We are pleased to share with you the second issue of the Graphical Networks newsletter! The goal of this newsletter is to keep you up to date with everything that is happening with the company and with netTerrain. As with the previous edition, we’ll share helpful information about product updates, support, and tips on using netTerrain. Enjoy!
Our first survey…
We are preparing a short survey that will be hitting your inbox shortly.
We want to find out how you are using netTerrain, what features you prefer, which new features you would like to see and also how current you are with the software. This is just one way for us to find out how we can improve our product. We take your feedback seriously.
Now, remember that you can always log into our customer support portal and enter any feature request or issue right there.
A username and password are required to access the portal. Don’t have one? Don’t worry. Just email us at mailto:support@graphicalnetworks.com, and we will set up an account for you.
Also if you want to invite other users to our customer portal simply drop us an email specifying the users’ names you want added. In minutes they should be able to access the portal.
https://graphicalnetworks.zendesk.com/home
netTerrain 5.4 is Here
After some serious testing we now have netTerrain 5.4 ready for shipping.
Want to upgrade? Just access the ZenDesk portal and let us know when. So what’s new in 5.4?
- Visio Export: export one or multiple netTerrain diagrams to Microsoft Visio.
- Embedded documents: now you can use netTerrain as your SharePoint-style document repository, including check-in, check-out, versioning, downloads, locking and history of files, docs and more.
- ITK improvements: faster uploads, multithreaded messaging and imports, better SNMP discovery and more.
- And much more: performance improvements, bug fixes, etc. Too many to list.
Coming up in 5.5
Our engineers have already started working on version 5.5! The reason? We refactored part of the diagram rendering and searching code. By refactoring, we mean that chunks of code were rewritten to improve performance and to speed up the creation of new features.
netTerrain 5.4 is already quite a bit faster than our previous generation 4, but we are obsessed about making netTerrain feel like a desktop tool. So in netTerrain 5.5 you will notice even faster diagrams and a much faster search engine as well.
There is, of course, going to be a series of feature additions. The main one is a new environmental monitoring module for DCIM and Enterprise users (requires paid upgrade). With this module you can discover actual power, temperature and other environmental and asset variables using IPMI and other protocols. Last month we got together with the Intel people that develop the Intel DCM product and signed a deal to integrate its API with netTerrain. This is some exciting stuff, as it takes our DCIM and Enterprise products to a whole new level.
Tip of the Month: use netTerrain for Document Control
Since we are introducing our new feature to embed documents, let’s talk about some of its benefits right here.
The new embedded document feature is great for document storage and control (similar to some of Microsoft SharePoint’s document management features). Users can control the change and flow of documentation. For example, by checking out a document users lock them for editing, thus avoiding the confusion that arises when many people independently change a file. Also, you will be able to embed any number of documents with any node in netTerrain. Some of the features include:
- Control of which extensions can be stored in netTerrain
- Uploading and downloading of documents
- Document check-out for editing purposes
- Check-in to upload newer versions of a document
- Document versioning and audit trail (history)
Take advantage of embedded documents in netTerrain to store user guides, processes, configuration files, diagrams designed with other tools, and much more.