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This page guides you through the Sandbox Demo which is installed as an Application in the repository. The Quick Start takes about 30 minutes to complete. To access the demo, and follow these instructions from within PhixFlow:

Run your PhixFlow installation. If necessary:
Switch to
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_design_mode
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Expand the Applications branch.
Expand the Help Viewer.

Developing an application in PhixFlow is a simple process:

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Table of Contents

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Introduction

PhixFlow is a flexible platform that can help you to manage your data. This Quick Start Guide introduces the process you can follow for any project: Table of ContentsmaxLevel1to build an application:

Set up a PhixFlow application
Define your data
Load the data into PhixFlow
Create a screen to maintain your data

To illustrate the process, you will create a simple analysis model and build an application to view and update its data.

PhixFlow has a lot of different options and settings. So that you can work through the process, some things are already set up for you:

the Excel spreadsheet which you can download from here
styles, set as system/application defaults, so that PhixFlow knows how to format data tables - which we call grids
a palette of application components that you can drag onto the layout.
styles that control the colours and appearance of the screen

Set up an Application
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Understand Your Data

This needs to be shorter with a link to this:

Before you start any PhixFlow project, it is important to take time to understand your data.

What is your data? Do you need to represent people, places, products, money, time? These are the data entities.
How does the data connect? These connections are the data relationships.
How will you represent the data in PhixFlow? This depends on the attributes the data has.
Is the data "clean" or do you need to tidy it up?
What data is missing? PhixFlow can combine existing data from different sources and use it to calculate additional data.
What volume of data do you need to handle? For very large data volumes, you will be able to use modelling strategies to process data efficiently.
What do you need to do with the data? What is the business problem you want to solve?

For this example, a sales team is using an Excel spreadsheet to manage a list of Business contacts. The data represents business customers (location, turnover) and people (names and addresses). The spreadsheet has the following tabs.

Businesses tab:

Image Removed

Contacts tab:

Image Removed

The data in the two tabs is connected by the the business name.

You want to make it accessible and maintainable by more than one person. You also want to add some simple CRM functions, so that you can add descriptions about the business.

Expand

title	Explore the possibilities

Remember that you can:

PhixFlow can connect to data stored in external databases (list or link?) or data files in a range of formats (list or link?)
PhixFlow analysis models are a powerful tool that you can use on any data project. Analysis models can help you to improve your data integrity, by
- identifying missing data, duplication and variation
- reconciling data in different files or systems.
The Introduction to Modelling Course shows how to do this
set up your own styles and palettes to create completely customised layouts. The Building Applications Course goes through this process.

You can represent your data and requirements in an Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD); see Wikipedia. It can help you to understand the data entities, their attributes and relationships. An ERD shows you the data architecture. As well as clarifying the data you already have and what you need to calculate, an ERD can help you identify:

static data: once added is unlikely to need updating. For example, the list of possible salutations:
- Mr, Ms, Dr, Sir, Lord
control data, that PhixFlow uses for screen input, for example data that is displayed in a drop-down list.
CRUD data, that PhixFlow will be able to create, read, update and delete.

Within PhixFLow it is a good idea to be consistent, at a minimum within an application. You can use prefixes to distinguish CRUD or control data from static data. During the planning phase you can set up a naming policy.

Anchor33Create an Application

The first step is to create a PhixFlow application. Everything you create will belong to this application.

In the repository, right-click on Application and select Insert excerpt_add_addnopaneltrue.

PhixFlow opens a properties tab for the application. Enter the name: Unique-name

Click Insert excerpt_save_savenopaneltrue.

When prompted to load the application, say yes.

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Creation might create a menu

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title	Explore the possibilities

Scroll down the properties tab.

If you scroll down to the Grid section, you can see that there is a Grid Header Style. This means that whenever PhixFlow displays data in a grid (table), the table header will always have the same colour, font size and style.

You can see there are lots of options where you can set data format and style defaults for the application. If none are set here, then PhixFlow uses defaults that are set for the system. This means that, all your applications have a consistent base line for the data and its styles, or you can apply defaults per-application, if you want them to look different.

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Anchor44Model your data

The first step is to create a PhixFlow application. Everything you create will belong to this application.

In the repository, right-click on Application and select
Insert excerpt
_add
_add
nopanel true
.
PhixFlow opens a properties tab for the application. Enter the name: Unique-name
Click
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_save
_save
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.
When prompted to load the application, say yes.

Add screenshot/video

Creation might create a menu

Expand

title	Explore the possibilities

Scroll down the properties tab.

If you scroll down to the Grid section, you can see that there is a Grid Header Style. This means that whenever PhixFlow displays data in a grid (table), the table header will always have the same colour, font size and style.

You can see there are lots of options where you can set data format and style defaults for the application. If none are set here, then PhixFlow uses defaults that are set for the system. This means that, all your applications have a consistent base line for the data and its styles, or you can apply defaults per-application, if you want them to look different.

Placeholder video

Multimedia

name	PlaceholderVideo.mp4

Define Your Data
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3

This needs to be shorter with a link to this:

Before you start any PhixFlow project, it is important to take time to understand your data.

What is your data? Do you need to represent people, places, products, money, time? These are the data entities.
How does the data connect? These connections are the data relationships.
How will you represent the data in PhixFlow? This depends on the attributes the data has.
Is the data "clean" or do you need to tidy it up?
What data is missing? PhixFlow can combine existing data from different sources and use it to calculate additional data.
What volume of data do you need to handle? For very large data volumes, you will be able to use modelling strategies to process data efficiently.
What do you need to do with the data? What is the business problem you want to solve?

For this example, a sales team is using an Excel spreadsheet to manage a list of Business contacts. The data represents business customers (location, turnover) and people (names and addresses). The spreadsheet has the following tabs.

Businesses tab:

Image Added

Contacts tab:

Image Added

The data in the two tabs is connected by the the business name.

You want to make it accessible and maintainable by more than one person. You also want to add some simple CRM functions, so that you can add descriptions about the business.

Expand

title	Explore the possibilities

Remember that you can:

PhixFlow can connect to data stored in external databases (list or link?) or data files in a range of formats (list or link?)
PhixFlow analysis models are a powerful tool that you can use on any data project. Analysis models can help you to improve your data integrity, by
- identifying missing data, duplication and variation
- reconciling data in different files or systems.
The Introduction to Modelling Course shows how to do this
set up your own styles and palettes to create completely customised layouts. The Building Applications Course goes through this process.

You can represent your data and requirements in an Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD); see Wikipedia. It can help you to understand the data entities, their attributes and relationships. An ERD shows you the data architecture. As well as clarifying the data you already have and what you need to calculate, an ERD can help you identify:

static data: once added is unlikely to need updating. For example, the list of possible salutations:
- Mr, Ms, Dr, Sir, Lord
control data, that PhixFlow uses for screen input, for example data that is displayed in a drop-down list.
CRUD data, that PhixFlow will be able to create, read, update and delete.

Within PhixFLow it is a good idea to be consistent, at a minimum within an application. You can use prefixes to distinguish CRUD or control data from static data. During the planning phase you can set up a naming policy.

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Connect to Your Data Source

To load the data.

In your application, create model and set Basic Settings > Name enter: Businesses
To open the model in the workspace, click the toolbar button
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_model_display
_model_display
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.
To load the Excel file, drag a
Insert excerpt
_file_collector
_file_collector
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from the model toolbar into the model and set Basic Settings > Name: Business-File, then
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_save
_save
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the properties.
In the model, hover your mouse pointer over the file collector. PhixFlow displays a pop-up toolbar. Click
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_upload_file
_upload_file
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. Browse to the Excel file.
In the upload window, click the
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_upload_button
_upload_button
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button. Your model should now look like this.

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title	Explore the possibilities

For file collectors, when you configure no properties, other than the name, when you upload the file PhixFlow automatically sets the other properties. If you make any changes to any field, even if you then delete the change, PhixFlow assumes you want to configure the properties yourself.

You now need to load the spreadsheet that contains the data into your application.

Open your application.
Right-click
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_model
_model
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and select
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_add
_add
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. PhixFlow opens a properties tab for the model.
In Basic Settings > Name enter: Businesses
In the toolbar for the tab, click
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_model_display
_model_display
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.
In the workspace on the left, PhixFlow opens an empty model.
To load the Excel file, drag a
Insert excerpt
_file_collector
_file_collector
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from the model toolbar into the model.
PhixFlow opens the properties for the file collector. Add a name: Business-File and
Insert excerpt
_save
_save
nopanel true
the properties.
In the model, hover your mouse pointer over the file collector. PhixFlow displays a pop-up toolbar. Click
Insert excerpt
_upload_file
_upload_file
nopanel true
. Browse to the Excel file.
In the upload window, click the
Insert excerpt
_upload_button
_upload_button
nopanel true
button. This process
- automatically configures the file collector properties to upload the file
- creates a stream ready to hold the data. Streams are like PhixFlow's internal spreadsheets.

Setting Stream

Set up Data Properties

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Stream Properties

Have a look at the stream properties and set:

Basic Settings → Period to Transactional
Tick Audit Manual Changes
Insert excerpt
_save
_save
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the stream properties and pin the stream properties to keep them open.

Script

If you look in the stream properties, you can see PhixFlow had named the file using the file collector name. It already has the list of attributes - the table columns - from the first tab in the spreadsheet.

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title	Key concept

At this point the stream knows about the data, but does not contain any data. This is the time to check that stream properties and the data types and sizes are correct. You cannot make changes to the attributes once data is loaded.

Have a look at the stream properties. The Basic Settings → Period is set to variable. In general PhixFlow assumes you are processing large datasets in batches. We are going to be making individual changes to single data records (transactions) . So that PhixFlow optimises processing for this type of data, In the Period drop-down list, select Transactional.
In the attributes, there is one data type that we want to change. Currently the Description is set to be a string with a maximum of 500 characters. To remove this restriction, we can change it to a "big string" which can have 4000 characters.
As we are going to have multiple people making changes to the data, it will be useful to be able to see who made changes. To set PhixFlow to track this for you, tick Audit Manual Changes.
Insert excerpt
_save
_save
nopanel true
your changes. Notice that the orange background tells you that the properties have unsaved changes. When you save, the background colour returns to light green.
It will be useful to have the stream properties open later, so click the Pin icon.

Modify

Data Attributes
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Modify any data attributes before loading the data into the stream. In the Attributes section, you can double-click on any attribute to open its properties and edit them. Change:

UID to have the name BusinessUID
Name:
- to BusinessName
- Size to 100
Description to have the type Bigstring
Insert excerpt
_add
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nopanel true
a new attribute and set:
- Name to Comment
- Expression to _NULL
- Type to Bigstring

You attribute list should now look like this.

When you save the stream, PhixFlow automatically adds some additional attributes. Because you set the stream to:

transactional, PhixFlow has added UID
Audit Manual Changes, PhixFlow has added 4 attributes with names starting with Update*

If we want to make any changes to the attributes, we need to do it before we load the data into the stream. In the Attributes section, you can double-click on any attribute to open its properties and edit them.

First lets change UID. Double-click the UID line in the Attributes table. PhixFlow opens its properties. In Basic Settings → Name, change its name to BusinessUID. Click Insert excerpt _finish _finish nopanel true to save and close the properties.
We will make some more changes.
Set Name:to be called BusinessName Size to 100 Insert excerpt _finish _finish nopanel true
Set Description to have the type Bigstring and Insert excerpt _finish _finish nopanel true
In the Attributes section toolbar, click Insert excerpt _add _add nopanel true and set: Name to Comment Type to Bigstring Insert excerpt _finish _finish nopanel true

Run Analysis Load your Data  Anchor
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Hover over the BusinessData stream and select  Insert excerpt
_run_analysis
_run_analysis
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, then click Yes to confirm.
Close the confirmation messages.
To check that the data has loaded into the stream, hover your mouse pointer over the stream and select  Insert excerpt
_stream_views
_stream_views
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 then select  Insert excerpt
_view_default
_view_default
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. PhixFlow displays the data it has loaded into the stream.

Script

You can now load the data into the stream.

In the model, hover our mouse pointer over the BusinessData stream and select Insert excerpt _run_analysis _run_analysis nopanel true .
In the confirmation window, click Yes to confirm.
In the bottom left of the screen, PhixFlow shows some confirmation messages. Close these.
We can now check that the data has loaded into the stream. In the model, hover your mouse pointer over the stream and select Insert excerpt _stream_views _stream_views nopanel true then select Insert excerpt _view_default _view_default nopanel true . This simply shows the data using a standard table view. You can see that the same data from the Excel spreadsheet is now loaded in the stream, with the additional columns we added to the Attributes.

 Create a view of the dataCreate a Screen to Maintain Your Data Anchor
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Add a Dashboard
To view the data, create a dashboard.
In the repository,  Insert excerpt
_add
_add
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 a dashboard.
In the dashboard properties, set:the name to Manage Contacts and  Insert excerpt
_save
_save
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Tick Open Maximised
Right-click on the dashboard and add a horizontal bar.
Show the data
From the Business File stream properties tab, drag the stream icon  onto the top half of the dashboard.
Select the "Table" icon.
Select the attributes from BusinessUID to Description.
Click X on the top right to close. 
 Expand
title Explore the possibilities
You can show data as a table, but also as charts
Look and feel comes from default settings. You can change these

You can now create a dashboard that uses displays data from the stream. We do this using a Dashboard. We want to have a view of the whole grid, and a form showing details of one data record.

In the repository, find the Dashboards branch and right-click then select Insert excerpt _add _add nopanel true .
PhixFlow opens an empty dashboard window and a properties tab for the dashboard.
In the dashboard properties, setthe name to Manage Contacts and Insert excerpt _save _save nopanel true Tick Maximised ??
You want the top half of the dashboard to show the data and for the bottom half to have a form that displays details of the selected record. Right-click on the dashboard and add a horizontal bar.
It is very easy to show the stream data in the dashboard. Open the Business File stream properties tab. You can drag the stream icon from the tab onto the top half of the dashboard.
Select the "Table" icon.
PhixFlow shows a list of all the attributes. In this case we will only include some of them in the dashboard. We do not need Comment or the 4 Update* attributes. Click the box in the table header to select all the attributes then clear the ticks for the last 5. The list should look like this:
Click X on the top right to close.

`Add a Form`

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Set up CRUD Actions on a FormShow all palletes
Application lego bricks - gui bits as palettes templates. 
Drag purple form onto the dashboard pfApp Builder (inner)  Business
Uses the template to add a form. 
Note splitter is draggable to adjust the proportions and scroll bars added automatically.

What attributes do you want. In stream select attributes, select, shift-drag and drop. Adds attributes. 
Description goes onto right

Add Update actions
First Tab is for Business Details
Right click and create a new form
From the Theme 1 Template drag a “Form Inner” onto the display area
Drag the attributes from the Business Stream onto the left column
Drag Description onto the right side.

Change the header to Business details
Make the header "Dynamic" to use a the data from the attribute

Initially the form does not change whith selected 
Drag UID onto form. 
Creates a backgound filter to use the UID to decide which is selected. See properties and say yeas

Add a sort order. If you update without a sort order, updated data
Without audit it overrides the entry in situ. Audit - marks old record as invalid and makes a new stream set. Without sort order - moves to the bottom. Sort by name, uid - use the dasboard.
LOcking and unlocking the layout
CRUD the data

 Anchor99Add More Actions

Versions Compared

Old Version 21

New Version 22

Key

Anchor
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Introduction

Set up an Application
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Define Your Data
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3

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Connect to Your Data Source

Set up Data Properties

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Stream Properties

Data Attributes
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Load your Data
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Create a Screen to Maintain Your Data
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Add a Dashboard

Show the data

`Add a Form`

Add Update actions

Page Comparison

Versions Compared

Old Version 21

New Version 22

Key

Anchor11Introduction

Set up an Application Anchor22

Define Your Data Anchor33

Anchor44Connect to Your Data Source

Set up Data Properties

Anchor55

Stream Properties

Data Attributes Anchor66

Load your Data Anchor77

Create a Screen to Maintain Your Data Anchor88

Add a Dashboard

Show the data

Add a Form

Add Update actions

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Introduction

Set up an Application
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Define Your Data
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Connect to Your Data Source

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Data Attributes
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Load your Data
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Create a Screen to Maintain Your Data
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`Add a Form`