Release Notes

Hi everyone,

Great news, the Merge Request workflow for GitLab has officially been released.

This is a new feature that brings our PR Workflow goodness to GitLab MRs so you can review, approve, and ship analytics changes using the process your team already knows.

What you will get:

• ⚡ One-click MR creation from Holistics, with AI to draft the MR title and description.
• 🔈 Live MR status inside Holistics — no more tab-hopping to GitLab.
• 🔀 Auto-publish on merge: when an MR is approved and merged into your master branch, the changes publish themselves.
• 👀 Better visibility and control over changes, helping keep data reliable and audits painless.

If your team runs on GitLab, this will make reviews smoother, governance tighter, and shipping safer — without changing how you work.

For more details, please refer to our doc Set up Merge Request Workflow (for GitLab)

Have you ever received JSON data in your dataset and wished you could unnest it right there, without having to go back and modify your data model?

Previously, you'd need to:

• 🔙 Navigate back to the model
• 🛠 Create a SQL dimension
• ✍ Write custom SQL just to extract fields

Why? Because AQL doesn't yet have built-in support for these database-specific functions (like JSON unnesting).

Now, with SQL Passthrough for AQL, you can do this directly in your dataset! 🎉

No more back-and-forth — just write AQL and leverage native SQL functions to handle JSON (and much more).

This isn’t limited to JSON unnesting — any database-specific functionality not available in AQL can now be tapped into using passthrough.

👉 How it works: SQL Passthrough functions act as a bridge, letting you call native SQL functions from your underlying database while maintaining type safety inside AQL queries.

That means you can:

• Extract fields from JSON directly in your dataset
• Apply database-specific functions (Postgres, BigQuery, MySQL, etc.)
• Extend the power of AQL without breaking your workflow

For more details, you can visit our public doc about SQL Passthrough

We're excited to announce Layout Assist, a new setting designed to make your dashboard editing experience easier and more intuitive.

Here's what's included:

• Prioritize Non-overlap: Now you can set your blocks to auto avoid overlapping. To switch to overlay mode, just press and hold a block for two seconds.
• Trim whitespace to remove extra space around your elements.
• Shift multiple blocks at once for faster adjustments.
• Auto-expand the canvas as you add new blocks.

We hope these updates streamline your workflow and make dashboard editing a breeze. We can’t wait to hear what you think! 😊

Timeline​

This feature is rolling out gradually over the next two weeks. If you want to try it out right away, just let us know and we’ll enable it for you.

Ever wanted to adjust a filter on a single chart—say, switching Status from WIP to Done—but there wasn’t a filter control ready for you?

Now you can!

✨ What's new​

Filter Visualization Directly on the Dashboard: You can now apply filters to any widget right from the dashboard. No need to pre-create filter controls or open the full data exploration. There are two ways you can do that:

• Filtering through the visualization action bar

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• Use the table context menu

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🎯 Benefits​

• Better self-service for business users: You can quickly adjust the filter, no learning curve required.
• Stay in context: Adjust filters right on the dashboard while still interacting with drill-downs, cross-filtering, and other widgets
• Less setup for builders: Dashboard creators no longer have to prepare every filter in advance.

📝 Notes​

• Available for Holistics 4.0 users only
• Requires Explore permission on the widget’s dataset

We're excited to announce that the Data Type and Display Format configuration can now be set in the field settings and the table context menu.

✨ Key Highlights​

• Format fields directly where you work — data type and display format settings are now directly accessible from the field menu or table context menu, keeping you focused on the field you are editing.
• Quickly search within the field settings menu to find the right format, aggregation, or other actions you need.

🎯 Benefits​

By bringing format settings into the field menu and table context menu, we reduce context switching — which in turn helps avoid mistakes and enables you to update formats more quickly.

📝 Notes​

• This feature is available for both Holistics 3.0 and 4.0

Controls & filters panel​

We're excited to announce the new Controls & filters panel has been released 🎉 - your centralized hub for managing all dashboard controls and filters.

What you can do:

• Centralized management 📊 - View and manage all controls and filters across all tabs in one place.
• Tab visibility 🔍 - Easily identify which tab each control belongs to (current vs. other tabs).
• Quick location 📍 - Jump directly to any control's position on the dashboard.
• Identify unmapped controls : Identify controls that aren't connected to any visualization.

Availability: All Canvas Dashboards in Holistics 4.0

Say goodbye to hunting through tabs to find and manage your dashboard controls! 🚀

You can instantly get insights and dig deeper into any chart with Holistics AI.

Hover over a chart you’re curious about, click “Ask AI,” then choose a suggested prompt or type your own.

The feature is currently in Closed Beta. Request access to be among the first to try it: Request Form

Share complete dashboards to Slack as a single PDF file—no more flooding channels with multiple images.

The Problem​

Previously, we only supported PNG export to Slack. When sharing dashboards with multiple charts, each visualization had to be sent as a separate image. This often resulted in 5-10 individual files cluttering your Slack channels, making it hard to view reports as a cohesive whole.

The Solution​

You can now choose PDF format when exporting dashboards to Slack. This automatically combines all selected visualizations into one professional document that's easy to share, review, and archive.

Documentation​

For more details on how it works, see: Export to Slack

Building fields just got easier with new updates from Calculation Builder. Let's take a look!

New calculations​

Concat, Date difference, Date add, Case when, and Rank – enabling you to work with text, dates, rankings, and classifications intuitively.

Support for custom dimensions​

Build custom dimensions with Calculation Builder using the new functions above.

Calculation Builder anywhere​

Access Calculation Builder across your Reporting tab - in the dataset fields panel, visualization settings, and tables, to define logic where you work.

Composable metric with flexible controls​

• Build new calculations based on existing ones.
• Apply filters and customize grouping for advanced aggregations directly inside calculations.

See it in action​

These updates help you create and refine calculations faster and more flexibly.

🚀 There’s even more coming up. 🚀

We're excited to launch Content Archiving, a powerful new feature that allows you to hide outdated analytics content, keeping your workspace clean while preserving full access to your historical data.

The Problem​

A growing analytics workspace often becomes cluttered with outdated reports and dashboards, making it difficult to find current, relevant information.

The Solution​

Content Archiving provides a clear way to streamline your workspace and ensure data accuracy:

• Organized workspace and fresh content: Hide outdated content from views, searches, and reports, ensuring a clean workspace and that users only see current, relevant data.
• Preserve history: Maintain full access to all archived data for reference.

Documentation​

For details, visit our public documentation: Content Archiving

Timeline​

• Released: Archive models, datasets, and dashboards
• Released: Access all archived items via the Archive page or search
• Upcoming: Get archive suggestions for inactive items (30/60/90 days)