meshIQ platform Highlights v11.1

New to the meshIQ platform? Review meshIQ Platform Highlights v11.0

Redesigned user interfaces

In response to our customers and in alignment with the latest user experience design practices, meshIQ is modernizing the look and feel of our user interfaces. We've started with Manage and Secure, updating viewlets and icons, and introducing a side toolbar with standardized meshIQ icons.

This effort will continue over the next several releases, as we work to provide a more seamless experience among our current user interfaces and new ones we're developing. 

New Manage interface

Key changes: Toolbar

• The Workspace dashboard is now on the left, rather than at the top with the other dashboards. It's accessible at any time from the vertical toolbar. The green dot signifies that it's the default dashboard. For an updated screen shot of the Workspace dashboard, see What are dashboards? 
• The current user is identified in the vertical toolbar with this icon, located above the Workspace dashboard icon.

Key Changes: Viewlets

• The default sort icon has been changed to . In previous versions, it was .
• The viewlet menu button now looks like this: . In previous versions, it was .

New Action menu

On viewlets and in the console, an Action menu becomes available once you select objects or messages.

 

The example below shows the Action menu when messages are selected. 

New dashboard — New look!

When you create a new dashboard and you choose not to automatically generate viewlets, the default dashboard is displayed, as shown below. All six viewlet generation options that are available on the Create Viewlet dialog are provided here (see Adding a viewlet to your dashboard):

Similarly, the dialog for adding a new viewlet has been updated with the same options.

New Secure interface

The new Secure user interface is is shown below, with an expandable side toolbar. See Toolbar options for information about the toolbar icons.

Export Kafka ACLs to a file

From a Kafka cluster, you can now save Kafka ACLs to a file. From a Kafka cluster action menu, select Commands > Manage ACLs. to open the Permissions dialog for the cluster. Then use the button provided (shown below) to export ACLs to a .csv file. See also Manage Kafka ACLs.

Example of export file

Message updates 

The new streamlined Put New Message dialog is context sensitive. Accordingly, Resource Center articles are now broken out based on which products share similar procedures.

• A new article covers putting Kafka messages (Add new Kafka messages to topics and partitions).
  
• The new article Add new messages (Solace, RabbitMQ, and TIBCO EMS) covers most of the rest of the products. A new Message Properties: Kafka, Solace, RabbitMQ, and TIBCO EMS article specifically covers properties for these products' messages.
• The original articles Add new messages to queues (now "Add new IBM MQ messages to queues") and Message Properties (now "IBM MQ Message Properties") are specifically for IBM MQ. The Criteria list (for Message Criteria) has been added to the articles. When adding a message, you can select from the Criteria list to apply Message Criteria. By default, the Message Criteria from User Settings or Global Settings is selected.

Viewing and browsing Kafka messages

When browsing Kafka messages in a partition, it is possible to page through additional messages in the partition.  When browsing messages at the topic level, paging is not supported. 

The Message Count setting under User Settings (Message Commands tab, Browse settings section) determines the number of messages that will be returned per page. To start at a specific record in the partition, update the Message Cursor setting on the same tab. The messages listed in the console will begin at the Message Cursor value that you set.

When viewing Kafka messages, the Partition ID, Offset, and Key are displayed at the top of the dialog. Click the Message Headers Data button to view any message headers as a table of key and value pairs.

In the console, a single Timestamp field is available in the message schema to replace the separate PutDate and PutTime fields. An example of the Timestamp field is: 2024/03/11 14:58:14.797. The date can be shown in either GMT or Local time.

You can apply message criteria to Kafka messages. An Active filter list is available in the console, listing message criteria records. Select the message criteria record to apply its criteria as a filter, which automatically adjusts the messages listed in the console accordingly.  

Performance and user experience improvements:

• When you change the format of a message you are viewing (json, xml, and so on). 
• Once selected, the "Full Message" format is retained as you navigate through messages.
• The number of messages you are browsing through is also saved if you navigate away from message browsing and return to it later.

User settings Load Messages tab is now product-specific

When accessing User Settings Load Messages, whether from the Configure button from Load Messages (Command Settings, above) or from the Settings button on the toolbar, you can now choose which product you are configuring settings for. Your Product selection affects the options that are displayed on the Load Settings tab.

Product preference is "remembered"

The Product selections such as those for new viewlets and on User Settings as described above will "remember" your most recent selection as the default. For example, if you chose Kafka most recently when creating a new viewlet, the Product selection will show Kafka as the default.  

View more Kafka topic properties at a glance

Typical Kafka topic properties have been moved to the General tab, making them easily accessible: 

 

RabbitMQ Updates

RabbitMQ Object Properties

Properties windows are now available for the following RabbitMQ objects: virtual hosts, exchanges, queues, users, components, policies, and operator policies.

You can also change the name of a RabbitMQ server cluster.

RabbitMQ Status Viewlets in the Console

You can now view status information for channels, exchanges, queues, and other RabbitMQ objects. For example, you can select queue objects in a queue viewlet and select Show Status from the Action menu (or click the status value within the Status column of the viewlet) to display a Status viewlet for the queue, as shown below.

In addition to channels, exchanges, and queues, status viewlets are now available for nodes, servers, virtual hosts, connections, and consumers.

You can also compare the status of multiple objects of the same type by selecting the objects and selecting Show Status from the action menu.

View, create, & modify remote message VPNs from Solace bridge viewlets

You can now view, create, modify, and delete Remote Message VPNs from Solace Bridge viewlets. 

Select the check box for the Solace bridge and select the Action menu. Choose Remote Msg Vpns.... 

A list of Remote Message VPNs is displayed in the console panel. For more information, see View, create, modify, and delete Remote Message VPNs.

Also related to Solace bridges: the windowsize parameter has been added to the WGS REST API for Solace bridges to allow for configuration of message spool window sizes.

Attribute filter custom properties

The available compare operations have been expanded when creating attribute filters for custom attributes. Since a value for a custom attribute is user-defined, a greater range of compare operations is now available. (Previously, only the matches pattern operation was available for custom properties.) 

Specifically, you can now filter custom property values using the following compare operations, which encompass both textual and numeric data: key exists, key does not exist, is equal, is not equal, starts with, ends with, contains, does not contain, and matches pattern. See Filtering objects in a viewlet (Attribute Filters) for more information about attribute filters.

 

New Regex Global Setting to Auto-Apply DLQ Message Format

To allow for flexibility in identifying a Dead Letter Queue (DLQ) by its name, so that meshIQ Manage can automatically apply the correct schema for the message format, a new DLQ Selector configuration property has been added to Global Settings. This field accepts regular expressions for pattern matching.

Example: .*\\.DEAD\\.LETTER\\.QUEUE.*

Minimum supported browser versions

The minimum supported browser versions for the meshIQ Platform 11.1 are as follows:

Edge 85

Firefox 78.0

Chrome 85

Safari 13.0

Opera 71

Performance improvements

What do Track 11.1.1 performance improvements mean for you? Faster load times and reduced data usage compared to earlier versions. Specifically, pages load up to twice as fast. Data usage has been reduced by as much as 64%.

Write a jKQL query to set up custom alert conditions

You now have the option to write a jKQL query to set up custom alert conditions instead of using objectives. The choice between objectives and a query is the first step in creating the alert.

If you choose Query, the Query step opens. Enter your jKQL query after the prompt. You can refer to an objective in your query by including the set name and objective name:

'<set name>.<objective name>'

An example is provided below:

Get Activity Fields All That Meet Any Objective 'set1.objectiveName', 'set1.objectiveST' Show As table

Refer to the Objectives section of the jKQL Reference Guide in the meshIQ Platform Documentation Library for more information.

Track Teams and User Roles

The two changes described below pertain to Track deployments that use internal authentication. 

Assign users to teams from Users setup 

You can now assign users to teams from the Users page of Admin settings instead of having to go to Teams setup.

1. Go to Main Menu  > Admin Settings > Users.
2. Click the setup icon in the Teams column of the user you want to set up team membership for.
3. Under Assign teams to user, enter the name of the team that you want to assign the user to. To assign the user to multiple teams, you can enter multiple names, as long as the user will have the same role within all the teams.
4. Using the Role list, choose View or Modify.
   • Choose View to indicate that the user belongs to the team.
   • Choose Modify to indicate that the user not only belongs to, but can modify (that is, control who belongs to) the team.
5. Click Assign.

Updates to Track Teams and User Roles documentation

The version 11 Users and Teams articles have been clarified to explain that the Role column refers to the organization role of the user or team. Possible organization roles for users are View (Organization User role), Modify (Organization Admin role), and Owner. Possible organization roles for teams are View (Organization User role) and Modify (Organization Admin role).

The "Assign roles to teams" instructions have been renamed to "Set up team membership: teams." The "Assign roles to users" instructions have been renamed to "Set up team membership: users."  In both cases, instructions for setting a Role have been clarified. 

Viewlet settings

Select Viewlets Settings from the side menu of Admin Settings to specify default viewlet and table settings. Viewlet settings is now divided into Table settings and Summary settings. In Table settings, you can set the default column width for table viewlets. See Viewlet settings (Admin Settings) for more information.

 

Specify a date filter for shared viewlet URL

A Date filter has been added to the Share Viewlet dialog. This filter will become part of the URL used to share the viewlet. From the drop-down menu select the filter type:  Unspecified, Predefined, Custom or Date Range.  After selecting the filter type, specify all associated filter options and click Save. See Set the date and time for dashboards for more details about filter options.