Altek Solutions Business Intelligence Blog » Xcelsius (Crystal Dashboard Design)

Xcelsius 2008 SP 3 Fix Pack 5 Now Available!

Mike Allison — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 15:57:43 +0000

SAP BusinessObjects has put out another fix pack for Crystal Dashboard Design (Xcelsius 2008). I was able to access the documentation on fixed issues and the release notes and have attached them to the bottom of the page. For all the fixes check out the list below and the associated documentation.

Fixed Issues

ADAPT01369834 (Leading blank spaces are truncated)
ADAPT01487252 (Spreadsheet table disappears when refreshing)
ADAPT01505461 (Background colors change)

Download

The FP is available out on SAP’s Service Marketplace through the following path:

Software Downloads > Support Packages and Patches > A – Z Index > D > Dashboard Design (Xcelsius) > Comprised Software Component Versions > BOBJ Xcelsius Enterprise 2008 > SBOP Xcelsius Enterprise 2008 Fix Pack 3.5

Documentation

FP 3.5 Fixed Issues

FP 3.5 Release Notes

SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise 4.0 Ramp-up and Analysis!

Mike Allison — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 20:59:27 +0000

As an SAP BusinessObjects Channel Partner, we have been given the privilege and opportunity to engage in a pre-release version of the SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise 4.0 product stack for evaluation purposes. This is a very exciting time for us here at Altek Solutions as our Center of Excellence has already installed the software and is in the process of analyzing and evaluating the new features that 4.0 has to offer. Be sure to come back often to view any news that we put out regarding the 4.0 release, but to start here are a few things that stick out from what we have found thus far!

BI Launch Pad (Formerly InfoView)

With a brand new name and a change to the look and feel, BI Launch Pad offers a redesigned interface and new functionality that builds upon InfoView and includes the following:

Tabbed Browsing that works and feels much like a web browser
Accordion Menu (or drawers as SAP calls them) for My Documents, Folders, Categories and Search
Dialog boxes for scheduling, properties, preferences, etc. much like the look and feel of the CMC for 3.x
Session Notifications that count down the time you have left before your session times out!!!!
Easier more intuitive access to web-applications
- Modules / BI Workspace
- Advanced Analysis
- Interactive Analysis

Central Management Console

Two new additions to the Central Management Console stand out like a sore thumb. First, an administrator will no longer have to drill into every SAP BusinessObjects job, event, processing and cache server to turn on auditing. This all will be done on a centralized auditing page and will have a default auditing profile when installed. Second, a monitoring page allows an administrator to view how the system is performing live or how it has performed historically.

Information Design Tool (New and Improved Universe Designer Tool)

While the Designer application still does exist and is available as a client tool, a new universe design application called the Information Design Tool is now available to offer new and exciting features when it comes to designing your metadata layer. When building a universe (.unx) using Information Design, you have 3 different files that need to be created:

Connection (.cnx)
Data Foundation (.dfx)
Business Layer (.blx)

While that is a big change on how the universe development process is currently done, the biggest addition has to be the best piece of functionality that we have found to date. With the Information Design Tool universe developers will be able to define multiple sources in the connection file. This will allow universes to be developed utilizing multiple relational databases!

Dashboard Design (Formerly Xcelsius/Crystal Dashboard Design)

Dashboard Design is adding new functionality that is geared toward making it more efficient for developers to build dashboards. The biggest addition to the application has to be the ability to create queries directly in Dashboard Design and allow developers to map data directly to components without having to go through the excel model. One thing to note, the Query as a Web Service application is still available as a client tool and will have to be used when referencing legacy universes due to the fact that the built in query tool in Dashboard Design seems to only acknowledge 4.0 universes (.unx).

Interactive Analysis / Web Intelligence

Web Intelligence may have been the biggest transformation in the whole 4.0 release. The name is still up in the air from what I understand so when the full release comes out it may be Interactive Analysis or Web Intelligence. Besides the pending name change, WebI has been completely reworked and has a whole new look and feel when it comes to developing and viewing reports.

On the development side, the toolbars are now in ribbon form like Office 2007 and above. Once getting to know where everything was, it was just like riding a bike. The second thing that is really helpful is the query panel now incorporates a data view that lets you see the raw data before ever putting it onto the report. The last thing I want to share is the ability to add a web service as a data source.

For report viewers, the visualization of the report for charts and tables has been greatly enhanced. This should help developers be able to create meaningful and elegant reports that meet any report viewers request.

Desktop Intelligence

The last thing I wanted to touch on was the fact that with the 4.0 release Desktop Intelligence will have reached the end of it’s life. Anyone who utilizes DeskI and wants to move up to Enterprise 4.0 will have to convert their existing DeskI reports over to either Crystal Reports or Interactive Analysis / Web Intelligence

Don’t forget to check back often for more information on SAP BusinessObjects 4.0.

Xcelsius 2008 SP 3 Fix Pack 4 Now Available!

Mike Allison — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 15:53:54 +0000

SAP BusinessObjects has put out another fix pack for Crystal Dashboard Design (Xcelsius 2008). I was able to access the documentation on fixed issues and the release notes and have attached them to the bottom of the page. The biggest fix that I see is the handling of child dashboards and their failure to load at times. For all the fixes check out the list below and the associated documentation.

Fixed Issues

ADAPT01449290 (Xcelsius Scorecard shows inconsistent behavior)
ADAPT01453931 (Value in secondary axis missed in combination chart)
ADAPT01463179 (Loading dashboards)
ADAPT01466477 (Text color not updated)
ADAPT01467541 (Scale of spreadsheet becomes unstable)
ADAPT01481544 (Error when adding components)
ADAPT01484281 (Xcelsius 4.5 dashboard does not open in Xcelsius 2008)
ADAPT01484920 (Tooltip displays incorrectly)
ADAPT01488426 (Query input with numeric value of 0 is ignored)
ADAPT01495841 (Cannot send null to BEx via Live Office)

Download

The FP is available out on SAP’s Service Marketplace through the following path:

Software Downloads > Support Packages and Patches > A – Z Index > D > Dashboard Design (Xcelsius) > BOBJ Xcelsius Enterprise 2008 > SBOP Xcelsius Enterprise 2008 Fix Pack 3.4

Documentation

FP 3.4 Fixed Issues

FP 3.4 Release Notes

Crystal Dashboard Design (Xcelsius 2008): Tips and Tricks ep5: Parent and Child Dashboards from InfoView using Doc Download!

Mike Allison — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 13:00:42 +0000

Sharing information from parent dashboards to child dashboards is a topic that has been gaining steam over the past 6 months and is a great way of increasing performance and enhancing your end users experience. What we are going to cover in this post is how to incorporate child dashboards in parent by accessing the child from InfoView using built in functionality called document download. Unfortunately there is not a whole lot of documentation of what document download is and how it is used so here is how I understand it to work. Document download works along the same lines as OpenDocument but the difference lies in that OpenDocument will pull in a resource that is inside the OpenDocument frame. Document download on the other hand will only pull the resource itself. This post will give you the basics on how to implement this functionality into Xcelsius.

Document Download Syntax

The basic link for document download is as follows:

http://:/Xcelsius/opendoc/documentDownload?&&…&

Parameters that will need to be used:

sKind=Flash
- This tells the type of document that you are pulling. Use Flash to pull a SWF file.
sIDType=
- This is optional and only should be used if you want to choose the CUID as the iDocID.
iDocID=
- This is the ID for the document based on whether you use the sIDType or not. If you use sIDType with CUID then you use the CUID here, if not then just use the InfoObjectID.

CELogonToken=
- Sending the session through the link will allow us to download the SWF.

Here is the example of what a completed document download link would look like without the token attached:

http://demo.alteksolutions.com:8080/Xcelsius/opendoc/documentDownload?iDocID=2354&sKind=Flash&CELogonToken=

Connecting with Xcelsius

Connecting document download into Xcelsius can easily be done in three easy steps.

SWF Loader

1. Add a SWF Loader or Slide Show component to your canvas

Document Download Logic/Syntax

2. Add the logic to generate your document download link

1. Object ID
2. CELogonToken

*NOTE: The best way to get the token is to use flash variables and pull the CELogonToken in from InfoView and put it into a cell in your Xcelsius SWF

Mapping SWF Loader to the Document Download Link

3. Map your SWF Loader or Slide Show component to the document download link.

Demo

The biggest hurdle in the entire process is getting the document download syntax correct. Once that is good to go, you should be able to complete this process in no time. The only thing that you will need to remember, is that you will need a session token to access the child dashboard using document download. Here is a screen shot of the final product.

ASI Travel Dashboard

Crystal Dashboard Design (Xcelsius 2008): Tips and Tricks ep4: Navigation using Label Based Menus and Push Buttons

Mike Allison — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 19:20:54 +0000

There seems to be a theme with all the blog series that I have created over the past year and it is something that I would love to fix but really can’t control. I am not trying to make excuses but over the past month and a half I have been swamped with multiple projects and have not been able to add any more entries into our CDD Tips and Tricks series. But over the next 2 months, I am going to try and make a conscious effort to wrap up our first season of the CDD and move on towards a new one starting the spring of next year that will hopefully include some vlogs! If anyone has any ideas they would like to throw at me, feel free to reach out and I will look into getting it put on our list of tips for an upcoming episode. Lets get started on the topic at hand though and look at how to create custom navigation using label based menus and push buttons.

After using the default components in Xcelsius for the longest time, I started looking into a better way of customizing clients dashboards. I found a pretty simple and efficient way of doing this by using label based menus and push buttons along with images. Using this approach, we can easily create and meet the needs of client dashboards no matter of what the look and feel requirements are. An easy way to do it, is develop the background, layout and navigation look outside of Xcelsius. Use a image editing tool to create it and import that in using the Image Component. After the image is in, you can use the steps below to complete your navigation. If you would prefer to use multiple images to complete the solution, feel free do to so. Just to mention, I am not going to go into the development of a background image but will go into how to use label based menus and push buttons along with logic to get your desired results. Enjoy!

Label Based Menu (Usage)

Label Based Menu

So basically how you use the label based menu with navigation is to set the menu to have as many labels as you need to fulfill the number of buttons you need for navigation, size the menu to be the correct size, place it over top of the navigation images and set the transparency to be 100%. Also make sure to make your label names blank by putting in just a space for solutions where you want to use the image/text behind the menu as a description.

Label Based Menu (Logic)

The logic should be just as simple as the usage part for label based menus. Perform the following steps to complete the process:

Set the menu to put a position or label to a cell
Create displays for each navigation button using the canvas container
Use dynamic visibility to show each display depending on which navigation button is selected.

Label Based Menu (Overview)

The process of using label based menus for navigation is really simple yet effective on gaining a custom look and feel in client dashboards!

Push Buttons (Usage)

Push Buttons

We can use the push buttons kind of the same way as the label base menu but using a different strategy. What we tried to accomplish here was giving the end user the ability to cycle through displays (i.e. images, charts, KPIs, etc.) with the click of a button. We used a left and right arrow image and a transparent push button on either side to allow the end user to navigate through the set of displays. Once again the set up is pretty easy to do but the logic is where you get your moneys worth here.

Push Buttons (Logic)

A couple things are going to be needed in cells to get the logic for push button navigation to work.

Min and Max number of displays that are going to be cycled through
The current selected display
The next display to be viewed depending on which push button is selected

Push Button Values

As you see above, we have all of our items laid out but what you don’t see is that we are using formulas to determine which displays come next.

Push Button Formulas

Lets go though the two formulas and describe what each are doing.

The left formula is looking to see what display is selected. If it is the minimum, then we want to have the maximum. If it is anything else we are going to take the current selected display and subtract 1.
The right formula is looking to see if the current selected display is the maximum, then we want the minimum display. If it is anything else we are going to take the current selected display and add 1

The final thing that you need to do is map the left and the right push buttons to have the source of the left and the right formulas respectively and then map both to have the destination of the selected display.

Right Push Button

Push Buttons (Overview)

If you are looking to customize your navigation of cycling through a set of charts or displaying different information by the push of a button, I would recommend using this tactic!

Demo in Action!

Xcelsius 2008 SP 3 Fix Pack 3 Now Available!

Mike Allison — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 14:05:28 +0000

Over the weekend SAP BusinessObjects released the newest Fix Pack for Xcelsius 2008 aka Crystal Dashboard Design, SAP Dashboard Design or even SAP Dashboards. The help documentation is not out on help.sap.com as of yet but it was available in the info for the download so I will attach them to the bottom of the post. One of the big things that I noticed that was fixed but not really stated in the documentation was the Windows 7 export to enterprise issue. Every time you tried to export the dashboard out to InfoView, the save dialog box would be missing text box to name the file as well as the save and cancel buttons. The only way to push the dashboard out was to use a non Windows 7 machine. No longer do I have to fire up my laptop with XP on it to accomplish this feat. Hooray for efficiency! Check out all the fixes below!

Fixed Issues

ADAPT01354589 (Excel XML Maps disappear unexpectedly)
ADAPT01413284 (Spreadsheet tables containing custom formatting in Excel will appear with an incorrect font while previewing the model)
ADAPT01428916 (Xcelsius is not ignoring end values in charts)
ADAPT01433555 (URL button component launches the URL when the field has been updated)
ADAPT01433567 (Trend Analyzer does not ignore empty cells)
ADAPT01433654 (The scroll button for the sliding picture menu component disappears)
ADAPT01442692 (XML data connection cannot be triggered when the reset button is selected to load the default scenario)
ADAPT01443743 (Xcelsius files containing SWF files may cause Internet Explorer to lose memory)
ADAPT01462208 (URL buttons cannot be triggered if the URL trigger cell and its dynamic visibility cell are in the same Excel cell)
ADAPT01463495 (The Phase theme is missing from the theme list in Xcelsius)
ADAPT01470026 (The query metadata appears blank on the BICS connection property sheet)

Download

The FP is available out on SAP’s Service Marketplace through the following path:

Software Downloads > Support Packages and Patches > A – Z Index > D > Dashboard Design (Xcelsius) > BOBJ Xcelsius Enterprise 2008 > SBOP Xcelsius Enterprise 2008 Fix Pack 3.3

Documentation

FP 3.3 Fixed Issues

FP 3.3 Release Notes

5 Reasons Why You Should Use SAP BusinessObjects Universes

Scott R. Zimmerman — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 09:22:56 +0000

In meeting with organizations who are new to SAP BusinessObjects or who are legacy Crystal Reports users, we are often asked the question “Why should I use a Business Objects Universe?”. To organizations who have worked with universes for a period of time, the advantages and value proposition are clear. But for organizations who are new to universes, it can often be a challenge to quantify the value of the semantic layer.

In this post I hope to outline a few of the reasons why we recommend implementing universes, even if you’re not using an SAP BusinessObjects tool that specifically requires them.

Integrated security

One of the most common ways that security is implemented into an SAP BusinessObjects Universe is to dynamically restrict data being returned by a query. In this example, only sales belonging to the user that ran the report or viewed the dashboard would be shown. You can also use this technique to segregate data by customer, regional manager, product division, warehouse, etc… to give everyone a personalized view of their information. But that’s just the beginning.

You can also use the built-in universe security to restrict access to particular objects (such as salary or SSN), control the types of queries a user can run, change the database connection depending on the user, and even dynamically map to other tables. Leveraging the universe model gives you complete security over your environment, and the best part is you only have to apply the security once and it takes affect whether the user is refreshing a canned report, viewing a dashboard or creating their own ad hoc report.

Single version of the truth

We’ve all been there. You’re at a meeting discussing sales numbers and three people give three different answers on what last month’s sales were. The Sales Manager defines it as bookings made. The Warehouse Team counts only orders that were physically shipped out the door. And Finance, well they pull a bunch of different information into their spreadsheet and come up with a third version. They may all be correct, but they’re also all wrong.

Building a universe layer “forces” you to come together and define the terminology that you use, perhaps in the case above creating separate “sales” and “shipments” measures to satisfy everyone’s reporting requirements. When reporting through the universe, everyone in the organization will benefit by having access to the same information, defined in the same way, using the same calculations.

Build once and reuse

Some of the clients we meet with, particularly those that have been using Crystal Reports for some time, are resistant to using universes because “it would be easier to just hardcode the SQL” or “our data structure is too complex”. Sure, it may be easier the first time to hardcode a SQL query into a report, but what about the second, fifth or tenth time you have to do that? And as for the data being too complex, with few exceptions if you can define it in SQL you can build it into a universe. This ability to define the universe semantic layer one time and leverage it across the entire SAP BusinessObjects toolset is huge.

Maintenance/change management

Perhaps one of the most overlooked benefits of utilizing the universe layer is around maintenance and change management. With the universe model all of your logic is in one place, making maintenance straightforward. Plus, if the data model for any of your upstream systems changes, you can in most cases modify the universe to reflect those changes without having to touch any of your downstream reports, dashboards or analytics. Just imagine if you had 2,000 reports written against hardcoded SQL sitting on top of a data model that has now changed radically in a new release. I’ve seen it happen, and it wasn’t pretty.

Intuitive interface for developers and end-users

This is what it’s all about: providing end-users and developers alike with a drag and drop interface where they could build reports using business terminology rather than SQL code. Which is more intuitive to an end-user: SUM(DB_AdvWorksDW.dbo.FactResellerSales.SalesAmount) or ‘Sum of Reseller Sales’? Now imagine this simple example using CASE statements, datatype conversions, etc… and you’ll understand the true power of the SAP BusinessObjects universe.

In using the universe layer, report authors and developers can reference information in common business terminology, and be shielded by all the technical complexity and transformations that are happening behind the scenes.

Want to learn more?

There are many benefits to using the Universe model, these are just a few of the most popular. Want to learn more? Call us at (877) 844-7476 or email info@alteksolutions.com to see how you can leverage the power of the universe for your organization.

Question: Does your organization utilize SAP BusinessObjects universes? If so what advantages do you see, and did you find any downsides? If you don’t use universes, why not?

Crystal Dashboard Design (Xcelsius 2008): Tips and Tricks ep3: Automatically Moving your Tab Set

Mike Allison — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:11:40 +0000

Sorry we missed our normal Tuesday blog post. I have been really busy finishing off a project and getting ready for a 3 week engagement that starts next Tuesday. So I figured that a short post was better than no post at all.

Another question was put up on the BOB Forum asking if it was possible to automatically move from tab to tab on an interval. A couple options were thrown out there before mine (all valid options) and I decided that I wanted to go the route and try to keep the functionality all inside of Xcelsius instead of trying to constantly pull data in from a data source. After about 15 minutes I was able to do this with 2 history components and a tab set.

History Component 1

Increments the value of a counter by 1 every 5 seconds. This tells which tab the tab set should be on.

History Component 2

This deciphers the number that history component 1 generates on 15 second intervals. The tabs are either 1, 2 or 3 all the time. So if history component 1 is at 4, 7, 10, 13 . . ., the tab shown should be number 1 and so on and so forth.

Tab Set

This is bound to the cell that tells it to show a specific tab. As the history components generate numbers, the tab set will move along from 1 to 2 to 3 in a constant loop.

Trick in Action

Access XLF

To access the source file, Click here!

Crystal Dashboard Design (Xcelsius 2008) Tips and Tricks ep2: Automatically Closing Your Calendar Control

Mike Allison — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:00:57 +0000

Welcome to episode 2 of our Tips and Tricks for Crystal Dashboard Design (Xcelsius 2008). This post is going to be a short one but should help in making your dashboard stand out among the rest. Ever since I started working with Xcelsius 4.5, I had clients wanting functionality built into their dashboards that just wasn’t feasible with the standard out of the box components.

One of the biggest request was to take the calendar control and to make it so that they didn’t have to click the toggle button to open the calendar, click the date and then click the toggle button to close the calendar. Too many clicks in the end users eyes. So with every new fix pack / service pack for Xcelsius, I have tried to build the functionality that will allow the end user to click a date and have the calendar disappear. With the addition of the push button, we are now able to do this.

Before I get started with the implementation of this in a dashboard, I just wanted to mention that the real idea behind this episode was a BOB forum topic that I replied to and got some positive feedback that it did actually work. As we continue on down the road of our tips and tricks series, I will be continuing to look for new content whether it be on BOB, SAP SDN or just internal ideas. If you have any ideas of a tip and trick for Xcelsius put a comment on this post and we will look into adding it as a post in the future. Thanks for your help in advance!

Logic

The first thing we need to set up is the Excel logic. This will consist of a couple things that will allow us to get this set up and work as expected.

Excel Setup (Calendar Values)

Calendar Value
- This will be the date that is selected by the end user and is populated by the Xcelsius Calendar Component.
- The Day, Month and Year are just Excel functions that check to see if the Calendar Value date is blank. I it is, make the cell blank else fill it in the the appropriate value.
  - =IF(ISBLANK(B2),”",DAY(B2))
Default Value
- This is exactly what you would expect it to be. My example shows the default date as =today() but yours can be anything you want it to be.
- The Day, Month, Year just pulls the value using excel functions.
- This does not need the if is blank logic because the default date is always populated.
Query Value
- This is the value that will be sent through to QaaWS or any other data source.
- The Day, Month, Year uses logic that says if the user has selected a value, then use that one else use the default.
  - =IF(ISBLANK(B2),C3,C2).
- The date cell is just a excel formula that takes the Day, Month and Year and makes it into a date.
  - =DATE(E4,D4,C4)

This is a nice little template that I use on all dates that needed to drive my QaaWS and it should be pretty straight forward on how to set up. Lets move on to the last little bit of the excel set up.

Excel Setup (Visibility Controls)

Push Button Value
- This is the second push button we are going to use and it will be the one that allows the user to select Today or Default as a date.
- The actual value is null. (Confused yet? Me too!)
Calendar Visibility
- This tells the calendar to either show (On) or to hide (Off).
- =IF(B3=B2,”On”,”Off”)

Alright lets look in detail what the above means. How we have it set up is that the calendar will only show when the value that is in the Calendar Value matches the Default Value. Seeing that the Calendar Value is null by default the calendar will never show on opening the dashboard. This will require us to have another push button so that the default date gets pushed out to the correct cell to display the calendar. At that point, any value selected other than today’s date will close the calendar. Lets move on to the components so that what we are trying to do is a little more clear.

Components and Mapping

We will need 2 push buttons, a calendar control and a value component. Once we get those on the canvas we can map them appropriately and give a quick demo on how it works.

Components

Value Component
- Displays the Current Selected Date or Default Date by mapping to the Query Value Date from above.
- Always Viewable
Push Button 1 (Push)
- Opens the Calendar Component by sending the Default Date (Source Mapping) to the Calendar Date (Destination Mapping).
- Always Viewable
Calendar Component
- Automatically shows/hides based on if the Default Date matches the Calendar Date (Dynamic Visibility: Calendar Visibility = On)
- Selection of another date triggers the Calendar Visibility to change to Off and hides the calendar.
- Default Custom Date mapped to the Default Date in the excel
- Insert Date goes to the Calendar Value in the excel
Push Button 2 (Today or Default)
- Takes a null value and pushes it into the Calendar Value cell in excel.
- Visible only when Calendar Visibility = On

Beware!

Don’t be afraid of this caption. I just want to make everyone aware of a couple items that you should expect to see. The should not be show stoppers but then again every client is different.

If the end user selects the same date or the default date, the calendar will not disappear. This is why we implement the second push button (Today)
When the user selects the Today push button, the selected date in the calendar will be the same as it was prior to clicking on the push button

Finished Product

Hopefully this is straight forward enough that you can implement this in your own dashboard. At first it does seem a little confusing but in the end I believe that it is a solid solution to the issue that it seems a lot of people are having. Check out the working example below!

Be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed to get access to new tutorials as soon as they are published!

Crystal Dashboard Design (Xcelsius 2008) Tips and Tricks ep1: Adding a Select All to your Selector

Mike Allison — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 12:00:36 +0000

I build and design dashboards pretty much on a daily basis whether it be for a client, POC, or as demo material. One of the biggest things that I dread to hear, is my boss saying either one of these phrases: “How hard would it be….” or “You know what would be cool?” This usually means that I will have to put on my thinking cap and figure out how to pull something off in Crystal Dashboard Design (Xcelsius).

(TANGENT: Before I go any further, I am going to say that the renaming of Xcelsius to Crystal Dashboard Design has not really sunk in with me, so I apologize for switching back and forth in advance)

Anyway, as I was saying, I have to pull off some pretty interesting things relatively often so I thought why not share these Tips and Tricks with everyone who follows our blog. This will be the first entry in a line of many that will pick out a little pieces of functionality that I have built using standard components inside Crystal Dashboard Design and using QaaWS or Live Office. Topic number one is allowing your dashboard to select All of the entries in a selector.

Summary

What we are trying to accomplish with this functionality is giving the end user the ability to select one or all of the items in a list, menu or a radio button. We had the requirement come across from one of our clients when they wanted the ability to select one or all customers, products and salesperson on their salesperson dashboard. We were able to implement this feature by utilizing QaaWS and optional prompts.

In the example I am going to show you, we are using the eFashion universe that allows the user to select from year(s) and state(s) to get a monthly total of sales revenue and quantity.

eFashion Monthly Comparison Dashboard

Development

Really there are only two things that you need to worry about when adding the functionality. The first is your QaaWS and the second is making sure you add an All selection to your list.

When developing your QaaWS you will need to make sure you create a dynamic list for each selection that you want in your dashboard as well as your main data QaaWS. My dashboard has 3 QaaWS in total: Year, States and data. The year and states are pretty self explanatory with them being just a full list of values.

The data is a little more involved and contains Month, Month Name, Sales Revenue, Quantity and is limited by a prompt for both Year and State. The catch with this is that the Year and State prompts MUST BE OPTIONAL! Without them being an optional prompt, bringing back All Years or All States will not work.

Optional Prompts

The second phase is setting up your list selector. The main thing you need to remember is to make sure you have a place holder for your “All” selector and not to overwrite it with you dynamic list coming back from your QaaWS. In the picture below, you can see I have Years and States all set up and ready to go for my selector components.

List Set up

Here are the steps to complete the set up of you list components.

Bind your Year and State QaaWS to your excel model making sure you don’t overwrite your All placeholder
Bind your list selectors to your dynamic lists
Set up your list selectors to an insertion type of row and have them move to an area designated for them specifically

1. QaaWS Binding

2. Selector Binding

3. Insertion Type and Binding

After your lists components are all ready to go, you need to set up a field that will answer the prompts for your master data QaaWS. When we created this, we made it an optional prompt so that if a null value was sent through it would bring back all records for that prompt. In my example, I need to set this up for two prompts, year and state.

The easiest way to do this is to create a formula in excel that checks to see if the value that has been selected is “All”. If it is great, make the cell blank, if not then make it whatever value that the user has selected. Your formula should look like this: =IF(I2=”All”,”",I2). After you have the formula, map your QaaWS prompts to the appropriate cells and you should be good to go.

Hopefully this little trick can help you out in one of your future dashboards! Be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed so you don’t miss out on the rest of our Tips and Tricks for Crystal Dashboard Design.