Openbox AI Private Beta Round 1 Reflection

Starting a beta – particularly a beta for a rapidly developing technology such as AI is always going to show you things you didn’t expect. Oh, so people don’t actually care about that feature we worked hard on? And people want to do what?! And actually most of their time is spent… you get the […]
Openbox AI – Just describe the model you want

Unless you’ve been having a total digital detox, you’ll have seen articles about AI being used in all sorts of ways. And one of those ways – since the current AI wave is all about language – is to write things. Need some code for your website? Ask ChatGPT. Need a summary of some complex […]
Openbox | A matter of perspective

When we started building Openbox, we thought we were building a tool to create spreadsheet models. But as anyone who has started a business will tell you, customers and the market have a way of surprising you with what they really want! And one thing they want is help understanding what their model is doing. […]
Ofwat builds its official price control model using Openbox

Earlier today, the UK water regulator Ofwat published its draft price control model for PR24. You can view the full model for yourself here, and the full consultation is also available here. Ofwat developed the model using the Openbox financial model build software. The Ofwat model deals with complex and important issues, and so it […]
Openbox V1.0

The last year has been quite a journey for Openbox. The pace of change really picked up over the last couple of months as 500 beta users have tested Openbox and given us unbelievably valuable feedback. We are now nearly ready to take the big step to version 1.0. We’ll be releasing this in early […]
Openbox Public Beta – Key updates and bug fixes since the private beta closed

The Openbox private beta closed late last year, and since then we’ve been concentrating on delivering the improvements that beta users asked for. We’re grateful to the dedicated users who have continued to send us additional suggestions, and we’ve been working to include those as well. So, as we launch the public beta, here is […]
Openbox release notes: December update v0.8.21

Since the end of the Openbox beta round 3 in October, we’ve been hard at work fixing the issues our beta users have found and implementing their feature requests. Here is the complete list to date. New features Create LAMBDAs from Openbox calculations. Read LAMBDAs from Excel and convert to Openbox calculations. “Unfold” recursive LAMBDAs […]
What does Lambda mean?

Those of you, like me, who follow Excel on social media (do your children take the p*** for this the way mine do?) may have seen a new article this week. Microsoft has announced a new feature in Excel called Lambda (λ). Lambda matters a lot. Both because of what it allows Excel to do, […]
Openbox Beta: Round 1 Retrospective

Round 1 Retrospective It feels like only last week that we kicked off the beta process, and here we at the end of Round 2. There has been a huge amount of input from our beta users, and we’re incredibly grateful for their time – particularly during the current crisis – in making Openbox more […]
Openbox dev diary – Private Beta week 1

Openbox diaries – Beta week 1 Our beta users received Openbox last week and have spent their first week using and testing the software. We want to make the process as transparent and open as possible so are publishing a weekly update bulletin. If you’re new to what we’re doing with Openbox watch this demo. […]