Alphacast Friday Update - January 7th, 2022
Happy New Year! 2021 was great. In December, we took a couple of days to work on planning for 2022, and we are already at full speed working on new features. Check out our latest updates:
New Pipelines Editor
We are working on a new Pipelines Editor. This is a really ambitious project, that will change dramatically the way data can be processed within the platform.
You will be able to create complex and powerful pipelines, process, merge, transform the data. Apply models, forecasting methods, and even create your own pythonic scripts.
So here are a few first peaks at the editor. Stay tuned!
Merge Datasets
Probably the most requested feature we had from many customers. Alphacast already saves a lot of work to our users by providing easy access to financial and economic data. But combining data in Excel is still a lot of work, and you need to deal with multiple sheets or files at the same time. The new pipeline editor allows to merge with a given Dataset, allowing to indicate how the matching should be done.
Calculate Variables
Our current pipelines editor allows defining simple linear combinations between variables within a dataset. We have taken a huge leap here, allowing you to define any type of arithmetic calculation (exponentiate to a dollar value might not be a good idea), and we made it really simple to reference variables within the dataset by typing @ and then selecting the variable from a list. We plan to include custom functions here as well, potentially giving you the power you get with tools like Numpy or Pandas, neural networks and beyond, but just simpler, and always updated.
Arranging steps as you want
Before going into more details about what you can do in each step, we will wrap this Friday Update by mentioning that you will now be able to combine steps as you want. This means you can first Fetch a Dataset, then Merge to a different Dataset then Select a few columns and finally Calculate a set of Variables that you may need. We want to give you flexibility and power to handle all your work with Data on Alphacast:
Print Insights
Last week we announced you can print insights. It was a feature many users had requested for a long time, and we received great feedback about it. We have now improved the print view, aligning better each chart and showing simpler versions of each one, with no user controls on them.
User Settings
If you go to your user settings page, you will find you can update your name. When you log in using Gmail, it may provide that information already but many users needed to customize it, so now you can do it!
That's a wrap! PLEASE share your thoughts and feedback with us. We base our work on our users needs, so feel free to share any comments you may have. Have an amazing 2022!
