Layout and new features in New Generation Composer (Next-Gen Composer)
New Generation Composer is available from ThingWorx 7.4 and later.
Each subsequent release of ThingWorx will contain additional New Composer features/functionalities. This video is focused on the layout change and new features implemented from ThingWorx 7.4.
How to enable the new Composer?
1. In the top right-hand corner, click on the User Menu and select the Preferences option
Figure 1
2. Click the check box for Turn on New Composer Features.
3. Click Done. A New Composer link is added to the menu bar at the top of the Composer window.
Figure 2
4. Click the New Composer link to open a new tab for the New Composer view
Figure 3
What's the layout change in New Composer?
Three areas layout
Figure 4
- Menu bar on the left (Area 1)
- Set Project Context to set default project name for new entities
- Two views: Recent and Browse
- Recent view will quickly locate the recent access entities
- Browse is almost the same to the old menu navigation bar
- Could be sizable or hidden, and the main idea here is to increase screen real-estate to allow bigger view/edit area
- Main area for listing and feeding entities in the middle (Area 2)
- It provides you a wider area to edit entities (author services, mashup builder, etc.)
- An extra area on the right for preview, properties/events editing, etc. (Area 3)
- It gave you an easier and handy way to get a glance of an entity’s basic information
Layout change in an entity’s editing page
- When you create a new Thing, you will find all the facets (general information, properties, services, events, subscriptions) of the Thing are listed in a dropdown list
Figure 5
By doing so it will save more area for the feeding
- Properties and Alerts
- Properties and Alerts are now listed separately (in two different Tabs)
Figure 6
Figure 7
- Properties and Alert are now edited on the right area of the page (See Figure 4 Area 3
- Services and Subscription
- A bigger editor area
- Events
- Events are edited on right area of the page (See Figure 4 Area 3)
What's the main function/features change in New Composer
- Industrial Connections
- The Industrial Connections entity allows you to connect with and configure industrial things in ThingWorx. With the “Discover” feature, you could easily bind the Industrial device’s (e.g., Kepware) Tags to a ThingWorx Entity
Figure 8
- From ThingWorx 8.0.0, Anomaly Alert type is supported
- An anomaly alert is only useful if you have configured Anomaly Detection to monitor a stream of data
- Anomaly metrics settings are allowed to be configured in the Alert edit page
Figure 9
- Subscriptions
- You could now manually remove a subscription permanently from the system in New Composer which is impossible in old Composer
- Services
- New Composer provided assistant scripting tools like static code analysis, String search or replace, etc
Figure 10
How could I switch back to the Old Composer when editing an entity?
It is so easy!
As long as you have opened an ThingWorx Entity, you will notice there is a button “Edit in Composer”; it will lead you back to the old Composer, and all the editing that have been saved will be logged in the old Composer.