A number of productivity features have been added on request to this version. The ones that might be of interest for a wider audience are described below. For other more specific addition and bug fixing see the change log.
Reports
Production Reports
Production reports allow to quickly document a sequence of roasts of logged in a certain period. This is helpful, for example, to create the required monthly tax reports in Germany. Those production reports are available via menu File >> Report >> Batches as generated Web page to be printed, comma separated text file or as Excel table for further customization and processing. First you select the set of roast logs to be covered and then let Artisan generate a table listing the key production parameters (batch, date, profile, beans, weight in and out, weight loss). Note that the Web version allows to sort the entries by clicking on the column headers in the Browser view. The weight unit respects the corresponding setting in the roast properties dialog. So you can easily switch between the units g, kg, lb and oz for this report.
Ranking Reports
Ranking reports (menu File >> Report >> Ranking) allow to compare a set of roasts wr.t. some key parameters. Again this report is available as Web, CSV and Excel format. The Web format includes a consolidated graph of all bean temperature curves (if not more than 10 profiles were selected). This graph respects all current Artisan formatting settings like axis configurations and colors and also respects the alignment criteria configured in the background profile dialog (menu Roast >> Background). Again the columns in the Web format are sortable by clicking on the column headers.
Batch Conversions
Batch conversion of Artisan profiles into various other formats like CSV, PNG and PDF have been added (under menu File >> Convert To). First one selects the intended output format from the corresponding submenu, then one selects the Artisan profiles to be converted and finally one selects the destination directory.
Automatic Panning
From early on, one of the design goals for Artisan was to maximize the space for the important graphical elements during a roast. Some elements are automatically hidden during recording or can be hidden quickly by some keyboard shortcuts (see below). Additionally, one can zoom into the interesting portion of the roast graph to maximize the precision in tracking a previous roast. One drawback of zooming is that the area of interest might quickly move out of sight and one has to use the panning tool to move it back on the screen center. In v0.9.9 a click to the home icon activates the automatic panning, which ensures that the last BT reading stays in the center of the graph. A further click on the home icon deactivates the automatic panning again.
Designer
The profile designer of Artisan has be revised to allow for the more precise construction of roast templates. This is to support the recent trend of fully automated roasting (see the post Curve Controlled Coffee Roasting), which is about duplicating a predefined roast template.
On starting the designer via the menu Tools >> Designer it is initialized with the current profile, or if none is available, with a set of default points. As before you can move those points around using the mouse and add additional points using the popup on a right click at the current cursor position. To make the addition of points more precise, the coordinates of the cursor position are now displayed in a popup dialog, where you can add changes before confirming the data. Additionally you can now save the point set at any moment to file for later reuse or refinement. On leaving the designer (again via menu Tools >> Designer), the constructed profile is established as regular Artisan profile and can be save to a file and loaded into the background.
Keyboard Shortcuts
A number of keyboard shortcuts have been added to make the work with Artisan more productive.
- H : load background profile
- <cursors keys> : move background
- P : toggle pid mode (manual, Ramp-Soak, background-follow)
- +/- : adjust lookahead
- M : hide/show standard buttons
Another useful, but mostly unknown keyboard shortcut allows to let Artisan compute the greens volume from a given bean density. Assume you know the green density from previous work with a bean. To avoid having to measure the volume of your greens and use the density calculator to compute the density again, you can alternatively enter the know density in the Density field within the roast properties dialog (menu Roast >> Properties), select the correct density weight and volume units and remove the content of the green volume field above, put the cursor in the field and press the Enter key. Artisan will take the specified density and batch weight of the greens and compute the green volume for you.
Keyboard shortcuts that have been around for longer, but might not be that well-known (see menu Help >> Keyboard Shortcuts for the full list):
- ENTER : keyboard mode on/off (use the cursor keys to select button and SPACE to trigger button action of the selected button)
- t : toggle cross lines (key d to toggle between RoR and temperature x-scale in the cursor position value widget)
- s, b : hide/show user defined sliders and buttons (equivalent to the menu items under menu Config)
- <numeric keys> : switch to the corresponding custom event palette
- q, w, e, r followed by two <numeric keys> : quick custom event value entry
- f : enter/exit fullscreen mode
