What's New in May 2025

Happy May!

Through the month of April we focused on upgrading some of D3M's underlying technology, squashing bugs, and building a new feature that isn't quite ready for release, but is setting the stage for some great new features that we expect to start trialing with users early in June. So in this edition we will give you a sneak peek into what we are working on.

Historically, both the Inventory and Quotes have been very restrictive in D3M. Inventory automatically organizes all your links and devices into sheets for you and you are not able to modify what rows or columns show in a sheet. Each sheet only contains one type of device, so you end up having a lot of sheets, many with only a couple of rows.

Quotes have had similar restrictions. There is only one active quote and everything automatically gets added to the single quote. If you are quoting many devices as the same part and you want those to be split across multiple line items in your quote, that also has not been possible. These are the problems that we are aiming to solve.

The foundational feature that we have been building this month that will give us the ability to address these issues is tagging.

Soon you will be able to arbitrarily tag items in your project to connect them how you like. For example, you may tag all the handheld radios with "Handheld" or maybe all the devices to be deployed in Phase 2 of your project with "Phase 2" or maybe your project has multiple sites and so you tag all devices based on their site.

You can already select icons and connections in a diagram and add them to a layer. Layers allow you to hide everything on that layer to simplify your diagram. This is local to the diagram (Topology, Site Plan, or Rack) so when you change to another diagram with the same devices being displayed, they are not part of the same layer. Each diagram manages their layers independently.

Tags act differently. It is the underlying data that you are tagging so that tag is carried over to every part of your project. Let's look at an example.

Below, on the left, we have a Topology diagram. A boring one with just one radio icon

with a quantity of 4. On the right, the same four devices in the Site Plan diagram. Notice how tagging the devices on the right causes the devices on the left to be tagged. That is because it is the underlying data that is being tagged, not the icon in the diagram.

We plan to allow users to creates their own sheets. You'll be able to name the sheet, provide a filter that will determine which items from your project show up in the sheet, such as items with "Phase 2" and "Radio" tags, and then select the columns that you want to appear in the sheet. Otherwise, the sheet will behave as usual allowing you to edit in bulk the properties of those items.

Similarly to sheets, we plan to give you more control in your quotes. You will be able to have more than one quote in your project and each quote will have a filter that you can manipulate to ensure the correct items get automatically added to the quote based on their tag.

If any of this seems useful for you and your business, please reach out to us via the in-app chat to let us know. As we are building new features, it is critical to get your feedback to help us shape new tools to be effective and flexible.