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 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.
Macrobond has partnered with one of the leading Content Management System firms to simplify the publishing workflow for users of both tools.
Through a simple configuration in Brightspot, your publishing teams can browse your Macrobond document library and import charts directly into Brightspot. This avoids the manual steps needed to send each other files over email, simplifying workflow, adhering to versioning and permissions to ultimately get your content out to consumers quickly.
Contact your account manager if you are an existing Brightspot and Macrobond user and would like to access your Macrobond content directly.
In Brightspot, simply search for your Macrobond assets in the search bar. Narrow down the search by using the filters on the left. Then click on the link to take you to the asset directly in your publishing process.
Chart Output API
We have introduced a new endpoint in Chart Server API called CalculatePath. It returns both the data and the settings’ data powering your chart. This response will facilitate the integration of the documents you initially created in Macrobond into other systems, should you need to take the data somewhere else.
CalculatePath works in a similar fashion to RenderPath whereby the request expects to receive a path towards an .mbnd document and a presentation string (optional) in case you have multiple charts in your documents.
The API call will return a json file containing chart settings alongside observation dates and values for each component of your charts.
Screenshot of overall document settings:
Screenshot of truncated observation values
Note: This new endpoint is not bundled into the Chart Server API current version, as it requires further licensing.
These notes support user with deeper and more specific information on the features and updates in the release. Once read, the user should have the knowledge required to understand the new features or updates and know how to best use them.
In-App Inter-Company Document Sharing
Would you like the ability to share your documents with your clients in Macrobond? If your client is also a Macrobond user, then you can now share your work with them directly while adhering to your security requirements and retaining your IP.
This feature provides a richer, deeper and simpler content sharing experience for both Macrobond producers and consumers. It enables you to collaborate with your peers and clients in Macrobond just as you do today with your internal colleagues.
You can now create a shared read only repository and collaborate directly with your peers and clients. If you would like to collaborate on a document, simply save it to your own library and edit it directly.
Once set up, users will see a new repository in the Macrobond application:
This feature is now available upon request. Please contact your account manager to enable it and start sharing!
Animated Charts in PowerPoint
Following the recent hype around animated charts to support your analysis and storytelling in the Macrobond application, we are taking it one step further by allowing you to export these animated charts directly into Microsoft PowerPoint or Word.
We now support the export of the documents you have created in the application as videos, not only images: two formats are currently supported, GIF or video.
Tick the “copy path to clipboard” box and paste the item in PowerPoint or Word, without having to browse your local folders to find the video.
Relative Revision History
Have you always wanted to automatically and dynamically overlay the latest version of a time series with its previous versions? This is now possible in the Macrobond application. To date, you could have been requesting the revision number nth for every observation of a time series or a particular vintage as of a specific point in time. But you could not query the “version before last” vintage.
We have introduced in your document builder this relative method that supplements the hardcoded vintage date:
Three different methods are now available to set relative vintages.
Relative to:
The most recent revision: {now, +/- # observations}
A specific series vintage: {vintage date, +/- # observations}
The document vintage date: {doc, +/- # observations}
For the last two expressions, the relative number of observations can be positive, referring to next vintages.
LinkedIn Posting
Sharing your insights in your digital world?
We have now made this super easy with various options to copy or export your documents.
Copy: copy a Macrobond embedded object to the clipboard
Copy Special: choose the format you desire and then copy to the clipboard. This is where you can also set your favorite formats.
Copy special favorites: find your set favorites here from the previous step
Export an image or video: chose your settings and save to your local file. This is where you can also set your favorite formats.
Export favorites: find your set favorites here from the previous step
We’ve enhanced the "Send to LinkedIn" feature in the File menu too:
Increased the character limit to 3,000.
Added an additional format option for posting animated charts in GIF or video formats (Note that LinkedIn has a limitation of 20 seconds for animations).
Introduced an option to send your post as a draft, allowing you to preview and edit prior to posting.
For those of you who prefer creating and tailoring your posts directly in the LinkedIn web browser, we’ve also implemented new settings, saving you time in the content creation process.
You can now predefine your favorite copy or export formats, whether it is for static images or animated gif or videos. They will be accessible in your clipboard in one click, and all you need to do is paste them directly into your post.
The preconfigured format options for LinkedIn and X (Twitter) are now set so you can use them directly.
Chart images
For static images, you can use the “copy special” feature, and define your favorite format which you can then save (and later rename by double-clicking).
Animated charts, with GIF or video format
Contrary to images which can be stored in a clipboard, GIF and video formats require a file to be stored locally.
For such formats, you should use the “Export image or video” option. By creating a favorite template, the process is now faster for any future item as you can access the export option directly in the right-click context menu.
We recommend ticking the “copy path to clipboard” box, so that you don’t have to locate and find the actual file when creating your post.
Once created, the “export favorite” menu will appear when you right-click on a chart. Select it and paste your chart in the LinkedIn post (either by pasting a GIF from the clipboard, or by importing a locally saved video).
Note: Only available to Core and Data+ users.
Sharing a chart and its link
Do you spend a lot of time on Teams calls discussing your research and exchanging ideas on Macrobond charts? Then this feature will make internal collaboration with your team easier!
In one click you can now copy the picture of a chart together with its hyperlink and paste it in an email or into our favorite communication platform, like Teams or Slack. Any colleague also using Macrobond will be able to open the file instantly.
Using the “Copy Special feature”, you will now see the option “Copy image with document link”.
Side notes:
The document needs to be saved in a folder for this feature to be available.
If you plan to use this feature frequently, you can also save it as a “favorite copy operation”.
Additional graph types available for animated charts
If you fond of the animated charts feature, we now have extended this feature to all graph types with the exception Bar Charts and Pie Charts.
For example, the animation on the chart below is broken down to first display individually the movements of the three main CPI components: Housing, Food & Beverages, and Transport. The other components are then animated together, and to finish the headline CPI – displayed as line – comes animated.
Chart sizes stored within a document
To facilitate the preparation and maintenance of your publications, you will now be able to store individual chart sizes within a document.
Three settings are now available:
Application dynamic size: using the size that maximizes the space available on the charting area
Application fixed size: applies a unique chart size across all documents currently opened in Analytics
Chart fixed size: this new setting will store the chart size within the document. Anytime you open the file, the size saved will be applied on the chart.
Additional options with open documents in Analytics
We’ve added several options to improve the user experience when working with multiple open documents in Analytics.
In the “Open Documents” tab, you can now select multiple Macrobond documents, and:
Close
Close all other
Create Presentation Document, which will include all the charts previewed and selected in the list in one presentation document.
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.
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.
'Advanced logging' is an extensive logging option available in Macrobond. It is not active by default because it slows other Macrobond processes. This option creates additional logs with technical information not available elsewhere.
How to enable Advanced Logging?
Close Excel and other Office programs.
Open Macrobond and select Configuration > Settings (for MB pre-1.28: Edit > Settings), then switch to Advanced tab
Check [x] Enable application logging
Restart Macrobond (and Excel/PP/Word if opened)
From now Macrobond will create extra logs in your %TEMP% directory.
What's next?
Try to trigger same error.
Go to %TEMP% directory and get logs from there, most likely some (or all) of these three:
Abacus.Excel.log
Excel-AddIn.app.log
MacroBond.err.log
After everything please disable Advanced logging because it slows Macrobond.
How to access %TEMP% directory?
To access %TEMP% directory please open Windows' Explorer and type in just:
%TEMP%
and press enter. It should take you to this directory:
C:\Users\[...name...]\AppData\Local\Temp
An easy way to go to the TEMP directory in Windows is to select Start|Run (Windows button + R) and the type %TEMP%
