Author: Pawel Kudzia

Animated charts

Dynamic SVG charts

Charts exported from the Application as SVG format can now be animated. Two features are introduced in this new version:‍

• ‍Data popup labels: allowing you to hover your mouse over a data point and see the date and value as popup. The label style can be formatted in the stylesheet editor.‍
• Animation: you can choose the delay between several line graphs and the duration of the animation. In this version, animation only works for line graphs. 

This feature works when SVG images are in a browser, and intended to be used when published on the web, typically through some Content Management System. 

Additions to the Start Page

List of available and enabled datasets in your license

The Start page of the Application has been revamped to facilitate the management of the datasets you subscribe to, and give you access to the complete list of additional content available. 

A color coded indication has been implemented to indicate your level of subscription: 

• Green: you have a full access to the datasets
• Grey: you do not subscribe to this content yet
• Green & Grey: you partially subscribe to the dataset listed

Enhanced data navigation for series with components, such as CPI

Ability to select all items belonging to a specific level of classification

When possible, Macrobond tries to present datasets with a relevant indentation structure, allowing users to identify easily totals, sub-totals, and components. 

Working with datasets having a high level of granularity often means having to manipulate a large set of variables, belonging to different levels of granularity.  As an example, to build a diffusion index using the deepest level of CPI components, one needs to manually select dozens of variables while being careful about the level structure. 

To simplify such workflow, we’ve introduced a selection shortcut: with any dataset displayed with an indentation structure, right-clicking on a specific series now allows you to apply “select this level”, which will result in highlighting all series belonging to the corresponding level of details. 

All in all, in one click you can now pick all components belonging to a specific level of the data structure. 

CPI releases are a good example to illustrate this feature: in the screenshot below, using the “select this level” option, all series belonging to the level 2 of the US CPI release are now marked and ready to be added to a document.  

Improvements in the Search activity

Quick filters based on attributes 

To facilitate filtering out results in the Search activity, a list of attributes based on the current search query is now displayed on a left pane, together with the number of series available for each attribute. 

Selecting an attribute will add it as filter for your search query, highlighting it in orange on the top. You can then easily remove it, or turn it as permanent filter if you want to combine attributes filtering together.

Filtering out attributes

As part of this new feature, you can also apply filters to exclude certain types of attributes from the search query.  This can be performed by not selecting any attribute value and then choosing this to be an "exclusion filter" by pressing the "-" button in the filter setting.

For instance, in the picture below we excluded any series having a “percentage change” unit as an attribute. 

Using the new search features in the Analytics activity

For users who prefer staying within the Analytics activity, we incorporated the features above in Analytics. 

Keep in mind that you can always adjust the width of each section (data navigation, analysis tree, and charting) on the fly, making it easier to focus on each panel. 

Library Management

Document labels

To make the management of your chart libraries smoother, we are introducing the concept of “document labels”. 

Labels can be set directly in the document, below the Analysis tree.

Filtering your library by labels

Labels can then be used when searching for documents in your chart libraries. 

On a side note, we’ve also added a few more filtering options: 

• Start / end date: allowing you to look for documents having been modified within a specific date range
• Modified by: filtering by user who last modified a document 
• Types: allowing you to display either Macrobond documents or presentation documents
• States: filtering for documents including / excluding discontinued series. This can become handy when you want to list documents that need updates as some series got discontinued.  

Tracking documents through labels

The concept of “labels” is also introduced is the monitoring / subscription tool we released in version 1.26. 

When setting your subscription rules for a given folder, you can now decide to track and be notified when documents containing specific labels are created, modified or removed from a folder. This way, you can now be easily alerted when colleagues create charts on a given topic of interest. 

New dynamic text property

Highlighting as a note the date at which series were last updated 

There is now a new dynamic text property that you can use in any chart text, displaying the date at which series were last updated. This is particularly useful for charts displayed in publications where you want to indicate the last update.

In the chart below, we displayed it as a foot note in the copyright text.

It is available under the “Document Properties” grouping and called DocumentLastDataRevision.

In the chart below, we displayed it as a foot note in the copyright text.

Corporate Templates

Defining a common variable and applying it to multiple settings at once

We’ve added new features to the Stylesheet activity, simplifying the creation and later adjustments of corporate templates. 

This new feature introduces the concept of “variables”. A “variable” is a predefined setting that can be mapped to various locations on a stylesheet template. Changing the variable setting will then be reflected to all locations at once, making it easier to do adjustments on the fly. 

An example could be a unique color code which should be applied for several settings of a template. Having it set as a “variable” allows you to adjust it with one click for its various locations (instead of changing it one by one). 

A setting is associated to a variable by using the small downward pointing triangle to the left of the setting. A filled triangle means that a variable is selected for that setting. By clicking it you can see or select the variable of choice.

To simplify the creation of new corporate templates, Macrobond built a logical mapping of variables in its “standard” stylesheet that users can leverage and adjust to their own criteria. 

Main menu adjustment

New “Configuration” menu to access your settings and notifications

We’ve a slight adjustment to the menu tabs available on the top of the Macrobond Application. To simplify the access to your application settings and document notifications, we’ve grouped them under a new tab named “Configuration”. 

Document notifications can be managed via a new dedicated dialog menu, allowing you to view / edit your current subscriptions (i.e., the folders you are currently tracking for notifications) as well as creating new ones.

Other changes

• You can now delete a complete branch of analyses in the Analysis tree by using the new command on the context menu "Delete with children".
• In the My series Activity, where you manage in-house series, there is now information about when a series was last modified and by whom. This information is also available as a metadata attribute called LastModifiedBy that can be use in dynamic text in charts. This attribute can be provided by Web API Series providers.
• The Macrobond application is now available only as a 64-bit installation. See Macrobond installation instruction.
• We now enforce the rule that series identifiers must be in lower case when provided via a Web API Series provider. This has always been the rule, but now there is an error if it is not followed.

Charting

Setting to show label for last year

There is a new setting called “Prefer last year” that will tell the application to prioritize showing a label for the last year in the case where every year is not included on the x-axis.

In the chart below, every odd year is used for the labels due to this setting.

‍

Analytics

Setting for "Start at shortest" and "End at shortest" in Index Builder

The new settings for starting or ending the calculation when the shortest series starts or ends simplifies some scenarios when using the Index Builder.

Metadata about actual sampling observation date for Cross-sampling

The date of the observation is added as metadata to the series in case the “Last common” or “Value at” methods are used in the Cross-sampling analysis.

This can be used in charts to get automatic texts. In the example below, the text “{s .ObservationDate}” has been used as the default legend text.

New method to calculate levels after differentials in Regression analysis

In the Regression analysis there are nowt wo different ways to calculate the levels after first order differentials have been used:

• Legacy – add the differences to the dependent series
• Aggregate – aggregate the differences

Include only periods with data in all series in Slice analysis

The new setting in the Slice analysis called “Include only periods available in all series” will exclude periods that are not available in all series. A common use case for this feature is to exclude the leap year of daily series.

Without this setting, the leap year will result in a gap in the graph as can be seen in this example:

With the new setting February 29^th will not be included:

TrimMean formula function

The TrimMean takes a series and calculates the mean value by excluding the highest and lowest values. The number of values to exclude is specified as a percentage (0-100) or the total number of values. An equal number of values are removed from the top and bottom tails.

New methods Standardize and Trim mean in Cross-sampling analysis

In the Cross-sampling there is a new method called Standardize.

This is calculated as the mean divided by the standard deviation.

The new Trim mean method corresponds to the formula function covered in the previous section.

Application features

Filter by frequency for all database types

The filter by frequency in the list of series in the data browser now works for all types of data bases and not just the ones provided by Macrobond.

Configure what document events result in Windows notifications

You now have even more fine control over what document events that are shown as Windows notifications.

Event notification status in status bar

If the document event notification is not working, there is a symbol in the status bar. This can be the case if the required servers are blocked in a firewall. See the deployment guide for requirements.

You can click on the icon to bring up a dialog, where you can send the error message to our support team that can help rectify this.

Actions are opened as Preview documents in Analytics

Actions that you find in the Action bar after selecting one or more time series, such as Line chart, will now open as Preview document in the Analytics activity, unless you are in the Browse activity. Previously they were always opened in the Browse activity.

Our long-term goal is to remove the Browse activity.

Chart in series tooltip

When you hover the mouse of the title of a series in the database view, the tooltip will show a line chart of the series.

Option to replace all discontinued series

The new button “Automatically select alternative series” in the dialog for replacing discontinued series will select the replacement series.

If there are several suggestions for a series, you will still have to make a selection.

Support for revision history in Web API Series Provider

The Web API Series Provider allows the Macrobond application to connect to your internal data sources. We have now also added support for accessing revision history that you have stored internally. Please see documentation here.

Other

• Add option to set missing value representation when copying Excel dataset from MB app.
• Performance enhancements and reduced memory footprint.

_Installation

You can begin installation directly within the application. Either by clicking on the yellow banner that appears in the application, or by going to Help|Check for update in the menu of the Macrobond application.

If updating requires involvement from your IT department, please see the instructions provided here.

If you have asked us to contact your IT department directly, an email with information about upgrading to the latest version will be sent to your IT contact person. You are always welcome to contact the Macrobond team if you have any questions.

Changed requirements

• This version of the Macrobond application requires .NET Framework 4.7.2 or later.

Charting

Pie charts

There is a completely new chart type called Pie charts that is typically used after Cross-sampling analysis.

Mini-pie charts as Bar chart symbol

The small Pie charts within Bar charts illustrates the proportion of two series, or magnitude of one value on a scale 0-100. These Pie charts are part of the new ‘Symbol’ column type.

Custom logo

You can use an SVG image as a custom logo. This can be specified in the Style sheets as well as in each chart. See the previous image for an example.

We impose some limitations on the SVG images. For security reasons, any JavaScript and external references are ignored. Only vector graphics are supported and bitmaps in the image will be ignored. Embedded fonts will not work. You can use a tool such as https://boxy-svg.com to convert fonts to paths.

Logo + text at the same time

As seen in the previous example, you can have text and logo at the same time.

Value axis “Auto reverse”

Some series contain a hint that they are best presented using a reversed value axis. The setting of reverse scale on the value axes has a new option called ‘Auto’ that takes this hint into account.

New tabs in Analytics

You will find an overview of these new features below. There is more information on our Help site here.

New “Open documents” tab

There is tab in the Analytics activity called Open documents. This offers a vertical view of the open document tabs including a thumbnail. You can go to the tab by selecting a document in the list.

Documents can be closed by using the “X” in the corner which is displayed when the mouse is over an item or by using the context menu.

You can navigate to this tab using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+o.

New “Documents” tab

The new tab called Documents in the Analytics activity is an alternative way to open documents instead of using the File Open/Save dialog.

This view offers the following benefits:

• You do not need to bring up a dialog to browse among the documents
• You can quickly switch between several different locations

It also integrates the list of Recently used documents and Notifications that can also be found in the Start activity.

This view contains one or more crumb bars at the top that can represent different locations in the folder structure. Having more than one crumb bar allows you to quickly switch between locations you commonly use. You can select how many crumb bars you want to have by pressing ⚙️button that can be seen in the upper right corner in the image below.

You can navigate the directory structure in several different ways:

• By clicking on the “arrows” in the crumb bars
• By using the “tree button” to the right of the crumb bar
• By double clicking on subfolders displayed below the crumb bars
• By typing on the keyboard in the crumb bar

Preview document

When you select a document by clicking on it in the Documents tab, the document will be opened in preview mode. This is indicated with the orange color of the document tab:

When you select another document, it will replace any document currently opened as a preview. In this way, you can browse through documents and preview them without collecting a lot of open documents.

The document will stop being in preview mode if:

• You double click on the document in the Documents tab
• You click on the Open symbol next to the X in the orange preview tab
• You make any change in the document

Open containing folder

The command “Open containing folder” on the context menu of the document tabs, will navigate to the folder where this document is stored in the Documents tab.

Notifications of changed documents

Notifications for open documents

You will get a notification in the application if a document you have opened is modified.

The notification will be in the form of a yellow banner at the top of the document and in the Open documents tab:

Subscribe to document change notifications

You can subscribe to notifications of document changes by right clicking on a folder in the new Documents tab. This will refer to documents in that folder and all sub folders.

You have an option of receiving those notifications on the Start activity of the application or also as Windows notifications.

The notifications on the Start activity looks like this:

Application features

“Change region” for multiple documents

You can select more than one document in the File Open/Save dialog and then “Change region” on the context menu. You will then see a dialog where you can select a new region. The existing documents will be updated with series that matches the new region.

If you select “Change region and duplicate”, you can instead create new documents instead of the updating existing and select what location to save the new documents. It is also possible to select how the new documents should be named.

“Change region and duplicate” for Presentation documents

If you right click on a Presentation document in the File Open/Save dialog, you can select Change region and duplicate. This will work in a similar way as when you selected multiple documents as described in the previous section. You should pick a new folder for the changed documents and the new presentation document.

Time series info icon above Action bar + context menu

The blue “i” in the Action bar is a shortcut to display the Time series info report for the selected series.

This option is also on the context menu of series in the time series browser.

Columns First and Last revision date in the Data browser

From the context menu of the header in the time series browser you can select to include the timestamps of the first and last revision stored by Macrobond for series that have revision history.

Show local language description in series info tooltip

For series that have a description in a local language it is now included in the tooltip of the series in the time series browser.

Explicit selection of “primary presentation”

The primary presentation is the presentation that is used for thumbnails. It is the one that is activated when you open a document and is the default for previews and in the Viewer.

There is a star in front of the name of the primary presentation in the analysis tree. This can be seen for the Bar chart here:

You can select another primary by clicking on the corresponding position for another presentation in the tree or by selecting “Make chart primary presentation” from the context menu.

New Start activity style

The Start activity has been redesigned.

• You can filter what types of news items to include
• Most news items have images that will be displayed together with the title and a short summary
• The notification pane has been moved to the lower left corner and now includes both new notifications subscriptions to changed documents plus the Watchlist notifications
• You can change the proportions of the panes by dragging the splitter line

More options for Regions for in-house series

The list of possible regions when saving an in-house series now includes many more regions and not only the major countries.

Labels with time period in the Slice analysis for daily data when slice period is Yearly

When you have daily data, select “Match by date” and slice by year in the Slice analysis, there will be value labels containing the dates that can be shown on the x-axis of a chart.

This works best if the series have one observation for each day of the week. You can configure in the Series list that the series should be converted to Monday-Sunday if it is not already in that frequency.

Select a different presentation for embedded chart

If you double click in a chart embedded in an Office document, it will open for editing in the Macrobond application. Here you can now select another chart in the document to be the one that is visible in the Office document by marking it as the primary presentation.

Missing series input mode for lists in Series list

We have added an option to select how to treat series that are missing when using lists of series in the formula expressions.

Other

Vintage property on ISeriesExpression in desktop API

By setting the Vintage property of an ISeriesExpression object, you can use vintage versions of series that stores revision history in Unified requests. Unified requests allow you to convert a set of series to a common frequency and calendar. See our API documentation.

Support for Vintage in the Excel add-in All series

There is now support for time series vintages in the Excel add-in. You can select a vintage timestamp for the whole data set, or you can select a revision for specific series in the basket.

A new column called “Revision” will show what revision that will be downloaded for each series in the basket.

View the Macrobond chart library in the Viewer

The new crumb bars and list of open documents have been added to the Viewer product too. Another addition is that the Macrobond chart library can be accessed directly from the Viewer.

Installation

You can begin installation directly from within the application. Either by clicking on the yellow banner that appears in the application, or by going to Help|Check for update in the menu of the Macrobond application. If you have a version older than 1.24, the automatic update feature will ask you to update to 1.24.2 before it offers you to update to later versions.

If updating requires involvement from your IT department, please see the instructions provided here.

If you have asked us to contact your IT department directly for these upgrades, an email with information about upgrading to the latest version will be sent to your IT contact person. You are always welcome to contact the Macrobond team if you have any questions.

Changed requirements

• This version of the Macrobond application requires .NET Framework 4.6.2 or later. Version 4.6.2 is the oldest version supported by Microsoft.
• The application need access to communicate with three additional servers: sse.app1.macrobondfinancial.com, sse.app2.macrobondfinancial.com, sse.app3.macrobondfinancial.com. See Deploying the Macrobond application.

Revision history in app

If you have a Data+ license, you can now access revision history. We collect revision history for more than 30 million time series in the Macrobond database.

If you do not have a Data+ license, please reach out to your Macrobond contact to learn more.

Revision history allows you to retrieve older vintages of a series as well as series of the initial release, first revision, second revision, etc. The latter is called the “nth revision”.

Here are two examples of how this can be used:

In the chart below, we compared the initial and last release for the US Private Nonfarm payrolls. In the 2nd pane, we calculated the difference between the two, which indicates us how frequent are upward or downward revision of the series.

This second chart uses specific vintages of a series. We took the DG ECFIN inflation forecasts for the Euro Area, and chose to display the past 8 vintages of the series for the year 2021 to see how – and at which pace – the CPI forecast has been revised upward throughout the year.

You can see if a series has revision history in the Data browser by the symbol ≡. There is a tooltip that will give you the range of revisions available.

You can see an overview of all the revisions using the “View revisions…” command on the context menu of a series in the Data browser.

Vintages

There are a couple of different ways you can request vintages, historical version of time series.

Document setting

You can specify a timestamp in the Series list and the application will look for the vintages of all series in the document and attempt to use that data as it was known at the time specified. This will only be done for series where you have not explicitly specified a vintage already. See below for how you do that.

You will get a warning if there are series that either do not have revision history or if the history does not go as far back as requested. On the Series information tab, you can see details about what vintage that is actually used for each series in the document. Make sure that the Vintage column is included here (if it is not, right click on one of the existing columns and add the column Vintage in the dialog).

To illustrate this, we created a US GDP regression model. Using the timestamp in Series list allows us to view how the model looked like at the specific date. We chose 15 September 2020 as vintage to view if the model was accounting for the V-shape economic recovery back then. In the Series Information tab, you can check which vintage has been used for each series of the document.

Series expression

You can pick a specific vintage for a series by specifying a timestamp as part of the series expression. This is done by using the format “series{yyyy-mm-dd HH:mm +/-tz}” or “series{yyyy-mm-dd +/-tz}”. When no time is specified, it will refer to midnight. “tz” here is a numerical value identifying the time zone offset. The easiest way to do this is to use the formula editor, and type “{“ after a series name. If this series has revision history, you will be presented with a list of existing vintages to pick from.

You can specify a vintage also for lists, and this will then be applied to all series in the list. There will be a warning if the specified vintage is not available for one or more series in the list.

A vintage can also be specified for ratios and calculated series. The vintage will then be requested for all series used in that calculation. For example, “#PerCapita(usgdp){2020-01-01+1}”.

Another way to add vintages is to select them from the context menu of the Data browser:

Nth revision

In the formula editor, you can enter “series{n}” where n is the nth revision or select it from the context menu of the Data browser. The number 0 will give you the initial release.

For example, the expression “usgdpcp{0}” will result in a series consisting of the initial releases, the unrevised values, of each observation for the US GDP series (in current prices). The series will go as far back as there are revision history for the series.

Please note that for observations where there are not as many revisions as requested, there will be a missing value in the series. This will often be the case for the last value. It is a good habit to turn off the automatic missing value method and select to not fill in missing values for revision series.

List improvements

Shared lists of series

In the previous version, 1.24, we introduced the concept of “lists of series” that can greatly simplify cases where you want to apply the same calculations on many series. What is new in 1.25 is that you can now share lists between documents and users. Shared lists are created and found in the new My lists tab:

In a document, you can find the lists in the tab called Lists in the Data browser where you can add them to your document:

Lists in documents can be moved or copied to a shared location with a new command on the context menu:

Derived lists

If you have a list with regions, you can use the Concepts in the Macrobond database to automatically find corresponding series. You can complement or override with other series.

In a document, you do this by creating a list by region, and the select a Concept:

You can create a child list of such a document and select another Concept. In this way you can easily create lists with corresponding series for a set of regions.

Another option is to use list of regions as a parent and then select a Concept. Lists of regions can be created in the My lists activity. There are also several lists provided by Macrobond. The lists of regions are the same lists you can use as filters when browsing and searching for series.

When you create a child list, you can select a list of regions as a parent in the dialog:

Transpose analysis

There is a new analysis called Transpose that works on category series. It will create series from the observations across a set of series. You can use this to switch columns and rows in a case like this:

Grading on y-axis

For certain time series, you can match the values of the y-axis to grading labels.

Currently there is one scheme of grading labels used for data from Scope Ratings, but additional schemes may be added in the future. Data from this source will automatically use this setting, but you can change this in the settings for the y-axis.

Create Presentation document from selection in Watchlist

There is a new shortcut that makes it easy to create a Presentation document by selecting one or more items in the Watchlist activity. This can be used to quickly create a presentation with the charts that have recently been updated or which will soon be updated.

‍

Excel add-in

Links to MB document in Excel datasets

A Macrobond Data set in Excel can now link to a Macrobond document instead of embedding it. This can be useful if you want to use the same data set in several Excel sheets and make changes only in one place, but please note that this also makes it more fragile. If the document is changed or even removed, it will affect your Excel models.

Cell reference for data range in Excel

It is now possible to enter a cell reference to a cell with a date, to be used for specifying the date range to import. This can be useful when you have several data sets that should use the same date range.

Smaller improvements

• Notifications from the Watchlist now integrates with the Windows notification system on Win 8 and later. This means that you can interact with them in the same way as most other notifications.
• When creating in-house time series, you can now pick from a more extensive set of regions.
• Improved copy/paste of series and lists.
• Shorter calculation time for some complex formula expressions.

Changed requirements

We no longer support 32-bit Windows.

This version requires 64-bit Windows, which almost all users of Macrobond are already running.

We are pleased to present an updated version of our application. 

Highlights 

1. Ability to create lists of series 
2. Cross sampling analysis
3. Conditional formatting in bar charts (Heat maps)
4. Fresh look and feel 
5. New chart settings and options 

Selection of new functionality

Lists of series

The highlight of all the new features of Macrobond 1.24 is the ability to organise large sets of series. Simply click on the new Lists tab, which you can find within Series. 

You can use the name of a list in a formula expression and the calculation will be applied on all the series of the list. For example, in the image above, you can use the ‘cpicomp’ list in a formula expression like this: cop(list:doc:cpicomp,1).This is easier to write, gives you a better overview and allows you to add more series to your list.

You can change the order of the series in a list and it will be retained and will not break any calculations.

In most analyses, such as Rate of change, you can set parameters for the whole list.

In most analyses, you can make exceptions at series level:

Lists can also be combined. This works in formulas and in the new Cross sampling analysis.

Combining lists works if the lists have a relationship (parent/child lists) or if they are organised by region using the List by region list type. Here is an example where several List by region lists have been created:

You can then use a formula expression like list:doc:gdp/list:doc:pop. The calculation will be applied pairwise to the series in the lists to generate a new list.

Read more here or by pressing F1 in the Series list analysis. 

Cross sampling analysis

Our new Cross sampling analysis is a successor to the Scalar analysis, with a new workflow that is especially tailored for lists.

Simply add the lists to the table on the right. In this example, the lists are of type List by region and automatically align.

In this next example, the output is sorted by population and the ten largest cities are presented in a bubble chart

Read more here or by pressing F1 in Cross sampling analysis. 

Conditional formatting in Bar charts (heatmaps)

You can set up conditional formatting in Bar chart in a similar way to Excel. This can be used for visualisations such as heatmaps to show negative values and highlight largest and smallest values and outliers.

In this table (bar chart), you can see that negative values are presented in red text, the two smallest values against a red background, and the two highest values against a green background.

You can set up the rules by pressing the Rules button in the Bar chart settings.

Here is an example that illustrates using rules to create a heatmap:

‍

Read more here or by pressing F1 in the Rules dialog.

Fresh look and feel

We have updated the fonts and colour palette of the application and charting tools so they align with our our refreshed corporate brand. The new look is cleaner and less distracting, with fewer borders and gradients.  

Font size as pixels or points

In the Font dialog, you can now choose the unit of the font size as either pixel (as before) or point, which is more standard. You can enter one decimal digit.

A pixel in this context is 1/96” and a point 1/72”.

New chart settings and options

Patterns for filled graphs

For filled graph types (bars, stacked columns, area, stripe etc.) you can now select a pattern for the background. This can be useful to contrast or complement different colours.

This functionality may not achieve the same result when the charts are opened in Microsoft Office due to the software’s format limitations. However, images exported as bitmaps or SVG should be fine.

Graph area borders

The image below shows some of the new options you can choose from when creating borders for your graphs. There are now options for including only left and/or right sides for the graph area border.

Graph area margins

You now have more control over how margins are allocated around graph elements. 

Under the default setting, margins above and below the highest and lowest values are wide enough to accommodate line width, marker size and height of y-axis label texts inside the graph area.

Now you can set your margins as Graph margin outside, which allocates enough space outside the graph area to prevent any overlap with surrounding elements.

Take a look at the x-axis on these two charts.

In this example, the margin is set to inside.

In this example, the margin is set to outside.

Thousand separator 

You now have an optional Thousand separator setting for the axes in the charts, which adds a separator after every third digit for numbers larger than 1,000. You can find this in the language settings selected for the chart.

In addition to the Thousand separator for Observation labels and other places where dynamic text is used, you can choose additional formatting options from the drop-down list. 

New calculation method for Smoothing and Statistics 

We have added a new None as a way calculation method for Smoothing and Statistics analyses so you can include the original series without any calculations.

We’ve just released an updated version of the Macrobond application. This article covers the following new features that are available to all Macrobond users in this update:

1) Expanded watchlist settings

2) Chart layout customization additions

3) Bloomberg connector enhancements

Along with this update, we’re also releasing a new edition of Macrobond: the Data Scientist – which includes some exciting new API features that we also highlight at the end of this article:

1) Revision history / point in time data / vintage data available through the Macrobond APIs

2) Ability to search the Macrobond database through the APIs

If you or any of your colleagues would like to try the Data Scientist edition, you can request a free trial here.

Selection of new functionality

Watchlist Actions

The Watchlist feature, which was first introduced in 2018, allows you to flag and monitor specific series or sets of series.

We’re now introducing Watchlist Actions – a feature that lets you select among a few actions to be executed when the series used in a Watchlist item are updated, such as showing a notification on your PC or running a program. There is special support for launching Python and R. The Macrobond application has to be running for the action to be executed.

Set the “day interval” when you’re monitoring a set of series. When all monitored series have been updated within this time range, the item is alerted.

There can be a delay of up to 5 minutes before you get the alert after the data has been updated.

‍

If you have selected “Show in application” you’ll be able to see all alerted series in the Start activity in Macrobond.

‍

‍

Background color gradients

We’ve added the option to specify a linear or radial gradient for background colors in charts. This applies not only to the background of the whole chart, but also to other elements where you can set a background, such as the legend.

‍

‍

Chart Size Units

When you pick the size of a chart for export, you can now set the unit to be either pixel, millimeter or inch.

‍

Bloomberg Connector Enhancement

In the Bloomberg series provider, you can now paste Bloomberg Excel BDH expressions and the application will suggest a time series.

‍

For example, if you enter or paste

=BDH(“goog us equity”,”EBIT”,”1/1/2005″,”12/31/2009″,”per=cy”)

New Features in Macrobond Data Scientist

The Data Scientist edition of Macrobond includes the following API enhancements. If they sound like something you’d like to try out, you can learn more and request a trial here.

Revision History

One significant feature of Data Scientist is that it includes access to revision history for many series in our database. This makes it possible to

• See what data points were updated and exactly what changes were made with each revision
• Get a vintage version of a series in order to perform an analysis using only information available at that time
• See how a value has been revised over time

Data Coverage

The revision data we currently carry includes up to two years of history from primary sources, as well as extensions in specific cases – for example: ONS, BLS, BEA, FED and OECD data.  Our coverage focuses on forecasts, national accounts, labor market, trade, product, balance of payments, as well as foreign and public finance. Regionally, the focus is on G20 countries with a priority on larger economies initially. During 2020, we will work to expand both the geographies and categories covered.

Some Examples of Data Scientist Revision History

To find out if a series stores revision history, you can either look for the metadata attribute “StoresRevisionHistory” or use the method HasRevisions in Python/MATLAB  or getHasRevisions in R.

Here is an example in R that downloads the revision history for the series usgdp and plots the first and second release.

library(MacrobondAPI)
seriesGdp <- FetchOneTimeSeriesWithRevisions(“usgdp”)
firstRelease <- getNthRelease(seriesGdp, 0)
secondRelease <- getNthRelease(seriesGdp, 1)
x <- MakeXtsFromUnifiedResponse(c(firstRelease, secondRelease))
plot(x)

Here is another example that will show the UK GDP vintages for 2017-2020:

library(MacrobondAPI)
seriesGdp <- FetchOneTimeSeriesWithRevisions(“gbgdp”)
s2017 <- series2018 <- getVintage(seriesGdp, as.Date(“2017-01-01”))
s2018 <- series2018 <- getVintage(seriesGdp, as.Date(“2018-01-01”))
s2019 <- series2018 <- getVintage(seriesGdp, as.Date(“2019-01-01”))
s2020 <- series2018 <- getVintage(seriesGdp, as.Date(“2020-01-01”))
x <- MakeXtsFromUnifiedResponse(c(s2017, s2018, s2019, s2020))
rebased <- sweep(x[‘2015-01-01/’], 2, as.numeric(x[‘2015-01-01’]), “/”)
plot(rebased)

Search

Another feature that’s now available to Data Scientist users is the ability to search the database filtering different metadata attributes through the APIs.

One common use case of API search is to use the RegionKey attribute to look for key series. The series in the “Concept & Category” tree that you can see in the Macrobond application all have this metadata. You can use the APIs to inspect the metadata of the series and learn what values this attribute has for different series. There are examples how to do that in our Macrobond API documentation.

Here is an example in Python that searches for GDP series in a set of regions:

import win32com.client
c = win32com.client.Dispatch(“Macrobond.Connection”)
d = c. Database
query = d.CreateSearchQuery()
query.SetEntityTypeFilter(“TimeSeries”)
query.AddAttributeValueFilter(“Region”, [“us”, “gb”, “cn”])
query.AddAttributeValueFilter(“RegionKey”, “gdp_total”)
result = d.Search(query).Entities

for s in result:
    text print (s.Name)

‍

The output is:

gbnaac00072
usnaac0169
cnnaac1961

We’ve just released an updated version of the Macrobond application. The new features you’ll have available when you update can be broken down into 1) features that make it easier to find and prep data, 2) new or expanded analysis methods, 3) Layout customization improvements (especially in bar charts), and 4) miscellaneous new features.

Related to Finding and Preparing Data

1. “Locate in Tree” Selects Series

Previously, the action Locate in tree that you get as an option after selecting a series in a document only located the category in the data tree where the series was located. Now, it also selects the first occurrence of the time series in the list of series below the data tree.

2. Options for Currency Conversion

We’ve added more options for how exchange rate conversion is done and changed the default for new documents. The currency conversion feature uses a daily exchange rate series available in Macrobond. When your series have a lower-than-daily frequency, there is a new automatic conversion method, described below. You can choose another method in the conversion settings tab in the Series list.

New Automatic Method and Additional Options

For new documents, the default setting will be Automatic. This means that the method will be decided according to the properties of the series. The base method will be Last for daily series and Last 5d median for other frequencies, but we also look at some additional properties: for Flow series and series that we know are sampled in the middle of the period or are averages of the period, we use the average exchange rate; if we know that the series is sampled at the start of the period, we use First 5d median.

Legacy Method

Previously, the automatic exchange rate conversion was done by matching the frequency of the series with a set of exchange rate series and typically only daily and monthly series were used. If there was no exact match with the frequency, a series with higher frequency was selected and the first value of the period was used. This method is still available and is now called Legacy. It will be the automatic method for all document created in the Macrobond application before version 1.22.

Layout Customization

1. Bar Chart Improvements

Set Bar Chart Width

The width of bar charts can now be fixed. You can now select to make the chart fill the width of the window, set it to a specific width or use the expanding mode, which means the chart’s width is simply  the sum of  all the columns of the chart.

When Fill or Custom have been selected, all non-text columns will be set to the proportional mode. You can adjust this and make only some columns proportional.

The proportions are used to determine the relative size when the size of the chart is changed.

Legend Spacing Options

We’ve also introduced a setting for the spacing of the legend elements as well as a setting for the distance between the legend and the graph area.

Option for Reversing Order of Rows in Bar Charts

There is a new setting for reversing the order of rows in a bar chart.

2. Text and layout in Presentation Documents

The new “Presentation notes” feature, that you can enable for a page, allows you to enter a short text note for each chart on the page.

You can decide where to present the notes relative to the charts on the pages.

New or expanded Analyses

1. Formulas

New Formula Functions

There are three new formula functions:

• LastNonForecast(series) – Returns the last value of the series that is not a forecast
• ExpandingPercentile(series, p) – Returns the value of the p:th percentile within a an expanding window (0 < p < 100)
• ExpandingPercentRank(series, value) – Returns the rank of a value in a series as a percentage (0..100) of the values in an expanding window

Additional Functions Take a Moving Window

A few more formula functions are now available in a version that takes a moving window: Sum, Mean, Median, HighObs, LowObs and StdDev.

2. Scalar: New Methods

In the Scalar analysis, there are two additional methods:

• Last non-forecast – The last value that is not a forecast in the series
• Nth last value – The nth last value of a series, where a value of 1 gives you the last value, 2 the second to last etc.

3. Rolling PCA: Cumulative Proportions

The cumulative proportions of the captured variance can now be calculated and selected as the output instead of the eigenvalues.

4. Slice: Improved Calculations and Added Labels

We’ve fixed some issues that the Slice analysis had with series containing a lot of skipped dates. We have also added week numbers as labels to weekly series, just as you can get month names for monthly series.

Miscellaneous Additions

Copy Special Favorites

In the window shown when you select Copy special for a chart, you can now select to save the selected settings as your Copy special favorite – including the type of copy and the size.

These favorites will then be available in the quick-access menu.

Send Chart to LinkedIn

Charts can now be posted to LinkedIn directly from Macrobond, similarly to what you can already do with Twitter. The command is on the File menu.

Attribute for Source Database

The new series property called Database contains the name of the database where the series is stored. For example, “Macrobond”, “Account in-house” or the name of your SQL database. You can use this in dynamic text.

Web API Provider

For a long time, you have been able to connect the Macrobond application to your internal SQL databases by using the SQL Database Connector. Now we have added yet another connector called Web API Database Connector. If you implement a specific REST based API in a web service, the Macrobond application can call this API to obtain and browse for time series. This is a bit more work on your side than connecting directly to an SQL database, but offers more flexibility when it comes to what databases it can connect to.

If you are interested in this functionality, please contact the Macrobond support team.

Selection of new functionality

Series ratios

Using the new calculate button, with one click you can create a ratio that expresses a series in relation to one of the following, predefined indicators:

• PerCapita: divides the series by the population of the corresponding region
• PerGDP: divides the series by the GDP of the corresponding region
• PerGDPPercent: same idea as ‘PerGDP’ but expresses the result as a percentage.

Find out more about Series Ratios or take a look at our tutorial.

The underlying methodology for each ratio can be found here.

Rolling PCA

This allows you to run PCA models on a rolling window of observations, using an expanding or a moving window.

Find out more in our help article on Rolling PCA

Scalar: new setting for value labels

When using Scalar Analysis, you can now decide which attribute(s) should be used when generating value labels. For instance, this allows you to change all value labels to reflect only the corresponding region of the series, instead of setting them manually, one by one.

Find out more in our help article on Scalar

Sorting: Limiting the number of items

In the sorting analysis, you can now limit how many items to include in the output, using the new observation limit setting. This is very helpful when you only want to display, for example, the top 10 categories among an input list of 50 items.

Find out more in our help article on sorting

Rate of change: Period mode for Annual Rate %

In the rate of change analysis, you can now select “Mode=Calendar date” also when using “Method=Annual Rate %”. In this case, we measure the distance between the dates using the ISDA standard Actual/Actual.

Find out more in our help article on rate of change

New Formulas

We’ve added a modification of the JoinScaled formula called ‘JoinScaledAppend(series1, series2)’. It works like JoinScaled (i.e. joining two series together) but that scales the second series instead of the first.

ExtendLastYoYForecast(series) uses the last % YoY change to calculate a forecast for the whole calendar range.

Analysis tree: Drag & drop analyses

In the analysis tree, you can now move analyses up or down in the tree, as long as they are part of the same branch or on the same level. This does not affect calculations but will help you organize your document.

‍

Excel add-in: Partial periods conversion method

The partial periods setting has been available in the Macrobond application since version 1.20 but now you can also use it via the Excel add-in, and in the APIs for Python, R and MATLAB.

This setting allows you to decide how to handle the missing observations in a calendar when converting a series to a lower frequency. By default, the application only converts a series to a lower frequency if the calendar of observations for the period is complete (example: converting a series from daily to monthly requires a full month of observations).Partial periods solves the issue by letting you decide how to treat these incomplete periods, with various settings.

Graph layout: ‘Range’ as graph type

You can now use the graph type ‘Range’ in time charts and category charts – which allows for columns that extend below and above zero.

Chart ornaments: Filled arrows & diamond head

We’ve added to new endings for line ornaments, which you can see in the chart below.

Find out more in our help article on chart ornaments

Charts: New settings to define the space around chart elements

In this version we have introduced some new settings for space around chart elements:

• For the axes, there is a setting called distance that controls the distance between the axis labels and the axis tick marks (or the graph area, if the tick marks have been turned off)
• The distance setting for the copyright/source text controls the distance from the element above.
• The distance for the axis labels text controls the space to the element above when you use value labels.
• If the legend is at the bottom or to the right, the distance setting controls where the legend is situated relative to the next element in the direction of the above it if the legend is at the bottom; to the element to the right, if the legend is to the left etc.
• The spacing setting for the legend controls the distance between the legend elements.
• The spacing for the x-axis controls the distance between the label rows when there more than one row
• There are settings called Minimum indentation here:

These settings control the minimum distance from the chart border to the graph area (y-axis) and can be used for aligning y-axes when there are several charts on a page in a presentation. The alignment of the main title and legend will take this setting into consideration.

Please note that some of these settings accept negative values. This can be useful at times but can also cause elements to overlap or be clipped.

Find out more in our help article on chart settings

Style sheets: Chart preview

When selecting a style sheet via the “Select chart style sheet” dialog, you can now see a preview of the chart with the selected style sheet applied.

Find out more in our help article on style sheets

Actions Bar: Improvement to navigation

To facilitate simpler navigation of the actions bar, when you click on a group box it’ll expand over the other boxes., and downwards if necessary.

Find out more in our help article on the actions bar

Text Search: Word suggestion

We’ve now updated all search fields to provide suggestions for your search query. This is done to improve the search results and help you find the correct data more easily.

Find out more in our help article on searching in Macrobond

Open document dialog box: Warning for discontinued series

We now show a warning icon in the open document dialog box when a document contains discontinued series that haven’t been acknowledged previously. The flag is set when the document is saved, but this information can be refreshed by pressing the “flash” button in the toolbar of the dialog.

Find out more in our help article on rate of change

File cache for heavy calculations

We have added a file cache that will store the result of the Seasonal Adjustment Census X-13 TO improve speed and performance when providing results, as long as the input data is the same. This is also available for the Vector Autoregression (VAR) analysis.

Various minor changes to the UI

You will also notice a few cosmetic changes in the Macrobond Application.

How To Upgrade

The new version can be installed directly via the Macrobond application by clicking on the yellow ribbon, which appears on the screen, or by selecting Check for update in the Help menu. If you need assistance, a description of how to upgrade can be found here.

Selection of new functionality

Watchlist

The Watchlist allows you monitor specific documents to see when the data in them is updated or is scheduled to be updated. You can see Watchlist as your personal agenda that helps you keep track of events.
Adding items to your Watchlist is done by adding a Macrobond document and chart that contains the series you want to monitor. Find out more about Watchlist here, or take a look at this how-to video tutorial.

Watchlist Primer

To help you get started, we have prepared documents for commonly used indicators and regions. You can create Watchlist items with these by using the Watchlist Primer dialog that you can access from the file menu.
Once you have added a few Watchlist items, you can use the overview tab to the left to see when data in these documents was last updated.

By clicking in the “Next release” header, you can shift perspective and see when the next updates are scheduled. The events that are closest in time are highlighted in bold.Your Watchlist items can be personal or shared with your company or department.

Extend incomplete periods when converting to lower frequency

We’ve added a setting called “Partial period method”, which allows you select how to handle to a lower frequency when there aren’t enough values to cover the whole last (and first) period.
You’ll find this setting in the series list under “conversion settings”.

Unit root test analysis

The Unit Root test analysis attempts to answer whether a series is (trend-) stationary. If not, the long run variance can wonder off into infinity and cause complications for further statistical modelling.

The test used is the Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF), which is based on regression analysis. The null hypothesis is that the series has a unit root. This is tested using special tables[1] from which p-values for the hypothesis can be computed. The test automatically takes into account model specification

See this document for an example of the unit root test.

Macrobond chart library : Examples/Analyses/Unit Root Test/Unit Root Test – log US GDP

[1] MacKinnon, James G, 1996. “Numerical Distribution Functions for Unit Root and Cointegration Tests,” Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(6), pages 601-618, Nov.-Dec.

New bar chart graph type: Range

Now you can display two series as a range in a bar chart.

Default tree filter in data tree

You now have more control of the region filters in the data tree. If you select a filter from the list of previously used filters, the filter is only applied to the current view. However, if you select it by clicking on the white star to the right, this filter will be the new default filter across views. Changing the default filter changes all views that currently use the default filter and will be used for all new analytics documents that are opened.

Directional arrows on scatter graphs

Additional line endings for graph annotation

Choose from various end points to a line, when adding an annotation.

Select portrait or landscape when exporting presentation documents

There is now an option to select a portrait page orientation as well as landscape when you export a presentation document to PowerPoint.

Paste data sets into Macrobond

You can now manually copy/paste the series from an entire dataset (or parts thereof) at once from Excel into Macrobond. This feature is available when creating Document Series as well as Account in-house series using external data. The Application automatically detects the frequency based on the information entered.

How To Upgrade

The new version can be installed directly via the Macrobond application by clicking on the yellow ribbon, which appears on the screen, or by selecting Check for update in the Help menu. If you need assistance, a description of how to upgrade can be found here.

Selection of new functionality

Data Navigation

Filters in the Data Tree

You can now use a predefined list of Regions in the Data Tree. This Region filter will be applied on any category or sub-category that contains a Region tree.

Filters in the Release Activity

You can now apply a set of filter lists for regions and sources to filter releases in the Release Activity. These filters are the same as the ones that you define in the Search Activity.

If you preferred selecting regions the old way, you can still use the tab “Region”.

Charting

Annotations

Circling a range of observations

Observation labels can now refer to a range of values and to a range of graphs.

Copy / Pasting the style of graphs, ornaments and annotations

You can now copy a graph, ornament or graph annotation and then right click and select “Paste style” to apply it to another object of the same type.

Copy / Pasting of ornaments and annotations

In Macrobond 1.19, you can copy & paste ornaments and annotations within the same chart, or in another chart.

Keep in mind:

• Observation labels are pasted by selecting a point on the series graph
• If the text box or the observation label contains dynamic text referring to a specific series, this text will likely not work when applied to a different chart.

Graphs

Line graph dashed from the end

When applying a dashed line-style in your charts, it’s possible that some data points may fall between the dashes when there are many points on a line. This is usually not a problem, but it can become one if the graph happens to end with the space between dashes. We now make sure that a graph always ends with a dash rather than a space so that the last data point is always visible.

As the end of a graph is typically more important, this might mean the gap is placed at the start of the line instead.

Scatter Charts

• Step Length for the X-axis

There is now a setting for the Step length for x-axis in scatter charts.

Analyses

Series List

• Sorting series in the Series Information tab

You can now sort the time series listed in the Series Information tab. The state will be stored per document.

X-13 Seasonal Adjustment analysis

• Chinese New Year

There is an option for selecting “Chinese New Year” as a regression variable in the X-13 Seasonal adjustment analysis. This works only for monthly data.

Download the Macrobond document below for an example of how this analysis can be used.

• Trend constant regression variable

You can add a trend constant regression variable by checking box in the constant column.

Formulas

• Trimean

The formula “Trimean” has been added. It returns the Tukey’s trimean.

Regression analysis

• “Diff” setting

A new setting, called Diff, has been added to the Regression analysis. Selecting it will use the first order of differences of the series in the model. The result will be converted back to levels.

VECM Analysis

• Cholesky’s method for impulse response

Presentation Documents

• Fixed Layout for the Paginator option

This setting allows you to set the same chart layout for the last page, when automatically dividing charts into separate pages using the paginator. Without this setting the layout (and size of charts) will adapt to the number of charts on the last page.

• Chart names

When you rename the chart nodes in the analysis tree, this is the name that will be used for the chart in presentation documents. In version 1.19, If you haven’t renamed the chart nodes, the document name will be used instead “time chart” for example.

Miscellaneous

• Auto-recovery

The application will automatically save a snapshot of all documents that are open, every 30 seconds. These will be used if the application is terminated abnormally. When closing the application normally, you’ll be prompted to keep these snapshots or discard them. This feature will also be used to remember the state when the computer is restarted by Windows Update.

• File | Revert

This command will revert the document to the state of the document that was last saved.

• Context menu for tabs in Browse and Analytics

There is now a context menu when you right click on a tab in Analytics and Browse. These options are available on the view menu too.

How To Upgrade

The new version can be installed directly via the Macrobond application by clicking on the yellow ribbon, which appears on the screen, or by selecting Check for update in the Help menu. If you need assistance, a description of how to upgrade can be found here.