EasyMorph version 3.9 is now available for downloading on our website. The new release adds powerful new automation capabilities to EasyMorph:
Fetching emails with attachments
Our goal is to make the everyday work of a data analyst as automated as possible so that tedious activities take less time, and more time can be spent on interesting and high-value work. Receiving data files by email and further processing them is a daily and monotonous routine for many people, but now it can be automated with EasyMorph. The "Fetch email" action introduced in v3.9 automatically retrieves email messages with attachments from Exchange as well as from mail servers that support IMAP (most modern mail services do). |
| The "Fetch email" action (tabs "Pre-filter" and "Attachments"). |
Using this action, it is possible to automate the process of receiving data files from email attachments and then transforming them with further uploading into a database, or publishing them to a Tableau Server, or transferring to another machine through SFTP (more on this later).
With a bit of creativity, more advanced scenarios can be accomplished, for instance:
- Sending an automated reminder if someone didn't send an expected data file in time.
- Automatically verifying incoming data in email attachments and then sending back a request to resubmit the data if a data quality checks fails.
- Using a 3rd party service to collect information through web-forms. The service sends form submissions by email which are automatically retrieved by EasyMorph, parsed, and uploaded into a database.
- Performing a particular action (e.g. run program, or execute PowerShell script) when an email with specific keywords in the subject is received.
SFTP/SCP file transfer
It is now possible to automatically send to and receive files from a remote computer via SFTP (FTP over SSH) and SCP. Key pair authentication is supported as well as use of a proxy.
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| The "File transfer" action. |
Note that sending files by regular (non-secure) FTP is not supported.
Data collection/publishing
With this release, EasyMorph (Desktop and Server) has become a versatile tool for automated data collection and publishing. It can now be done in multiple ways which cover the vast majority of cases in a corporate environment:
- Receive/send emails with attachments (Desktop and Server).
- Transfer files to/from a remote computer via SFTP/SCP (Desktop and Server).
- Upload/download files via a web-browser (Server only).
- Transfer files between Desktop and Server over secure HTTPS connection using the "EasyMorph Server Command" action.
- Transfer files between any computer and Server using Server CLI or EasyMorph .NET SDK
Native data format
This release introduces for the first time, the ability to save and load EasyMorph datasets into files in the native EasyMorph data format (.dset). The native data file format stores data in a form that is very close to the internal data representation in the EasyMorph’s in-memory engine. Therefore, saving a dataset into a file and reading a dataset from a file doesn’t have performance overhead issues such as data conversion or compression/decompression, and therefore is very fast.The native format compresses data. The compression ratio on par with Tableau Data Extracts (.tde) and Qlik QVDs (.qvd). The difference is typically within 10% deviation compared to one or another format depending on data type.
Later we will add the ability to publish datasets to and load from the Server in one click. This will make the Server a convenient place for collaboration -- storing and sharing even large datasets with millions of rows.
Data Preparation University
This newsletter is the last one in its current form. Starting with out next newsletter, we're introducing a new format, our "Data Preparation University" where most of its content will be dedicated to practical advice on data preparation for beginners and experienced users. We will continue to include short overviews of new releases, however the main description of what's new will be in the release notes that accompany every new version.Links:
Download EasyMorph
Release Notes v3.9 (pdf)