Studies

• Dataset tagging: A new tag property added to datasets lets you group datasets by keyword. (docs)
  === Sponsored by ITN - Immune Tolerance Network

• Republish study: Republish a previously published study using the same settings. (docs)
  === Sponsored by ITN - Immune Tolerance Network

• Expanded notification options: Receive notifications for all changes to reports and datasets, or changes in particular categories. (docs)
  === Sponsored by ITN - Immune Tolerance Network

• Extraction of thumbnail images: Thumbnail images embedded in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents can be automatically integrated into data views. (docs)
  === Sponsored by ITN - Immune Tolerance Network

• Improved time charts: Time charts now handle large numbers of participants. User interface for time charts offers pagination for large numbers of participants.
  === Sponsored by University of South Florida Health Informatics Institute

Specimens

• Specimen importer: Performance for the specimen importer pipeline has been improved. (video)
  === Sponsored by HVTN - HIV Vaccine Trials Network and ITN - Immune Tolerance Network

Collaboration

• Data pipeline: When you process and upload data, the data pipeline remembers and returns to the last directory you visited. (docs)

• Auto-completion: Username and email fields have improved auto-completion in the following areas: specimen requests, issues, messages, and user/permissions management.

• Issues management: Issue lists can inherit admin settings from another folder, simplifying and consolidating administration tasks when managing multiple issues lists. (docs)

• Full-text search: Improved performance for full-text search.
  === Sponsored by O'Connor Labs, University of Wisconsin

• ETL (Extract-Transform-Load) improvements - (video)
• Performance has been improved for large jobs.
• Support for cancellation of running jobs. (docs)
• Support ETLs into target tables which have JavaScript Triggers Scripts.
• A bulkLoad option minimizes logging and processing overhead. (docs)
• Allow finer granularity of transaction size when writing into the target table, including no transaction option. (docs)
  ===Sponsored by SNPRC - Southwest National Primate Research Center
• ETL export to files, such as TSV and CSV files. (docs)
• Support for pipeline command tasks in ETLs. (docs)
• Support for stored procedures which return result sets; use the result set as source query. (docs)
• Support for stored procedures that pass parameter values to further stored procedure steps in the same ETL. (docs)
  === Sponsored by Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Assays / Instrumental Data

• (ELISpot) Handle "too numerous to count" values: Instrument codes for "too numerous to count" are recognized and excluded from calculations. (docs)

• (Luminex) Improved quality control reports: Quickly view the Levey-Jennings plots directly from the QC report page. (docs)
  === Sponsored by Vaccine Immunology Statistical Center (VISC)

• (Luminex) Guide sets: New user interface lets you manage and delete guides sets. (docs)
  === Sponsored by Vaccine Immunology Statistical Center (VISC)

• (Luminex) Disable flagging: When a metric has too few runs to be useful as a quality control guide set, you can selectively disable flagging for that metric. (docs)
  === Sponsored by Vaccine Immunology Statistical Center (VISC)

• (Luminex) Run re-calculations as a pipeline job: After inspecting and choosing to exclude certain data values, the curve fit recalculation can be processed in the background using the pipeline. (docs)
  === Sponsored by HVTN - HIV Vaccine Trials Network

• (Luminex) Levey-Jennings plots: Improved performance for calculation of Levey-Jennings plots.
  === Sponsored by Vaccine Immunology Statistical Center (VISC)

• (NAb) Reverse dilution direction: The default direction of dilution on a plate can be reversed. (docs)
  === Sponsored by MHRP - U.S. Military HIV Research Program

• (Genotyping) Bulk update/Data cleanup: Bulk edit simplifies experiment management. (docs)
  === Sponsored by O'Connor Labs, University of Wisconsin

• (Genotyping) Feature annotations: Import feature annotation data via the script pipeline.
  === Sponsored by HIPC - Human Immunology Project Consortium

• (Panorama/Targeted Mass Spec) Quality control: Quality control folder type helps you evaluate instruments and analytes over time. (docs) (video)
  === Sponsored by Panorama Partners Program members

Development and Operations

• Recommended Java Upgrade: As part of the 15.1 release, we recommend that all users upgrade to use Java 1.8u40 or later. The end of life date for Java 1.7 is scheduled for April 2015, after which, public updates will no longer be available. (installation docs), (configuration docs)

• Module resources reload: To make development easier on a production server, many file-based module resources are dynamically reloaded (from the /deploy directory) when the server detects changes to those files.

• SQL Server synonyms: Synonyms on tables and views are supported. (docs)

• Rlabkey security: Rlabkey now defaults to TLSv1, instead of SSL3. (docs)

Potential Backwards Compatibility Issues

• Java Client API changes - HttpClient library: The underlying HTTP library used by the Java Client API has been migrated from Apache Commons HttpClient 3.1 to Apache HttpComponents HttpClient 4.3.5. We have made every effort to hide the substantial changes in the underlying library from users of our Java client API. However, some Java API methods exposed Apache classes that have been removed (e.g., HttpMethod, HttpConnectionManager, and the old HttpClient), making 100% compatibility impossible. Please test your code thoroughly against the new library. (API docs)

• Java Client API changes - Self-signed Certificates: For security reasons, the Java client API no longer connects by default with servers having self-signed certificates. Users of the API can override this behavior by calling Connection.setAcceptSelfSignedCerts(true).

• Character Encoding Changes: Study, list, and folder archives are now all written using the UTF-8 character encoding for text files, and imported archives are parsed as UTF-8. In addition, text exports from grids consistently use UTF-8 character encoding. Formerly, these operations used the server's default character encoding.