elbow dialog has autofocus on Elbow description

• New error pages for Microsoft Azure Active Directory support. (Not enabled for this organization, you aren't a member of the group that has access to the organization).

• To conform with Microsoft Azure Active Directory, users no longer have First and Last name, just Username.

• The History of the Model View no longer shows email address.

Bugfixes

• The first time you create an empty collection with Firefox will succeed instead of fail.

• Users with Read permission can no longer create Entities, Reports or Models.

• Adding textboxes works again.

Ellie v3.6.1

Improvements

• Updated visuals for error messages (Missing model, report, entity)

• The Wherescape site now has a favicon

• Reports can now be deleted while viewing them

• Organizations can be disabled

• Multiple forms now have automatically focused textfields, such as Create Model, Create Collection, etc.

• Bold and Italics used for username and role when editing users

Bugfixes

• Reset password emails are now sent from ellie@ellie.ai instead of ellie@ellie.fi

• Removing the same Model from Two Collections results in Two Models with same name - no longer happens