FA Back 3.7 - Release notes

Global App Bar to navigate between available applications and to manage user account

Improvements in managing FX contracts, including contract-specific future cashflows, clicking on a future cashflow position on the Overview allows you to access the contract, “Hidden” cashflow transactions, and future cashflows valuated until the settlement date of the leg

Support for tracking market exposure

Support for accrued income management with mutual funds

Other improvements in existing features, including for example last modified as a column for transactions and orders, multiple strategies per portfolio, duration calculation for FRNs and clicking a position on the Overview shows all related transactions

Improvements in recent Analytics+ features, including limits based on Analytics+ tailored columns and drill down in Analytics+ with sub-portfolio structures

Analytics+ custom grouping "Linked security" now works correctly. If “linked security” is used as part of the grouping hierarchy, any security that has a linked security, is categorized based on the info of the security that it is linked to. Only exception is on group “security/position”, when the security itself is shown. The hierarchy is built so that when grouping “linked security / security” is used, the logic analyzes whether to show both levels, or is it enough just to show security.

Saving an FX contract now valuates the future cashflows induced by the contract up until the current date, ensuring you get a proper valuation on your future cashflows even if you save an FX contract for the current date.

Opening an existing FX Swap in the Contract window is now faster than before, due to no longer unnecessarily loading market data for the selected currencies.

Saving an asset class or an asset type in Asset classes and types Preferences is now faster than before, even when your system has a lot of asset classes and type. When saving changes within these preferences, asset classes and types are no longer unnecessarily loaded multiple times to construct the list of allocations.

Dropdown fields listing allocation groups or asset types now list the available options consistently as "Name (Code)" (for example "Geographical allocation (GEO)"), allowing you to select an allocation group or asset type more easily for example in Portfolio window, Report window or Analytics+.

You can now save changes to your portfolio's strategy or investment plan even after you remove a row from the strategy or plan - removing a row no longer results in an error, allowing you to flexibly add, remove and modify rows before saving your portfolio.

You can now remove an investment plan from your portfolio with the portfolio importer by importing an "empty" investment plan. Before, this resulted in an error, preventing you from clearing an investment plan through portfolio import.

You can now add a long list of asset managers to your portfolios. There is no longer a limitation on how long the comma-separated list of asset manager names can be - the list of asset managers is stored to show portfolio's asset managers through Versions.

Contact window's Representatives tab and Portfolio window's Asset managers tab now properly shows a contact sub type when selecting to view the details of a linked representative or asset manager.

You can now use your contact-related custom fields as columns on the Contacts view even when you don't have a permissions to use the Customers view - the unnecessary linkage to Customers view has been removed for being able to select custom fields as columns on the Contacts view.

Benchmark index preferences under Preferences - Portfolios now contain a proper help link, directing you to the correct article in the User Manual in FA Help Desk.

General Preference "Enable modification of Help button URLs" and the related permission ENABLE.HELP are no longer available - this feature was old and obsolete, and has now been removed from the Preferences.

Performance of loading a specific portfolio's contacts has been optimized through adding an index into the database, making it faster to load portfolios' contacts programmatically.

Filtering contacts with a zip code programmatically, such as through the Contacts API no longer crashes if there are contact addresses without a zip code in the system.

Fixed an occasional issue related to nightly report recalculation not going through due to an unexpected error from EOD Historical Data Market Data Connector. This error is now handled properly, and the nightly report recalculation goes through properly despite of it.

You can now user your browser's URL to directly navigate to Portfolios view with certain portfolios pre-selected - this allows you to programmatically navigate to this specific search view and list certain portfolios on the view. You can do this with adding a list of portfolio database IDs at the end of your URL, separated with a "-" (URL would look something like https://xxx.fasolutions.com/app/main/Portfolios/Portfolios/1-2-3).

File type detection for file uploads is now more strict, preventing a vulnerability related to uploading shell scripts (*.sh), if the file name / extension is modified slightly to include a space.

Outdated and vulnerable technologies used within the APIs tab in the Administration view have been updated to latest available versions.

In addition, FA Back has been restructured in the background for it to better fit our microservice architecture. For example, certain technologies have been upgraded to latest versions, and new technologies have been introduced for improved facilities for logging and monitoring.

Query-based report templates now allow you to control the width of the columns you have defined in your query-based report template. By default, the PDF report based on query is generated dynamically, and the system automatically determines column widths based on the template and the content - this often works well, but sometimes you need to "tweak the pixels" to gain a proper output. You can now define the width of a column within your query, by adding the column width in pixels after your column name in [] (e.g. SELECT column AS "Name[100]"). This allows you to control the width of individual columns within your query-based report template - recommendation is to leave at least one column within your template without a width, allowing it to resize to fill in the report properly.

You can now again save a benchmark to an asset type in the Asset classes and types Preferences - benchmarks you enter are properly saved to the asset class.

Performance of loading the Overview has been optimized when the selected contact or portfolio has many documents: document listing is now loaded only once (instead of loading the listing unnecessarily twice) and document listing is now loaded only when the Documents section is selected to be open on the right.

Coupon payment Corporate action now considers a bond's "Ex-coupon period" correctly, determining the portfolios that should receive a coupon based on positions on the ex-coupon date (deducting the security’s ex-coupon days from the coupon date, taking into account the security’s holiday calendar). As a result, if a portfolio purchases a bond during ex-coupon period, the portfolio doesn't receive a coupon, or if a portfolio sells a bond during ex-coupon period, the portfolio receives a coupon anyway.

All Analytics+ groupings that start with "Portfolio's ..." (such as groupings "Portfolio's country") are now considered as "portfolio-level groupings", showing the same TWR figures as show on the portfolio level. All "Portfolio's ..." groupings now use portfolio-level net cashflows instead of aggregating up position-level net cashflows.

"Drill down with hierarchy" custom groupings in Analytics+ now show the drill down correctly also when the analyzed portfolio contains multiple positions that have been linked to the same underlying portfolio (such as multiple share classes of the same fund, linked to the same underlying fund portfolio): underlying investments are now correctly shown for all positions with a linked portfolio.

When analyzing portfolios in Analytics+ screen, the system now correctly filters out Analytics+ custom columns which are not selected to be visible within the analysis. This ensures that custom columns are not unnecessarily run / calculated, if they are not selected to be visible on the screen when doing the analysis - this was previously not considered when doing the analysis from Analytics+ screen in FA Back.

Analytics+ custom columns based on key figures no longer show the key figure value on a position that has been sold off during the analysis period, to be consistent with how other columns behave.

"Aggregate up only if all children have a value" option for Analytics+ custom columns based on a key figure now works correctly also for categorized key figures, even if the last position in the listing has a value for the key figure while other positions in the listing don't have a value for the key figure.

Analytics+ custom columns based on a key figure no longer calculate an aggregated value from children when using "Drill down with hierarchy" custom groupings: when using drill down, the actual investment is always shown as it would be shown without visualizing the drill down, now also in a specific scenario when combined with custom column based on a key figure.

TWR (sec) and FX-relate figures are now shown correctly when data is aggregated for a specific time period in extensions, such as the Strategy Analyzer.

You can now update a fee formula through the Formulas section in FA AppStore even when the formula is already in use and linked to your portfolio(s).

Fixed an issue related to logs showing an unnecessary error message when a user logs into version FA 3.7.

Fixed an issue related to environments not starting up properly due to unnecessary references to old services that are no longer used.

In addition, a conflict with two queries with the same name but different parameters in the GraphQL API listing portfolios was resolved by renaming one of the "portfolios" queries to "portfoliosByGroup".

Executing a trade order through the Trade orders view's "Trade order execution" or running a corporate action through the Corporate actions view now correctly recalculates report data of all affected portfolios also when the transaction or trade order is linked to a shared account in another portfolio. When the created transactions in the above scenarios are done against a shared account in another portfolio, the other portfolio's report data is now correctly recalculated to correctly show the shared account's balance.

Limit analysis now provides a result on all your limits even in the scenario when the limit group you are analyzing contains multiple limits defined on the lowest "security" level. This issue was introduced in version 3.4.15 when including the lowest "security" level items in the limit analysis.

Importing an asset manager to a portfolio through the portfolio import now correctly updates all dynamic groups where asset manager is defined as the dynamic group criteria. This ensures that if you update your portfolios' asset managers through importing, your dynamic groups based on portfolios' asset managers are directly up-to-date.

"Modify transactions" and "Modify trade orders" buttons on the Transactions and Trade orders views now run the modified transactions through any rules installed in the system.

In addition, when deleting transactions and trade order programmatically, the versions of the transaction or trade order in the database now correctly track that the transaction or trade order was deleted.

Performance of using Analytics with drill down has been optimized, ensuring that analyzing portfolios with drill down no longer takes significantly longer than analyzing portfolios without drill down.

Coupon payment corporate action now correctly determines the receivers of a coupon based on settlement date (i.e. settled position) - coupon payment corporate action now creates a coupon payment corporate action based on the position on the settlement date. For example, if a coupon is paid out based on ownership on 1.7.2020, a coupon transaction is generated based on settled position on 1.7.2020 (i.e. if portfolio buys the bond with transaction date on 30.6.2020 and the settlement date on 2.7.2020, that portfolio would not receive a coupon paid out on 1.7.2020).

Accrued interest is now calculated correctly also for bond transactions that occur during the ex-coupon period, when the coupon date happens to be a non-business day and adjusted with a business day convention - the calculation now takes into consideration the extra days that occur due to the adjustment when calculating the negative accrued interest.

You can no longer unlink a future cashflow security from the contract security, ensuring you don't accidentally break the link between these two - "Linked security" field has been disabled for securities with basetype DISCOUNT to ensure this.

When future cashflows are generated based on an FX contract, the future cashflow security name now formats large cashflow values with appropriate number formatting, making it easier to read the names of future cashflow securities within your positions.

You can now again upload .json format files into document management, allowing certain standard features, such as reconciliation, to store the data they rely on into the document bank. This issue was introduced in FA 3.7.1 when improving the file type detection for file uploads.

Added an additional default setting in application configurations to ensure all scripting features are by default disabled from all production environments, ensuring that users cannot do harm by writing malicious scripts in the system.

In addition, fixed an issue related to upgrades from a version prior 3.7 directly to 3.7.1 failing.

Transaction listings are not properly updated if you change the names of your cost types or tax types through Preferences - transaction listings now show your transactions' tax and cost types with their new names after the change.

When you delete a portfolio-specific benchmark from a portfolio in the Portfolio window, the confirmation popup now shows a proper text "Delete: benchmark" as the window title.

Adding a new contact or a new portfolio into the system through the Contact or Portfolio window now works without errors also when document management has been disabled, i.e. document management is not at all in use in the system.

Importing data into the system with custom import formats now properly handles situations when more than one file with the same data and same custom import format are imported into the system at the same time.

Fixed an issue in report recalculation that occasionally resulted in report update to fail with errors, potentially causing the system to freeze. In addition, more logging was added to help investigate potential issues with storing report data into the database.

Fixed an issue when connecting to Azure Service Bus for example for trading microservice to send and receive messages.

Performance of managing asset classes and types through Preferences has been improved when the system contains a lot of asset classes and types. Adding, removing and re-organizing asset classes and types is now faster than before.

Market value (d) and Exposure columns now work correctly and don't prevent report recalculation in a scenario if a portfolio contains a bond security with invalid coupon information that results in the system not being able to calculate accrued interest on the bond position. Even with invalid bond data, these new columns no longer become corrupted, preventing report recalculation.

Logging has been optimized to avoid issues with running out of disc space: number of log files stored has been cut down from 10 000 to 100 to avoid unnecessary large number of archived log files, and log files are now configured to roll based on size, not date, to avoid huge error log files.

Certain general components within the system have been optimized on how they populate their data to help with memory issues when there are multiple concurrent users simultaneously loading a lot of different screens.

System now limits the number of views stored in memory and the time the views are stored in memory to help with memory issues when there are multiple concurrent users simultaneously loading a lot of different screens. When user navigates through different screens, the system now "remembers" maximum of previous 20 views for 60 minutes - that is, if you return back to your 20 previous views within 60 minutes, your previous selections and search results are remembered when returning to the view.

In addition, 2nd level hibernate cache has been enabled via local ehcache to improve performance of small database queries done by FA combined with network latency against database in Azure environments.

Performance of selecting a portfolio on the Overview has been improved through removing an unnecessary double-loading of data. When you change your portfolio selection on the Overview, loading the contents of the Overview is faster than before.

Performance of loading the Overview has also been improved by not unnecessarily loading outstanding trade orders and unsettled transactions. Outstanding trade orders and unsettled transactions are loaded only if you have enabled the "Extended position info" or selected one of the "Amount (o)" columns on the Overview - if you don't have these enabled and selected, loading the contents of the Overview is faster than before.

Fixed an issue related to FA Back not being able to start up without unnecessarily large memory configurations.

In addition, selected configurations have been optimized in the background for better performance of the application in certain situations.

SIX end-of-day market data connector now works again without errors, allowing you to fetch EOD prices from SIX. This issue was introduced in FA 3.7.

Generating reports "to documents" with options "Report per customer to documents" or "Report per portfolio to documents" now again work correctly from the Report window, allowing you to publish reports to customers' documents.

Customer's logo stored in document bank is now correctly fetched also to query-based report templates. Depending on your choice in Reporting Preferences for "Define what logo to use on generated reports", the correct logo is picked up also when generating query-based report templates from the Report window.

Calculation logic for bonds has been changed so that ex-coupon date is now included in a bond's ex-coupon period. Now the ex-coupon date of a bond is interpreted as the date on or after which the bond is traded ex-coupon - before, the ex-coupon date was regarded as the last date the bond is traded with a coupon, which was incorrect.

You can now build analytics-based Limit definitions by grouping with "TAG", allowing you to construct a limit definition based on security's or account's tags.

Analyzing limits on a portfolio now correctly considers portfolio's accounts that have been marked with "Exclude balance from portfolio total" - the balance of such accounts is now correctly excluded when analyzing a limit that is based on portfolio's total values.

Groups, contacts and portfolios selector on the search views (such as on the Overview) now correctly updates the list of portfolios when a portfolio's contact's name is changed. Portfolios are listed in the dropdown as "Contact name - Portfolio name (ID)" - when you change a contact's name, the portfolios listed in the dropdown are updated accordingly.

Executing trade orders with the "Trade order execution" on the Trade orders view now correctly runs the executed trade orders (in addition to transactions) against rules defined in the system. As a result, for example standard switch rules (which update a buy orders with values from an executed sell order) now work correctly when executing the sell orders through "Trade order execution".

In addition, correct "batch count" is now used when storing report data into the database.

Saving transactions now again works correctly when a process (such as Fund management or Bulking) executes trade orders. This issue was introduced in FA 3.7.6.

Drill-down in Analytics+ with sub-portfolio structures now works properly also when your security's linked portfolio has multiple sub-portfolios - checking "Include positions from linked portfolios" now correctly fetches all sub-portfolios of the linked portfolio.

Coupon payment corporate action now creates the coupon payment transactions on the "ex-coupon date" for ex-coupon bonds. When the corporate action run generates coupon payment transactions, the ex-coupon date is used as the transaction date of the coupon payment transaction.

You can now import categorized key figure values with the text associated with the key figure value within the contact, portfolio and security import formats. This means that if you have a categorized key figure with options 1=Low, 2=Medium and 3=High, you can import observations for this key figure with texts "Low", "Medium" and "High", without having to know the values associated with them.

You can now successfully save report packages that contain multiple reports in the system - saving a report package with multiple reports now works without errors, allowing you to build also large report packages.

You can now generate a PDF report templates also for contacts who don't have portfolios in the system. This allows you to for example utilize the PDF report templates to generate material for leads who don't yet have portfolios in the system.

Rebalancing can now properly handle situations when a portfolio has some accounts that are marked with "Exclude balance from portfolio total" and rebalancing is done with either “Include only cash accounts in available cash” or “Include only the default account in available cash”. In such a scenario, rebalancing now properly treats the available cash without the excluded balances.

"Override FIFO" for transactions now works correctly also for transactions without cash effect - even if your transactions don't have effect on cash, you can still link them together to override FIFO.

Customers view now allows you to open multiple customers with identical names as tabs on the screen. Before, Customers view allowed you to only have one tab with a unique name open.

Fixed an issue related to the window sizes for processes installed through FA AppStore: if a process has more than one successive screen, the windows can now be different size. This allows all steps of a process to have appropriately sized windows.

Fetching prices through a market data connector no longer empties prices from other closes than the one it should be updating, ensuring that for example manual corrections you have made to your prices are not lost when prices are fetched automatically during the night or manually with the "Update close" button. Market data connector now correctly updates prices only in the "close" field the connector has been connected to, and does not change or remove prices from any other close fields.