Enhancements to Layers in Optuma

Layers in Optuma are a great way to keep your charts clean when apply different analysis. Having used it for some time now I have a few feature requests in addition to some that have already been raised in this channel.

  1. Groupings of Layers or additional levels to layers - this will give more flexibility when trying to organise analysis and keep layers clean
  2. Ability to search tools or layers
  3. Ability to quickly 'highlight' layers - This could be triggered a number of ways either by some sort of button or when searching layers. By highlight I mean make all non-positive results more transparent to make the 'highlighted' layers pop more on the chart. This type of feature is very popular in data visualisation packages such as Tableau and again, just helps remove noise and clutter when required. (link to Tableau page demonstrating their highlighter)
  4. Layer names appear in Tooltip - Specific tool name from layer panel appears in tooltip.

Thanks :)

Hi Ryan,

Thanks so much for these suggestions. The situation remains the same as per Marcus’ post. I love these ideas and I think they would be great to add but layers is a complex beast and it is not a trivial thing to work on. I can not promise that these will get done because they fail the three questions we ask:

Is it easy to add - No.

Do lot’s of our clients want it - No, in fact from talking to users very few even use layers at all.

Will it help us sell more Optuma - No. I do not believe that layers would be the deciding factor.

To put a dollar to this request, I would estimate that it would cost me around $9,000 to do once we count on development, testing, documenting etc.

Like I said, I love the idea, but I have to make the numbers work.

All the best

Mathew

p.s. Did you know the magnifying class in the top right of Optuma allows you to find tools? Not the same as a search on the layers panel, but still may help.

Thanks Matthew and appreciate the response. I'm surprised that not many clients are using layers!

Even the ability to duplicate layers would be super handy. At the moment I'm having to export the layer and import it again just to duplicate.

I didn't realise the search feature could search tools. Great to know - thanks :)

Cheers,

Ryan

Ok - duplicating layers was easy as it is just calling our export and import functions behind the scenes. That work has been done and will be in the 1.4 release of Optuma. We are hoping to release that early January.

Hi Mathew and Ryan,

I'm amazed at your comment Mathew that not many Optuma users use Layers. The availability of Layers and their On/Off functionality was one of the main reasons, among others, I dumped an "Xee" and limited functionality competitor and moved to the much more functional Market Analyst, what seems like ages ago. The morph from MA to Optuma and its ongoing functionality development has only improved the application enormously.

I would hope that those users that don't use Layers are not adding, then deleting, tools as they wish to change the markup and view when analysing their charts. If that is what they are doing, then they need some encouragement and instruction on the functionality Layers provide. A Blog video on the usefulness of Layers may be timely educator/reminder to those users not familiar with how graphics applications, like Optuma, work.

Naturally I'm supporting Ryan's suggestions, especially the Grouping of Layers, ie having Layers within Layers.

Cheers

Trevor

Hi Trevor,

I agree with you. I think the issue we have is that very few people purchase Optuma because of layers. Mostly that is because they don’t understand them. I also think that in many cases the Layouts features have dealt with the use cases you are mentioning. The great thing about layouts is that it is simple to apply the same set of indicators to different securities and it is smart enough to keep separate sets of position tools (like trend lines and fibonacci etc).

The bottom line always comes down to difficulty and how does it improve the software so that it will lead to more sales (aka getting paid for that development). In this case I can say that layer grouping will not happen. As much as I agree that it would be great, we are still using the same basic infrastructure that I developed in MA3 (2001). To add grouping would be a 4 week job which would impact every area of Optuma since it is in the core of the program. I just do not see that there is viable way that we can do that. Particularly because layouts can have different sets of layers and it is simple to swap between.

While I would love to build in every great idea, Optuma would cease to exist if I did not weigh every idea carefully.

All the best

Mathew

 

Hi Matt,

The Clone layer works great in Beta version - Thank you!!

Whilst I understand the time / cost factor in making this change and it might not be viable now, I would like to add my support a parent - child structure for Layers at some point in time. This would be very useful for organising and adding to analysis over time. Most of my stocks have close to 20 layers each covering analysis over the last 2-3 years. Id like to reserve historical analysis as I continue to trade into the future.

Thanks

Emma

Do not know if this is simple or complex fix but; If you have 18 items in a layer and you only want two visible you must turn 16 off. It would be neat to be able to select the icon which turns off the entire layer, and then turn on the 2 items you want.

That would make a big difference - we’ll see what it will take to make that happen.