Arable Web 9.1.0 Release Notes

Date

April 28, 2021

Instance affected

Production

Hostnames

arable.arable.com

Browsers

Chrome 89, Firefox 88, Edge 90, Safari 13.1/12.1, iPad 12/13

Type of Release

Minor Release

Version

9.1.0

Description

The main navigation bar has been rearranged to better match the onboarding process in Arable Web. This means that in the Settings section, you will see the Account page at the top; one thing you can do here is make sure you’ve added your mobile phone number correctly for SMS and voice alerts. Below Account is the Devices, where you will see a list of your devices and can ensure that all devices are in the right state. Teams are next; here, the org and team admins are able to invite new members and divide up responsibilities for monitoring devices among teams. Only those in the Water Beta group will see Sites BETA next, where you can set and edit boundaries to match the field being monitored, and set irrigation flow rates as well as soil characteristics like field capacity and permanent wilting point. Seasons shows up for all users and allows for defining crop, varietal and growth stages (among other things used for GDD graphing and GDD alerts). At the bottom of this section is Subscriptions; it is a renamed version of the previous Alerts page and allows you to set alert thresholds (done by org admins) and subscriptions (done by individual members). The former Activity log is now named Alerts in order to align with the user interface of the Arable Mobile application. 

The work on long-lived, boundary-based site representation in Arable Web has made significant progress toward completion. Water Beta customers will now see site-based data representations in Map, Search, Devices, Weather and Plant details in addition to the previously upgraded site-enabled pages (Sites, Seasons and Water details). Water and Sites n beta testing will continue during Q2 2021 while we work to complete the lift of the remaining UI components to Sites (Graph, Export, Teams and Analytics screens).

Map: In sites mode, map view shows the latest available aggregated values across the Mark devices associated with the site. The list has an organization selector on top, plus two tabs (Current Sites and Unassigned Locations). The Unassigned Locations tab replaces the Untitled Location rows that were previously mixed into the Current Locations list. New deployment locations are no longer manually named, as sites are named instead. The location name is auto-defined as “Device_Id | Deployment Timestamp.” If the device has a connected Arable Bridge, you will be asked to validate the connected sensors. Otherwise, you can go directly to either Create a New Site (the default is a 1-hectare square site [100m x 100m] boundary that can be edited) or add the deployment to an existing site (the location must be within 10km of the existing site center, as a site area cannot exceed 10km square). Only sites with a device that has synced within the last week are shown in the map view. 

Search: Sites have replaced locations, joining device ID (e.g., C003000) as the only searchable objects. Search results contain either a card that takes you to the site details page (Weather tab opens) or to the Devices list (with the device ID as the top row). There are now also search suggestions as you type into the field. 

Devices: All devices, including dormant and removed devices, can be seen in the devices list. This list has now “Sites” as a second column instead of “Locations.” Note that there can be more than one site associated with a device in case a Mark was deployed in more than one field over its lifetime. The sites are, in this case, provided in alphabetical order. 

Sites BETA: Weather and Plant details pages have now been updated to match the Water details layout. Like in map view, data for a site details may be an aggregation of multiple Mark devices within the site’s boundary. More importantly, the site also concatenates current and historical deployments for the site into a long time series (multiple season deployments, replacement and new units, etc.). The left part of the screen has been updated to show a small map of the boundaries of the site in question as well as a list of the devices and deployment locations that are utilized for the site measurements. As the Graph and Export pages are not yet updated to site mode, you will be taken to these two pages via the top-right corner shortcuts with all the deployment locations pre-selected. All the locations will be shown or listed independently in the same Graph-Export file for now.  

When editing a site and its boundary in the “Create a Site” map, you can now delete a vertex by right clicking it. 

The list of countries that are supported for SMS and/or voice call alerts has been moved to a better location in the Subscriptions page. Now you can find it  as part of the Default Notifications Settings info modal. Colombia and Peru have been added for voice call alerts and Israel for both SMS and voice call alerts. Note that Chile and Thailand are two countries where we only support mobile push messages for alerting (no SMS or voice call alerts are available). 

Description

In the previous release, the original season growth stages were not cleared automatically when creating the next season or editing the crop for the same season. This is now resolved. 

Previously, the column headers could sometimes be mixed up for multi-measurement exports on the Graph-Time page. This is now resolved.

For multi-location selection on the Graph-Time page, toggling from Daily to Hourly did not always maintain the date range selected. This is now resolved.

The Tomorrow’s Forecast tab on the Map page previously showed Today's ETc. This is now corrected to provide Tomorrow’s ETc Forecast.

In Arable Web 9.0.0, only an org admin could create seasons. Now, team members and team admins are able to do this.

The Arable Web UI on the Map and Settings pages did not explain to the user whether GPS is missing for a Mark (e.g., that it is temporarily deployed indoors). The Location/Site info modals are now updated to tell the user to move the Mark into GPS coverage (i.e., outdoors).

Previously, only org admins could invite new users in the Teams page. Now, team admins can also perform this task within the team. 

Description

Sites is still in beta with a few customers during Q2 2021, since the following modules have not yet been migrated from location mode:  Alerts, Graph, Export, Teams, Notes and Analytics. 

Graphing GDD for seasons created at sites is unavailable at this time. 

Search functionality on lists (e.g., the list of sites) is limited to only the rows loaded on the screen at the time of searching.

There is no full team selector in the current beta release, so we recommend that sites only be used for now by tenants who represent one company.

An entire org should transition to using sites all at the same time, since the way locations are named is different, and could cause confusion if some have transitioned and others have not. Additionally, creating GDD alerts & growth stages for site-based seasons can generate duplicate alerts for location-mode users. 

If it is not possible to update the complete org to site mode at once, please use site mode for dedicated devices and users to limit any impact on other users.

Site mode UI still has room to improve on certain screens. In particular, the time it takes for Firefox to load the Weather details page can be up to 10 seconds. 

When using the “Create New Site” feature on the Sites page, the map shows all deployment locations available. This can sometimes feel daunting and make it hard to select an area and icon on the map that corresponds to the target device and field in question. There is currently no function to right click on the icon to get the device details (same goes for the main Map page, though there the icon for an unassigned location is a unique Arable Mark symbol, making it easier to identify). A workaround, until this feature is implemented, is to complete a site boundary around the icon you expect to be the target, and then review the list to the left of the map to see the device ID and location name. 

Once you select “Create New Site” for an unassigned location, you will be given a starting point in the form of a 1-hectare square (100m x 100m) around the location (it may not look like a square if the map view is zoomed in, since Google Maps defaults to an “airplane” view at this scale). 

If you want to use the “Add to Site” function, first check the site name before switching from the “Current Sites” to the “Unassigned Locations” tab, because there is no filtering of the drop-down list of available sites based on your zoom level on the map or distance from the location.

The Water details tab currently only has a breakdown in weekly aggregations. Expansion to daily, monthly and per-growth stage aggregations for the water balance table is expected in the next release. 

Furthermore, only the current season can be shown on the Water details page. A season selector is expected in the next release. The capability to create multiple parallel seasons across multiple crops at the same site (and Mark location) is also under consideration for future development, but may take some time to complete.

For water balance deployments connecting the GEMS pressure switch on the analog interface, there will be no wind direction provided in the UI. A future combination of local wind speed and remote-sensed wind direction is planned.  

While the Locations drop-down on the Export and Graph-Time pages shows the start date of an historical location (inactive/dormant) in parentheses, the end date is not shown. This is targeted to be improved in the next release.

The loading time for the Graph-Rank tab can be prolonged in certain circumstances (e.g., a slow internet connection). It is planned to improve the performance in an upcoming release.

When creating new seasons, we have seen occasional issues confirming the selection of a location to be included at a site. This is under review for an upcoming hotfix. In the meantime, the issue gets resolved by refreshing the browser page.

To enable confirmation of successful soil moisture probe installation in real time, we plan to add Bridge status as part of the deployment message from the Mark to the backend, and have it populate in the API and UI (on the Devices page). As of now, the update will come with the first complete sync. 

Sorting in the Devices page has a few issues. Sorting by “Last Sync” may show pending device locations at the top, regardless of sort order. Sorting by “Site” is only done for the list of devices shown on the page. Sorting by “Connectivity” can contain rows with “Unknown” status in the middle of the sorted list. All these issues are aimed to be fixed in an upcoming hotfix.

Using the Search page in site mode does not return to the devices list with the selected device ID on top. This is expected to be resolved with a hotfix soon after the initial deployment of this version. 

Frost and heat alerts are currently triggered based on the max/min 5-minute temperature value of the hour. A hysteresis of 2°C above the threshold has to be achieved before another alert would be triggered again. This means that one 5-min anomaly value could lead to a retriggering of the alert. An improved algorithm for the min/max temp that uses, e.g., the average of the top five 5-min values, is being assessed for an upcoming release. 

Currently the NDVI measurement and graph does not show or deal with a drop due to temporary cloudy days. To circumvent any misunderstandings, users can also review the solar radiation with the two-measurement graph feature. A future enhancement to incorporate cloud cover when calculating NDVI is expected.