Changelog

Maybe not glamorous, but security is fundamental to how we are building Hex. We're excited to announce that we now have a SOC2 Type II report!

The tl;dr — we take security seriously, so much so that an external auditor agrees that our systems and processes are secure, and that we adhere to them in practice. Read more details on our blog.

Yep, we went there. You can now select "Dataframes" as a data source for SQL cells, and query any dataframe in a project like a table in a database. Queries are fast, in-memory, and use a well-featured flavor of PostgreSQL.

You can use Dataframe SQL to break up large queries into modules that are "chained" together, join tables across databases and CSV sources, or just pop back into SQL halfway through an analysis to do a simple filter or case statement. You can mix and match SQL and Python on the same data as many times as you'd like!

There's a lot to say about this one, so we wrote an entire blog post with the "why" behind the feature. Just in the mood to get started? Check out the docs for the full details and jump right in.

🚦Project organization​

Bring some order to the chaos and organize all of your Hex projects! You can now add a Status and multiple Categories to any Hex project and filter the main Projects view to quickly find what you're looking for.

We've set you up with some default options to get you started, but any Hex administrator can add new Categories or Statuses from the Administration page. And yes, you can remove the defaults if you've got your own big plans 🙂.

🖥️ View Live button​

We saw that you generally only clicked the 👁️ button in the menubar to access the "View Live" button contained within, so we pulled that button out to the top level. You can now click this 🖥️ button to go straight to the live version of your app.

🕵️‍♀️ SQL Query metadata​

To help admins keep track of database usage, SQL queries now include a comment with helpful metadata about the Hex user and project that ran the query.

📊 Binning in Chart cells​

Chart cells now support binning, which means you can create histograms right out of the box!

🕴 Performance improvements​

We have made some big improvements to speed in Hex: loading projects is much snappier, project run times are faster, and little things like adding new cells take less time. Performance work is never done – let us know if there are any other areas that you think could use a little speed up 🚀

ℹ️ SQL query information​

SQL cells now offer more context about a query, including when it ran, how long it took, and whether it is coming from a cached version or not.

🤫 Shared secrets​

Like Shared Data Connections, Shared Secrets allow Admins to create secret values that can be used across projects.

Note: Shared Secrets are visible to all Editors in an organization.

🚨 Email alerts for failed scheduled runs​

Project Owners will now receive an email when a scheduled run fails. Along with the new Scheduling sidebar, this makes it easier to understand when and where projects might be running into issues.

🔁 Input Parameter cell updates​

We made a bunch of updates to Input Parameter Cells. They now include a Run Button, which makes it easy to Run Below after changing a parameter value.

They also include a new "Referenced In" element, which let you quickly see and jump to downstream cells in the project that use the given parameter in their code.

💬 Live chat relocated​

Don't fear, you can still drop us a line any time with our live chat support, we've just tucked the button out of your way in the bottom left corner of the screen. You'll also find a link to the help docs and this changelog there too!

Lots of great updates this week, but first...

♻️ A note on iteration​

We're big champions of building iteratively — this means that we take your feedback very seriously as we incrementally add the Hex features that make your data life easier. (So a big thank you to everyone who's shared their thoughts!)

With that note, we're excited to (re)share two features which have had some big updates: the File uploader and Schema browser! Keep scrolling for more details.

🗃️ File uploader 2.0​

Among the many things that a year+ of WFH has taught us is that home internet upload speeds are not great. We've revamped our File Uploader so that you can not only upload multiple files at once, you can do so in the background with no time limit! You can also download your files to your local computer.

👓 Schema browser 2.0​

Our Schema Browser can now handle larger, chunkier schemas! We've also added the ability to search through your data, reference multiple databases within a data source, and manually trigger a schema refresh.

👟 Run mode options​

We've unlocked more options for how cells execute while you're in Notebook view. "Cell + above", "Cell + below", & "All cells" are execution modes which can now be set as a project-wide default or triggered at the individual cell level. Check out the docs or the video below for a breakdown!

🧺 SQL goodie basket​

We're making the SQL editing experience in Hex better and better. This batch of improvements includes:

• Type-ahead — use the suggested schema and table names without having to do all that typing! (See a sneak peek in the screenshot above)
• Better error messages — we've condensed SQL cell errors to make them more helpful
• SSH data connections — access databases on private networks with a secure SSH tunnel
• Compiled query — see the query you've written as a compiled prepared statement for easier debugging

Bugs squashed​

• The item limit for dropdown menus has been increased to 1000 items and a warning when that limit is passed has been added.
• Some markdown cells were not automatically being added to Story mode apps, which has been resolved.
• Error message from cached queries are no longer suppressed.
• HTML outputs no longer have a fixed size.
• Auto highlighting of a project name has been added to the renaming project workflow.