Product Updates

You now have the ability to model non-financial objectives, such as carbon emissions and other sustainability goals, in AIMMS Network Design. Using the custom objectives functionality, you can now define objectives in units of measure other than costs (for example, carbon emissions in tons). You also have the ability to run scenarios to evaluate the trade-offs between financial and non-financial metrics, and apply to constraints to both, in order to find the right trade-offs between costs and carbon emissions. This is the first release of this functionality, more enhancements and functionality on this topic will follow in future releases.  Please feel free to let us know if you have ideas in this regard by replying to this post, or sharing your ideas in the Ideation section. See a demo and tutorial of this feature in our Network Design user group 

There is a new version of Data Exchange Library (version 1.3) available with various improvements including these two new features: Introduced new annotation-based JSONDocument generator that creates a mapping for a standardized nested JSON document to read and write all data for a given collection of identifiers in a model. Introduced a new function dex::ResetMappingData() to empty all identifiers, sets, and reset counters used in a particular mapping. In addition to existing row-based formats, the Data Exchange library can now also generate a (nested) document-based format on the basis of model annotations (see https://documentation.aimms.com/dataexchange/standard.html). As the generated formats may not be exactly what you’re looking for, we have also outlined how you can modify or extend existing annotation-based formats, or create a completely custom format based on the existing ones. See Data Exchange Library documentation and roadmap for more details.

ICYMI: We released AIMMS 4.82 about a month ago. Loaded with improvements, including the following:Downloading widget as an image is now standard functionality and extended to the Map widget The new Application Manager is now standard functionality and will allow you to more easily manage your pages and widgets (including copying and moving widgets between pages). An new selection box is now standard functionality and can support tens of thousands of elements and improves the page load performance significantly, especially if you have many selection boxes on a page.  Procedures can now use identifiers from runtime libraries before they are actually declared. A number of improvement in the math generation options to e.g. determine the feasibility tolerance and to generate stochastic rows for all scenarios.Check out the details at: https://documentation.aimms.com/release-notes.html#aimms-4-82-1-release-september-15-2021-build-4-82-1-0 or the high level overview at: https://www.aimms.com/support/new-features/ Download AIMMS 4.82 via the AIMMS Launcher (preferred), or via the download link at https://www.aimms.com/support/downloads/#aimms-dev-download

Dear Community,In AIMMS 4.81.7 we released a feature request from the community about adding custom tooltips to buttons. We went a step further and added the functionality to the Download widget and Upload widget as well! Here is a preview.Button WidgetDownload Widget Upload Widget AIMMS 4.82 has also been released that has some great updates. Please read the previous product update here. We are also working on adding custom tooltips for the axes on the bubble chart. Here is a sneak-peek. When you hover over the X,Y or Size axis labels, it will display the custom tooltips specified in the “webui::TooltipIdentifier” annotation layer for that string parameter. Hope these feature add more value to your applications. Let us know what you think in the comments. Thanks,Team WebUI.

This is an important update for customers with a paid-for license (subscription or 'in maintenance') who build and maintain WinUI Apps in AIMMS. We have extended the end of life of the WinUI to ‘not before 2026’ (this used to be ‘not before 2023’). This gives you the certainty that WinUI will be available for at least 3 more years. WinUI itself has been considered deprecated for a number of years now. This means no more new features will be added to the WinUI, and only high-priority issues will be fixed if possible. See also: https://documentation.aimms.com/deprecation-table.htmlOur WebUI builder has become the standard for most Apps. If you are unfamiliar with our WebUI capabilities, please check out these two free courses on AIMMS Academy for WebUI basics and some advanced interactions:Basics: My First AIMMS App WebUI Advanced User InteractionsIf you have any questions about using the WebUI, you can also visit our the dedicated WebUI forum on our online community or send an email to support@aimms.com. 

Dear Community, We recently released a couple of improvements for the side panels, mentioned in the previous product update in AIMMS 4.81.4. In the next release, we will be making the following features General Availability features. Application Management - The new application manager will become the default option when developing applications. We have made a couple of improvements as well. Combined all widgets under a page in a “Widgets on page” section. That helps reduce the clutter and the length of the application tree. It also helps identify the widgets from the pages. Removed the effect where, when a widget is copied and pasted, the source node of the copied widget expands. The copied widget will lose the border once it is pasted. However, the copied widget will stay on the clipboard unless another widget is copied, or the application is closed. Download PNG - We have extended this feature to also the Map widget. Download PNG will be a default option for all the Charts widgets, Table and Map widgets, and the Full Page. Selection Box V2 - The Selection Box V2 widget was released as an experimental feature in AIMMS 4.80. This widget will now be available in the list of widgets you see when adding widgets to a page. The advantages are mentioned in this product update, a couple of which are: Server-side search allows users to search the entire data set, i.e. all elements in the set regardless of the size of the set.  Users can scroll the complete list of elements.  We hope these features bring value to your applications and further enhance the experience. Please leave your feedback and suggestions in the comments. Thanks.Team WebUI.

We added some interesting new algorithmic capability features in the latest release, AIMMS 4.81. Gurobi Use on the AIMMS Cloud So far, you could use Gurobi on desktop licenses and on-premise deployment systems, such as AIMMS PRO. However, the AIMMS Cloud was not able to support this. Thanks to a new licensing mechanism developed by Gurobi Optimization, it is now possible to connect your Gurobi Web Service License to the AIMMS Cloud. For more details, please check our AIMMS Cloud Gurobi support documentation.   Passing Quadratic Structures to Knitro We added a new option called “Use Quadratic Structure” to the Solvers General category. If this option is active, quadratic structures are passed to Knitro 12.3 (or higher). Check the AIMMS Help section inside the IDE for more information.      Creating Block Matrices for Submodels If the coefficient matrix of a math program contains several independent block submatrices, then you can use the new function GMP::Instance::CreateBlockMatrices to decompose the math program into several generated math programs, each containing an independent block submatrix. Each of these blocks can be solved separately. By combining the solution blocks, you can obtain a complete solution to the original math program. This approach can be more efficient than solving the full math program at once.math program with 3 blocksEnjoy!

Dear Community, With AIMMS 4.81, Grid Layout is now a General Availability feature and the default layout applied when adding new Pages, Dialog Pages, and Side Panel Pages will be the grid layout. That does not mean that the existing pages in your application that are in classic layouts will be converted to Grid Layout pages. You still have the choice to select the Classic Layout once a new page has been added.We have made considerable improvements to the existing functionality. To mention a few:Auto scrolling to the selected layout in the page configurator. Hidden widgets in a grid no more cause an issue for other widgets in the same grid. Although we discourage the use of hidden widgets. Compact Scalars are sized correctly now.We hope you have had a positive and great experience using Grid Layout in your applications.  We encourage you to start using Grid Layout in your applications, if you have not already, as support for Classic Layout will be limited. Also, the new widgets that will be introduced will only be available on Grid Layouts. Upcoming Features: We are working on improving the functionality of the Side Panels as well.state property for Side Panels: The state property in the SidePanelSpecification can be used to show or hide specific side panel tabs. The state can have one of two values Active - To show the Side Panel and Hidden - To hide the Side Panel. When the data for properties like displayText, tooltip, icon, or iconcolor is changed for a side panel that is open in the WebUI, the side panel will remain open. The side panels will close only when pageId and state is changed Thank you,Team WebUI.

As you may know, we will transfer the AIMMS Cloud Platform from AWS to Azure. A few words on the transfer of existing cloud accounts from AWS to Azure:We are currently writing the ‘playbook’ for this and developing and testing the technology. We expect to start the first transfers in July and we intend to complete the last account transfer no later than the end of this year. Our ‘guiding intention’ is to minimize the impact for our users. If you want we can first transfer your ‘non-production account’ and then one or two weeks later your ‘production’ account, allowing you time to convince yourself that everything still works as before. We anticipate a few hours of downtime as we need to take the application database off-line when we transfer its contents. We will schedule this downtime at your convenience. Customers using SSO via ADFS/SAML will need to ask their IT colleagues to set-up the ADFS/SAML identity provider to point to the new AIMMS PRO metadata URL (more info). We will support you. Customers using IP-range white-listing for providing their cloud account access to on-premise data sources will need to adjust the white-listed IP range. We will support you. Customers using VPN access will have to re-configure their VPN gateway. We will support you.  We do not offer an option to stay on AWS. We are too small to properly support two versions of the AIMMS Cloud Platform, especially as we are making extensive use of the PaaS managed services of the cloud providers and these are quite different between AWS and Azure. So we will transfer all our customers from AWS to Azure and then shut-down the AWS version of the AIMMS Cloud Platform. Please let me know if you have questions.Jan-WillemAIMMS Cloud Platform

Many of us use a tool like MS Teams nowadays to meetup, create teams to exchange information, have chat groups etc. We also are aware that some of our customers have channels to exchange AIMMS information such as best practices, internal support, example cases, snippets and more.So why not add AIMMS Apps to the teams that you have created, or are in to e.g. give access to a specific App to the team, or add the App Portal to the users. Once added, the App can be used inside the TAB, or you can open it in a browser. All works out of the box.In my opinion, this can be very handy for training channels, or for easy distribution of a specific App to a specific user group (no need to send out or find the portal URL) and you can build an experience around the App(s) and make it a more integral part of something else (files, chat, other tabs, planner, polls, etc.). Is this interesting? Not at all? Love to hear your reaction/ideas/suggestions for its combined use.  If you want to try, its good to know:MS Teams version should be based on Chromium 85.0 or higher, which I think is MS Teams 1.4.00 or higher (update to the latest should do the trick).Also, we know there are some limitations (intrinsic due to MS Teams), but those are not really hampering its use. We found:download image and csv drops the files right in your download folder without a message as there is no status bar switching tabs always brings the app back the URL you added in the tab settings (there is no ‘active tab’ concept yet in MS Teams)  Select Add Tab in MS TeamsEnter details for Website Tab using URL of App (right-click on Launch App button)Now you can run the App inside the MS TabOther features of MS Teams can be used around your AppEnter details for Website Tab using URL of App portalNow Apps can be started (will open in default browser) 

Version 1.2 of the Data Exchange library supports a new capability to expose procedures in your model through a REST API. You can simply expose procedures by adding a model annotation to specify the service name through which you want the procedure to be exposed. Within a procedure called this way, you have full access to the query parameters, HTTP headers and the body of the request through predefined parameters in the Data Exchange library. The latter can also be used to map the data in a request body to parameters in your model, or conversely, to create a response body from the output data of your model. For now, you can directly use this feature on the desktop, for instance to allow AIMMS to be called from within a Python application, or a Jupyter notebook. As you can use this functionality directly from the AIMMS IDE, this will even allow you to interactively debug such requests using the AIMMS debugger. As this functionality will work with all types of AIMMS licenses (also the free Academic and Community licenses), this is now the preferred way to embed AIMMS in other applications running on your desktop.  This functionality will also form the basis for exposing AIMMS models through a REST API on the AMMS Cloud Platform. This will, however, require additional support in the AIMMS Cloud Platform for load-balancing and routing API calls to the appropriate solver session, which is planned for Q4 of this year. We do not plan to support this functionality for AIMMS PRO on-premise installations.  In addition, the Data Exchange library now also contains a completely asynchronous Curl-based HTTP client library, which supports any feature supported by libCurl that can be activated through an integer- or string-valued Curl option.  This makes the Data Exchange library your one-stop shop for producing or consuming REST APIs from within your AIMMS models.Visit the documentation page for more information.

We have added a new functionality called Take or Pay in Network Design. This feature is useful when you have a type of contract where you are forced to ‘take’ a certain amount of volume from a supplier at a given cost or ‘pay’ the supplier if you decide not to take the volume.  To add the option in your template you must activate the take or pay fixed cost of transportation option within the Cost component section of your Configuration.Learn more about this feature in a Tutorial on our Network Design user group page

The below mentioned features are available with AIMMS version 4.80. Read more about the New Features.Dear Community,  We had mentioned a couple of new features in the previous product update. Apart from that, we have now extended the grid layout to the side panels as well. Also, the Side Panels now have the option to configure icons and icon colors on the tabs. Here is a preview of those two features.Side Panel Grid Pages: As part of improving the layout of the application and maintaining consistency, we have extended grid layout support to side panel pages as well. The process is the same as converting pages to the grid layout. You can also create and apply custom layouts, and utilize the space more efficiently. Side Panel Grid Page with Custom LayoutWe are also contemplating providing different sizes for the side panel. We encourage you to read through the topic.    Addition of `icon` and `iconcolor` properties in the side panel specification. We have introduced two extra properties in the SidePanelSpecification which allows you to now add icons and color to the icon for specific tabs. You can use the icon and color to depict and indicate some more information without the user having to open the tab.     We hope these features help further enhance the experience of your application and the happiness of your users..Please leave your feedback and suggestions in the comments. Thanks.Team WebUI.

Update: Thank you all for your participation in the poll for this Idea. The poll is now closed.Dear Community!Hope you all are safe and in good health!We are extending the Grid Layout on Side Panels and are also planning to introduce a couple more sizes for the side panels so that you can utilize the grid layout in an efficient way and make better use of the real estate on the side panel.Currently, the side panel has one fixed-width size of two columns. We want to introduce two more sizes, resulting in Wide, Medium, and Narrow. Narrow will be the current size available. Before we go ahead and introduce this, we wanted to check with you on your preference and how you would like the functionality to work.We would like to know your preference on the implementation of these sizes on the WebUI. How and where these sizes should be set and how they should behave?One size for all side panels across the application. You can select one of the sizes and that will be set for all side panels across the application. You can set this value in the Application Settings. Defined size per page. You can select the desired size of the side panels per page. The side panel will open with that respective width on the page. You can set this value in the Page Settings.  We will also provide a preview option when configuring the side panel so the widgets and end-user experience remain the same. Size per side panel. Set a size for each side panel. You can set the size in the Side Panel page settings when adding widgets.There are pros and cons for each implementation, the main being:One size across the application Pro - Consistency is maintained across the application for end-users. Con - Size would be dictated by the biggest size. Some side panels may not require that size and might look very empty. Poor use of the real estate. Standard size per Page Pro - Maintaining consistency on the page when the user interacts with the side panels.  Con - Here as well some of the side panels may not require that size. Size per Side Panel Pro - Different sizes allow app developers to select the correct size based on the content. Con - Inconsistency when the users interact with the side panel, different sizes would result in a lot of movement on the page.  We would also like to know your thought about the different sizes: Would you prefer to have Three sizes - Wide (4 columns wide), Medium (3 columns wide), and Narrow (2 columns wide) - This is our current preference! Two sizes - Wide (4 columns wide) and Narrow (2 columns wide) Custom - Ability to define any size.To give you a perspective of the different sizes:Wide Side Panel Medium Side Panel Narrow Side Panel (Current Size) We also plan to introduce a feature where the app developer and end-user can make the side panel a part of the page that will then not overlap (overlay) the widgets.   Do also leave your suggestions and feedback. They are valuable and help us!  Thanks,Team WebUI.

Update: the features in this article were released on April 21, 2021 - Read the release notesIn the next release of the Network Design app, we will add some features that make the map more customizable, easier to use, and visually appealing.  Below is a short demo video to get you started using these new features :Customize nodes and lines (size, color, icons, etc) Filter which information is displayed on the map Show DC service areas in different colors, etc Show node and arc information in hover boxes Save and recall custom map zooms Overlay heat mapsSee a demo on our Network Design user group page 

The below mentioned features are available with AIMMS version 4.80. Read more about the New Features.Dear Community,Here is a preview of a few of the new features / additions to the WebUI.Selection Box V2 (Experimental Feature): This is a replacement for the dropdown Selection Box with some extra features and improvements: Server-side search allows users to search the entire data set, i.e all elements in the set regardless of the size of the set.  Users can scroll the complete list of elements. Better performance since the data is loaded only when needed. Available for Grid Layout only. Built with new technology. These options are not available in Selection Box V1. Grid Layout on Dialog Pages: As part of improving the layout of the application and maintaining consistency, we have extended grid layout support for Dialog pages. The process is the same as converting pages to the grid layout. You can also create and apply custom layouts, as you would for regular pages. You can now specify CUSTOM sizes for Dialog pages. We will soon begin extending grid layout support for the Side Panels as well. It has also been a few months since we released our first set of features on Application Management in 4.78, which allow you to easily cut, copy, paste, and move widgets from one page to another. We would love to hear your feedback and if you have any suggestions. You can read more about it and add your comments here. In our upcoming release, we will be removing one of the Experimental Features, Ignore Map Upgrade. All map widgets will now be rendered with the latest version. Please read more about that here. We hope these features add more value to your applications and further enhance the experience. Please leave your feedback and suggestions in the comments. Thanks.Team WebUI.

In an effort to make it easier for users to provide feedback and contribute to the improvement of our products, we have recently opened our Docs’ source code. What does this mean?You might have noticed a new footer at the bottom of all our docs. The footer provides easy ways to contact us and connect with the user community. You can also:suggest improvements make edits submit feature requests create topics in the communityThis is a first step towards opening more of our technology.The technology that is used (the Sphinx package and the sphinx-aimms-theme) can also be studied and used for your own App documentation. It is also a reminder that an AIMMS Github organization exists, filled with AIMMS examples.If you would like to contribute, please reach out to us!

We have released a new version of AIMMS Network Design, with functionality that enables you to model more complex constraints in an easier manner. Example use cases of how these new constraints can be used include:cross country/state restrictions different resources for slow movers/fast movers open/close multiple DC types and production lines at a single location simultaneously restricting certain modes of transport from entering or leaving a resourceWatch the demo video on our Network Design user group page 

Having the same quantity declared in multiple libraries and modules was the source of many problems and unexpected behavior. Starting in AIMMS 4.79 we move away from this and follow this new recommendation/best practice:Declare all your quantities at one location in your main model and do not declare them in a library or module. If your library or module needs a specific unit, use the new attribute Required Units to make sure that the main model will automatically declare this unit.This new attribute, Required Units, is available for libraries and modules and it specifies which units the module or library needs to work correctly. For example, until now, the WebUI library had its own quantity SI_Time_Duration declared because it needed the units [s] and [minute]. In the new version, the WebUI no longer has this quantity. Instead, it specifies the new attribute as follows: What will this do?For a new model or for an existing model that does not have its own quantity SI_Time_Duration declared, this specification tells AIMMS to automatically add a quantity in the main model. This quantity will appear in a new section called “Quantities and Units,” which is added as the last section in the root node of your main model (see image below). For an existing model that already contains the quantity SI_Time_Duration, this quantity is extended with two derived units [s] and [minute] (unless these are already present).You are free to adapt the automatically added quantities and/or units to your own needs, but of course you cannot delete the added units. They will be added again as soon as you restart the model with the WebUI library.In AIMMS 4.79, the following libraries and modules are now using this new feature:WebUI library System modules: MultiStart, GMP_BendersDecomposition and GMPOuterApproximation AimmsProGui librarySo if you use any of these in your application, it could be that a quantity or unit is added to your main model. If this happens, a message will appear in the Message window, and also the comment of the quantity will tell you which units were added.We don’t expect any real problems because of this change. It will just make it easier to understand which units come from which quantity. The only thing that we know of is that the suffix SolutionTime of a math program ‘suddenly’ may have a unit seconds, and this might lead to an error/warning about non-commensurate units in expressions where you use this suffix. The option ‘Solution Time has unit Seconds’ can be used to make sure that this suffix is always unitless, even if the unit [s] is known in the main model.Of course, this new attribute is not only for the generic libraries and modules that are shipped with AIMMS. You can (or should) use it in your own libraries as well, to make sure that you follow the recommendation/best practice stated above.If you encounter any problems because of these changes, please let us know.   

In our most recent hotfix we added the new project option called Post Compilation Procedure. This option allows you to specify a procedure that is run automatically after each explicit and successful compilation (via F5) and it has been created to offer an easy way to, for example, run a set of tests on your model after such a successful compilation and thus removing the need to explicitly do this (and possibly forget). Thanks @rutgerdemare for suggesting it!Curious what use cases you see and how this helps you making life easier. Do share with us! Find the release details and a link to the download here:https://documentation.aimms.com/release-notes.html#aimms-4-78Enjoy.

Updated: Selection Box V2 was not part of the 4.79 release and is removed from this list. We have moved it to the next release.Hi Community,Here is a preview of some of the new features / additions to the WebUI you can expect as part of the next release.Download Image - PNG (Experimental Feature):  Users can now save snapshots of the widgets or the application using this feature. Read more here to know the widgets and how the feature will work. String parameter support in Text widgets - Ability to specify a string parameter that has HTML content, in a text widget. This allows developers to read from a file and represent the data in the text widget using the string parameter sliced on a certain condition. Custom HTML Tooltips for Table Header and X-Axis elements for Bar, Line, and Bar-Line Charts  Similar to how custom tooltips can be added to the data and elements of the widgets, You can now add a ``TooltipsIdentifier`` attribute to the set and the HTML tooltips defined in the specified string parameter is rendered for those elements on the Table header and the 3 charts.   We hope these features add more value to your applications and further enhance the experience. Please leave your feedback and suggestions in the comments. Thanks.Team WebUI.

In our most recent hotfix we added the new RegexReplace function to allow you to adjust information (raw text data) more easily for further use. Think of collecting address data or names, adjusting lower/upper case etc.More about this new function and a few examples can be found in our documentation:https://documentation.aimms.com/functionreference/elementary-computational-operations/string-manipulation-functions/regexreplace.html#id1We know it does require some specific knowledge on regular expressions, but we know some of you ‘speak’ Regex. Please find some inspiration for using both the RegexSearch and RegexReplace function: https://regex101.com/r/dU5fO8/33Curious what use cases you see and how this helps you making life easier. Do share with us! Find the release details and a link to the download here:https://documentation.aimms.com/release-notes.html#aimms-4-78Enjoy.

Dear all, Time flies… Since the last Feature Release announcement here in this sub-forum, no less than three have followed: 4.76, 4.77 and 4.78. They include all kinds of cool new features, so I invite you to have a look here to see what’s included for you. Best regards,Mischa

Update: these new features have been released in AIMMS SC Navigator 2.27.01. This topic has been updated with more information.We have integrated the GIS data service LocationIQ into Data Navigator and have built significant new functionality that will allow you to automatically generate geocodes together with real trip times and distances in AIMMS Network Design. This has two important benefits:  Geo-Coding :  In addition to importing latitude and longitude directly, you can now import address data (country, state, city, street and zip code), and then use the geocoding function in Data Navigator to generate geo-codes based on the address data. You can now also manage the quality of the geocodes generated.  Trip times and distances  In addition to importing actual trip times (used for lead time constraints) and distances (used for cost per km or cost per mile transport costing), you can now generate these automatically in Data Navigator.  You can also adjust these for different modes of transport. Moreover, it’s now possible to combine straight lines (plus a user configurable factor), input data, and data generated by LocationIQ in a way that makes sense for your model. Watch the demo video on our Network Design user group page  

 Update: The UX enhancements announced in this post were released in SC Navigator 2.26.01. Read the release notes.As we mentioned in January, our next release of Network Design and Center of Gravity will come with a UX revamp. We also made exciting changes to the Data Navigator UX. Highlights include:A new side panel on the left for improved navigation   A status bar for easy access to data configurations and applications Handy overview of data issues, with colors that flag the most urgent ones A new in-product help feature for improved access to supporting documentationCheck out the video below to see the new UX in action. We expect this to be released in the next few days. Keep an eye on your inbox or watch this space for updated release information. If you need help navigating these changes, contact support@aimms.com.