Prepare Cable Lists with the Cable Inventory!
Our latest feature - Cable Inventory – is here! Cables allow you to extend your project with additional information by assigning cables to your connections in the project. You can now maintain a comprehensive record of your cable inventory, detailing length, unit, connector, SKU, and quantity.
By adding cables to your connections, it enables tracking of usage at the per cable level, along with tracking your inventory counts. You will receive warnings when you start to run low, and a final warning when you run out of stock.
While you can manually assign cables to your connections in the drawing or in bulk from Report tab, the fastest way to assign cables is by choosing which cable is your default for new connections. For example, by selecting your 10’ RJ45 cable as your default RJ45 cable, then every new RJ45 connection you draw will automatically be assigned to your 10’ cable, until you run out of stock.
You can set one default cable per connector, so configure your most used cables at the start of the project to speed up your workflow!
The Cable Inventory Manager, accessible via the Tools menu or with the shortcut Ctrl+I, provides an interface for adding, editing, deleting, copying, and pasting cables. From the Manager, you can choose to generate a detailed "Cable Count Report". This will create and prepare a report for you, taking advantage of the full power of the Report mode!
While you can manually assign cables to your connections in the drawing or in bulk from Report tab, the fastest way to assign cables is by choosing which cable is your default for new connections. For example, by selecting your 10’ RJ45 cable as your default RJ45 cable, then every new RJ45 connection you draw will automatically be assigned to your 10’ cable, until you run out of stock.
You can set one default cable per connector, so configure your most used cables at the start of the project to speed up your workflow!
The Cable Inventory Manager, accessible via the Tools menu or with the shortcut Ctrl+I, provides an interface for adding, editing, deleting, copying, and pasting cables. From the Manager, you can choose to generate a detailed "Cable Count Report". This will create and prepare a report for you, taking advantage of the full power of the Report mode!
An Upgraded Report Mode
Alongside the Cable Inventory, we've introduced several significant improvements to Report mode, bringing a smoother, more powerful experience, while squashing several bugs. From new column options to added animations, there is a lot to talk about, so let’s start with the highlights.
One of the standout additions is the new "Group By" feature, which allows you to group data in their reports by several common fields. Some examples include grouping all your ports by connector type or creating a gear report grouped by device models. This feature is easily accessible through the new dropdown located in the report toolbar, making it trivial to start building helpful reports.
Another useful tool is the "Hide/Show Duplicate Rows" button. This new feature enables the ability to toggle between displaying all rows or only unique rows based on the currently visible columns. It is especially handy for making reports like pack lists using either the new “Cables Used” or “Total (Connector)” columns.
To make it easier to access, we have moved and enhanced the column selection feature to the "Choose Columns" button in the toolbar. You can now manage which columns are visible in their reports with ease, offering enhanced flexibility and customization. You can even drag the columns around to change their order in this menu as well!
And lastly, the app now can generate template reports for you, to quickly jump you right into the information you need. You may have noticed that already with the “Cable Count Report”!
Other templates are available when you right-click on gear in the drawing, you will see two new options: Port Report and Connection Report. These will generate new reports for you, automatically filtered to either the gear’s ports or connections. This allows you to quickly bulk edit parts of your gear, double check your data, or further customize the report to your liking.
Together with the Cable Inventory, these additions make Report mode an even more powerful tool to customize and view project data. And with CSV and Excel exports, it’s easy to export everything out of GearConnect into other tools such as inventory software.
But these additions are just the tip of the iceberg! We have lots of other big improvements to help speed up and improve your workflow!
One of the standout additions is the new "Group By" feature, which allows you to group data in their reports by several common fields. Some examples include grouping all your ports by connector type or creating a gear report grouped by device models. This feature is easily accessible through the new dropdown located in the report toolbar, making it trivial to start building helpful reports.
Another useful tool is the "Hide/Show Duplicate Rows" button. This new feature enables the ability to toggle between displaying all rows or only unique rows based on the currently visible columns. It is especially handy for making reports like pack lists using either the new “Cables Used” or “Total (Connector)” columns.
To make it easier to access, we have moved and enhanced the column selection feature to the "Choose Columns" button in the toolbar. You can now manage which columns are visible in their reports with ease, offering enhanced flexibility and customization. You can even drag the columns around to change their order in this menu as well!
And lastly, the app now can generate template reports for you, to quickly jump you right into the information you need. You may have noticed that already with the “Cable Count Report”!
Other templates are available when you right-click on gear in the drawing, you will see two new options: Port Report and Connection Report. These will generate new reports for you, automatically filtered to either the gear’s ports or connections. This allows you to quickly bulk edit parts of your gear, double check your data, or further customize the report to your liking.
Together with the Cable Inventory, these additions make Report mode an even more powerful tool to customize and view project data. And with CSV and Excel exports, it’s easy to export everything out of GearConnect into other tools such as inventory software.
But these additions are just the tip of the iceberg! We have lots of other big improvements to help speed up and improve your workflow!
Improvements
- New Port Options:
- Connectors: QSFP-DD, Mini XLR (3, 4, 5-Pin), 2.5mm, LEMO 7-Pin, Hirose 4-Pin, Phoenix 5-Pin, 3-Pin Fischer, and eSATA
- Network Speeds: 200 Gbps, 400 Gbps, and 800 Gbps
- Signal Types: TCP/IP, RTSP, RTSPS, GB28181, ONVIF, MA-Net, and RS-485
- Manager Enhancements:
- Copy and Paste functionality has been added to the Layer, VLAN, and Cable Inventory managers
- Layers and VLANs in their respective managers are now sorted by name by default. Cable Inventory items are sorted by connector, then unit, then length
- Added tooltips to toolbar buttons in manager dialogs
- Report Mode:
- The Connector type of the connected port is now available as a column in Connection Reports allowing you to see what type of connection / cable it is
- Added a "Total (Connectors)" column to Connection Reports, showing the total number of connectors (RJ45, XLR5, etc) used across all connections, even without assigning cables – useful to use with the duplicate row feature!
- Added "Port Report" and "Connection Report" options to the gear right-click menu for quick report generation filtered to that gear (Pro feature)
- When in Local Mode, you are no longer restricted to copying and pasting one layer at a time
- The individual column menus no longer hide when not moused over; it is always visible and now only contains settings for that column specifically
- During export, fields such as connectors and layers now use their friendly names, instead of their unique identifier
- Active filters in reports are now visually highlighted on the column header
- Improved number sorting in reports
- Save keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+S) when on a report page will now save both the report and the project
- Gear & Connection Enhancements:
- Connection right-click menu now includes options to:
- Assign, change, or remove a cable from the Cable Inventory
- "Remove All Nodes" if the connection has manually added nodes
- When moving a Gear Group with self-contained gear items, it now moves the manually places connection nodes with it, ensuring that all lines move cleanly with your gear and gear group
- Hovering over a connection in the drawing now displays its assigned cable information in the tooltip
- Gear Port tables now have better sizing on smaller screens, especially when "Full Edit Mode" for ports is enabled, to prevent them from going off the screen
- Connection right-click menu now includes options to:
- Design Updates:
- Added a subtle glass effect to Manager dialogs and Gear Port tables
- Improved dropdown components with a subtle glass effect and a border to help make them stand out easier
- The default color for newly created layers is now black instead of blue for better visual contrast
- When dragging items from the Library or Gear Browser, the preview image now reflects the new black default and fixes text visibility issues when the drawing was zoomed out
- Additional animations added for menus and dialogs in Report Mode
- Added an animation to Expand / Collapse All in Reports
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue where reports might not open correctly or could be replaced by an older server version after certain operations like reverting Version History, especially if not recently synced
- Fixed deleting the currently active report would not update the URL correctly, sometimes leading to a 404 page
- Fixed changes to Layers, VLANs, and Cable Inventory Items not trigging a save
- Fixed a rare case where new VLANs might not be creatable if existing VLAN IDs were not in sequential order
- Fixed dropdown menus not auto opening in tables consistently
- Fixed Connection Reports not correctly accounting for duplicate gear names when displaying target gear labels
- Fixed reports not expanding / collapsing all consistently or as expected, and were not restoring their state in some situations
- Fixed navigation being prevented to newly created reports in some instances
- Fixed Layer, VLAN, and Cable Inventory Items not receiving updates from the server in some instances while editing
- Fixed various errors and crashes related to importing files with missing information