Hey all, we’ve been a bit quiet on the blog lately, but it’s been quite the opposite here at Dedoose Central. Here are the most recent noteworthy developments and thanks for all the requests and suggestions that are coming in directly and via our increasingly active forum….read on for more details:
- New Server
- Code Cloud
- Sub-Code (Child Code) Count Options
- Descriptor by Code App Chart
- Chart Selection (Excerpt List) Filtering
- Security Center and Training Center Video Tutorials
- Most exciting for our development team was our recent move to a terrific new server. We’d been planning this for a while as we saw our user-base growing, but we actually ‘missed it by that much.’ Took roughly a month to get it all set up and about 12 hours before we hit the switch we maxed out on our old system resources. Sorry for anyone that got caught in that special moment, but we are now zipping away on the new server and ready to keep growing. Certainly a good problem to have from a company growth perspective, but our service to all of you is the most important thing we do, so it’s all good now (and for some time to come) and the system performance is rocking.
- If you’ve logged into Dedoose lately, you are sure to have seen the hot code cloud that is now present on your project home dashboard. Informative, fun to play with, and, of course, interactive. The code name colors and size reflect the relative application rates and click a code to easily pull up all associated excerpts.
- Sub-code counts are now included by default in all tables and charts. This means that all counts reflected in bars and cells include both the parent code counts and all applications of any the codes children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren … Simply turn off this option to view only the counts for the immediate code in question.
- A new descriptor by code application chart that is basically the flip side of the code apps by descriptor charts. Select a code and Dedoose generates a set of charts for each descriptor that shows the relative use of the code for each descriptor sub-group.
- Some nice internal enhancements to the Training Center that speed test creation for really big tests with lots of codes and we hope people are taking advantage of the feature.
- All chart selection reviewer lists (we sometimes call excerpt lists)—the pop-up you get whenever clicking a feature in a chart or table to view the underlying excerpts—can now be used to quickly define and activate a filter. So, for example, in our demo project let’s say I click the ‘Spanish’ slice of the ‘Reading Language’ descriptor ratio pie chart. What I get is the review panel with all excerpts assigned to families who predominantly read in Spanish to their children. In the panel I can now click the ‘Make Active Set’ button which serves to filter the data set to only the Spanish reading households and all subsequent analyses will only be on those cases until I enter the ‘Select Data’ workspace and clear the current set. Convenient AND powerful and you can always enter the Select Data workspace to apply additional filter criteria.
That’s all the big development activity and we’re locking this in as version 3. A few little bits and pieces will come online this week and then we are happily cutting the team lose to attack the video support that we think will come online by mid to late summer….that’s a biggie so stay tuned. Finally, we’ve a gorgeous new website going up by next week that will include all the new video tutorials and security language. For now, the Training Center (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_o6MGqLDUA) and Security Center (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN_fL5g49js) tutorials are up on YouTube so you can tap those resource immediately as we work to get the new site wrapped up.
Cheers,
Eli