Introducing Crosser Control Center and a new Flow Studio

Introducing Crosser Control Center and a new Flow Studio

Release Note

Crosser Control Center

Feb 2, 2023

Introducing Crosser Control Center

With this release we are introducing some brand changes that gradually will be implemented across all documentation, illustrations and marketing materials. 

The main change is that what we earlier called Crosser Cloud will now be branded Crosser Control Center and is a part of Crosser Cloud (when it’s not self-hosted).

The main reason is to avoid confusion with our Flows-as-a-Service offering that also is part of our Cloud offering and that is a pure serverless and fully managed SaaS offering for the Crosser IPA Edition. 

The hierarchy of the Crosser brands and components after this update:

  • Crosser Cloud

    • Flows-as-a-Service 

    • Crosser Control Center (SaaS)


  • Crosser Platform 

    • Crosser Control Center (SaaS or self-hosted)

      • Flow Studio

      • Deploy, Monitor and Manage Flows & Nodes

      • User & Account Management

    • Crosser Node

New Flow Studio

The Flow Studio has been completely re-designed with a new modern UI and lots of new features. We have tried to incorporate what we have learnt over the last years to build the most user friendly and efficient low-code tool on the market.

Highlights

  • Support for Pan, Zoom

  • Multiple flows open at the same time (tabs)

  • Access to everything needed when working with flows, without leaving the Flow Studio:

    • Open flows and FlowApps

    • Create new versions

    • Manage deployments

    • Create new resources and credentials

    • Add parameters

  • Customizable layout of connections

  • Harmonized UI across all modules


NOTE! To be prepared for the update we strongly recommend that you check-out this video, where we will go through the new features and show you how to continue working with your existing flows. In the Help Center you can also check out the new documentation for the Flow Studio. There is also updated documentation that describes the new Flow Studio.

Considerations when changing existing flows

The new Flow Studio has been designed to be compatible with existing flows and module versions. There are a few things to consider though and if you plan to make major changes to a flow we strongly recommend that you upgrade all modules to the latest version. This can easily be done with the new “Update modules” functionality that can be found in the “Flow settings” panel.

In the following sections we will go through the most important things you need to consider.

Layout

The layout engine that draws connections between modules is re-designed. We have tried to get as close as possible to the previous layout when you open an existing flow, but there may be minor differences. Modules will most likely end up in the same place but the connections may have changed paths. You now have the option to manually adjust any connection to get the layout you want.

Module settings

In the old Flow Studio some modules had the settings UI generated automatically from a schema, while others had custom-built UIs, resulting in inconsistent layout and UI functionality. In the new Flow Studio the module settings panels have a new look-and-feel which is automatically generated for all modules. If you open settings on an old version of a module we will try to generate a UI based on the information available, but it may not always be a perfect result and it can be difficult to understand the settings and make changes. Therefore we strongly recommend that you upgrade all modules to the latest version to get the best possible user experience. At least if you plan to continue working on a flow. If you just want to make minor changes to some settings you might stick with the existing versions.

New modules

The following new modules have been added since the last update of Crosser Cloud (August 18th, 2022):

  • Array Statistics - Calculate statistics over values in an array.

  • CAN J1939 Decoder - Interpret CAN data based on a DBC file.

  • Google PubSub Publisher - Publish data to a topic on the Google PubSub service.

  • Google PubSub Subscriber - Subscribe to data from the Google PubSub service.

  • Microsoft Dynamics Create Record - Create a record in Microsoft Dataverse (the backend for Microsoft Dynamics).

  • Microsoft Dynamics Get Records - Get a list of records in Microsoft Dataverse (the backend for Microsoft Dynamics).

  • Microsoft Teams List Chats - List chats on a Microsoft Teams account.

  • Microsoft Teams Send Chat - Send a chat message to Microsoft Teams.

  • OPC UA Events - Get events from an OPC UA server.

  • SIGNL4 Publisher - Send data to the SIGNL4 service.

  • Time Difference - Calculate the difference between two timestamps and present the result as a numeric value with a selectable unit (ms, s, hour…).

  • Window - Create arrays of data from a sequence of messages (time or count -based). Sliding and tumbling windows supported.

Updated modules

The following modules have been updated since the last update of Crosser Cloud ( August 18th, 2022). Most of the updates are done to make the modules compatible with the new Flow Studio and the upcoming Node version 2.6. These modules are listed separately.

  • Array Filter [1.0.1] - Relaxed version dependencies, no functional changes.

  • Array Sort by Property [1.0.1] - Relaxed version dependencies, no functional changes.

  • Aveva Historian Reader [1.0.6] - Fixed issue with null values, UI updates.

  • AWS IoT Core Publisher [1.0.1] - Fixed issue on Windows service nodes.

  • BigQuery Insert [3.0.1] - Fixed issue with DateTime values, UI updates.

  • Firebird Insert [1.0.6] - Fixed issue with null values.

  • Firebird Select [1.0.7] - Fixed issue with null values.

  • Google Sheet Append Row [1.0.1] - Documentation updates.

  • Google Sheet Read Rows [1.0.1] - Documentation updates.

  • Google Sheet Write Row [1.0.1] - Documentation updates.

  • MariaDB Executer [1.1.5] - Fixed issue with null values.

  • MariaDB Insert [2.9.7] - Fixed issue with null values.

  • MariaDB Select [2.8.6] - Fixed issue with null values.

  • Modbus Reader [6.0.0] - Taglist can now be overridden with parameters, UI updates

  • MsSQL Executer [1.1.5] - Fixed issue with null values.

  • MsSQL Insert [1.8.5] - Fixed issue with null values.

  • MsSQL Select [1.6.7] - Fixed issue with null values.

  • MsSQL Stored Procedure Read [1.0.5] - Fixed issue with null values.

  • MySQL Executer [1.1.5] - Fixed issue with null values.

  • MySQL Insert [2.9.7] - Fixed issue with null values.

  • MySQL Select [2.8.6] - Fixed issue with null values.

  • OPC UA Browser [4.0.1] - Updated library version, UI updates.

  • OPC UA Reader [7.0.0] - Taglist can now be overridden with parameters, UI updates 

  • OPC UA Subscriber [4.0.0] - Taglist can now be overridden with parameters, UI updates

  • OPC UA Writer [4.0.1] - Updated library version, UI updates.

  • Oracle Database Insert [1.5.2] - Fixed issue with null values.

  • Oracle Database Select [1.5.3] - Fixed issue with null values.

  • Parquet Writer [1.2.1] - Will now try to convert incoming data types.

  • Postgres Executer [1.1.5] - Fixed issue with null values.

  • PostgreSQL Insert [1.2.2] - Added option to skip validation on inserts, fixed issue with null values.

  • PostgreSQL Select [1.0.6] - Fixed issue with null values.

  • Property Mapper [3.0.1] - Keep data types when using template syntax.

  • Redis Publish [3.2.0] - Preserves data types.

  • Redis Subscribe [3.2.0] - Preserves data types.

  • Rockwell Reader [2.0.0] - Taglist can now be overridden with parameters, UI updates

  • S7 Reader [3.0.0] - Taglist can now be overridden with parameters, UI updates

  • SFTP Upload [3.3.0] - Added support for renaming files on upload.

  • Snowflake Executer [1.0.5] - Fixed issue with DateTime types.

  • Snowflake Insert [1.0.3] - Fixed issue with DateTime types.

  • Snowflake Select [1.0.4] - Fixed issue with DateTime types.

  • TimescaleDB Insert [1.1.4] - Fixed issue with null values.

  • TimescaleDB Select [1.0.4] - Fixed issue with null values.

The following modules only have UI updates and adaptations for the upcoming Node version 2.6:

  • Aggregate [3.0.1]

  • Array Join [2.2.4]

  • Azure Blob Storage [4.0.2]

  • Azure DataLake Writer [1.0.2]

  • Azure File Storage [4.0.2]

  • CSV Reader [3.0.1]

  • Data Generator [2.0.5]

  • Date Generator [2.0.4]

  • Files Move [1.0.3]

  • Interval [2.0.3]

  • Join [2.0.6]

  • Random [3.0.0]

  • Range Classifier [2.0.3]

  • Range Filter [2.1.0]

  • Smooth [2.0.4]

  • Split [2.1.2]

  • Statistics [2.0.4]

  • Timeout [2.0.3]

  • Time Stamp [3.2.1]

  • Unique Counter [2.0.3]


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