Release History

We’ve rolled out our rebranded look to the SLOPE platform! We hope you enjoy this modernization to our brand.

As part of our ongoing effort to better support our clients, we’ve also rolled out a live chat feature on the help page. Users can navigate to this page from the User menu in the upper right-hand corner, or by going straight to help.slopesoftware.com. The icon pictured below will appear in the lower right-hand corner and allow users to chat with a SLOPE representative in real-time.

The MetLife Digital Accelerator is still keeping us very busy, but keep your eyes out for more feature releases towards the end of the program. That being said, here are a few fixes for bugs that were brought to our attention recently. We hope these make your lives easier!

FIXES

• Fixed a display issue with the “Variable Tags” field on projections and projection templates causing tags that were no longer on variables to be hidden from view, but the tag was still filtering variables during execution.
• Mortality table dropdown selection now works properly in Firefox when editing data tables.
• Fixed errors caused downstream by changing a table column type from mortality table to something else (such as decimal, integer, etc).

We’ve been hard at work at the MetLife Digital Accelerator, but in the meantime here are a few features and bug fixes that have been actively requested.

NEW

• Variables within an array variable calculation chain can now be changed to have a formula per array value. This allows more flexibility and different logic in different parts of the dependency chain.

FIXES

• Fixed an issue where formulas were sometimes duplicated when moved via drag & drop outside of a grouping.
• Fixed an issue with nested array formulas that sometimes caused unintuitive behavior around which array value was used during calculation.

NEW

• Individual products can now be selected during copy and export of a model to give users more fine grained control of what is copied or exported.
• Arrays and array values can now be merged between models.

IMPROVEMENTS

• Portfolio cash references (before/after investment) are now marked with “t-1” to make it clear that the value referenced is from the end of the previous time period.

FIXES

• Fixed an issue where if a product variable was set as an array variable the product always ran in dynamic calculation mode even if it could have been run in static mode, therefore hurting performance.
• Fixed some issues around copying, merging, and importing models containing array variables.

IMPROVEMENTS

• The current array value is now logged in calculation engine error messages, when calculating array variables.
• Performance has been improved when calculating goal seek functions within array variables.
• Models are now sorted by name across the site.
• Minor performance improvements during page load in the Analyze module.

FIXES

• Input table formulas within aggregate formulas now properly show validation messages when indexes are missing.
• Fixed an error that sometimes occurred after merging a variable with an input table formula referenced within an aggregate formula.

NEW

• We’ve added the concept of data table index “read methods”, which allows for the configuration of how data table rows are read. In this release, we’ve added the “Less Than or Equal” operator, which will match an index during calculation if the index is less than or equal to the value provided.

IMPROVEMENTS

• Drag handles have been added to the headers on tokens within the formula builder to make it more apparent that dragging is supported and to give an alternative to clicking and dragging on the main part of the formula.

• Self referencing variables’ self dependencies are now handled automatically when merging.

FIXES

• The link to input tables from the formula builder has been fixed.
• Empty groupings on the formula builder can no longer be “ungrouped”, creating an invalid formula.
• Fixed an interface issue where some items on the page were still able to be interacted with after activating a menu on the formula builder.
• Data tables are now appropriately updated when merging in input table column changes.
• Fixed a merging issue that caused some variables to have invalid references after merging a new portfolio/product into a model.
• Fixed a model copy error that occurred on some models.

Expanding on our last release, this release focuses on some improvements to the newly available array variables feature, as well as a few other improvements.

NEW

• A new formula type is available allowing users to reference an array index value directly.

• A new system variable is available which allows users to reference the current array index value being calculated during runtime.

IMPROVEMENTS

• Array values are now displayed as their own nodes in the relationship view for array variables, to better display the variable dependencies. Formulas for each index value can be viewed, as well as their dependencies.

• Formulas for array variables can now be copied to specific index values in addition to being able to be applied to all index values at once.

• Improved performance around saving array variable changes at the bottom of a large dependency chain.
• Performance around model import has been improved.
• Minor calculation engine performance improvements.

This release is all about Array Variables! We’ve been working hard to release this feature, which allows even more flexibility and ease of configuration, particularly for variable-type products.

NEW

• Arrays & Array Variables can now be configured and used! Array variables allow users to specify a different formula for different values of an array, and then reference the array variable from other variables. This effectively creates a chain of calculations that iterates on the array values, without having to configure each one throughout the chain. Array value results can also be aggregated or singled out for more complex/flexible calculations.
  
  See our help site documentation here for more detailed information.

IMPROVEMENTS

• We’ve added a bit more context to the error message when an IRR formula fails to calculate properly, so users can more easily troubleshoot any issues.

FIXES

• Fixed an issue when calculating deeply nested IRR formulas that project well beyond the end of the projection with a very specific and uncommon configuration that sometimes generated errors.

This release focuses on some smaller improvements and bug fixes while we work on some larger initiatives behind the scenes. Stay tuned for more soon!

IMPROVEMENTS

• Existing references to old scenario table versions can now be selected when updating projection settings. This allows the updating of settings without changing the scenario table to a new version.
• The ‘Share’ link on dashboards is now also available on dashboards without filters.
• We’ve updated the error message on a failed economic variable rate scenario file read in the calculation engine logs to include the name of the variable rate for easier diagnosis.

FIXES

• Fixed formula builder state issues with deeply nested time indexed variable references within goal seek seed formulas.
• Fixed an issue causing cell selection in the data table editor to require a refresh to work properly after removing rows from the table.
• Saving a variable while the variable list is filtered no longer clears out the filter.
• Fixed an issue where info icon tooltips were sometimes not displaying on formulas.

OPERATIONS

• We’ve upgraded some backend servers with the latest patches to keep performance and security up to date.

NEW

• A new formula that allows Rounding, Floor, and Ceiling calculations is available in the formula builder.

IMPROVEMENTS

• We’ve improved the user feedback in the Execute and Analyze modules when an old scenario file version is being referenced:

• Scenario file records that go beyond the start/end of the projection time are now supported. In addition, it is now possible to reference time periods beyond the end of the scenario (the last scenario record will be used, in this case).
• The model point allocation field on investment files is now validated when setting the file on the product set allocation, to prevent a validation error further downstream in the calculation engine.
• A link is now available when viewing data tables to take users back to the input table structure for that table.
• Product Output Groupings are now included when copying a product.
• IRR calculations will now log an error message if attempting to calculate beyond the terminal time.

FIXES

• Fixed an issue where scenario files could sometimes not be deleted when still referenced by a projection template.
• Fixed an overlay issue when scrolling on the formula builder.