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- Run your PhixFlow installation. If necessary:
- Switch to
Insert excerpt _design_mode _design_mode nopanel true - Expand the Applications branch.
- Expand the Help Viewer.
Developing an application in PhixFlow is a simple process:
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PhixFlow is a flexible platform that can help you to manage your data. This Quick Start Guide introduces the process you can follow to 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
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 Unique-name
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Creation might create a menu
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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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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:
Contacts tab:
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.
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Remember that you can:
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:
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. |
To load the data.
Businesses
Business-File
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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.
Businesses
Business-File
and - 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.
Set up Data Properties
Stream Properties
Have a look at the stream properties and set:
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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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. |
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 Comment
_NULL
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 toBusinessUID
. Click Name:
BusinessName
100
Description
to have the type Bigstring and Comment
Bigstring
Script
You can now load the data into the stream.
In the model, hover our mouse pointer over theBusinessData
stream and select Create a Screen to Maintain Your Data
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Add a Dashboard
To view the data, create a dashboard.
- In the repository,
a dashboard.Insert excerpt _add _add nopanel true - Set:
- Name to
Manage Contacts
andInsert excerpt _save _save nopanel true - Tick Open Maximised
- Name to
Insert excerpt _save _save nopanel true
Add a Dashboard
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, set
- the name to
Manage Contacts
and
Tick Open MaximisedInsert excerpt _save _save nopanel true
- the name to
the propertiesInsert excerpt _save _save nopanel true
Show the data
- Add a horizontal bar.
- From the Business File stream properties tab, drag the stream icon onto the top half of the dashboard.
- Select the "Table" icon and the attributes you want to display.
- Drag the attributes into the dashboard.
- Close the list of attributes.
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You can show data as a table, but also as charts Look and feel comes from default settings. You can change these |
Show the data
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.
- To split the dashboard horizontally, 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.
- PhixFlow needs to know how you want to show the data. Select the "Table" icon.
- PhixFlow needs to know which attributes you want to show. In this case we will only include some of them in the dashboard. We do not need the 4 Update* attributes. Click the box in the table header to select all the attributes then clear the ticks after "Description".
- Now drag the selected attributes into grey bar in the dashboard.
- Click X on the top right to close the attributes list.
Add a Form
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Show 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 a form.
In the dashboard, right-click on the empty bottom half. and select Create New Form
Enter the name for the form and click > OK
PhixFlow adds a form background using the styles that have been set as defaults for this application.
You will now add the form fields using palettes - which are predefined layouts.
To access the pallets, go to the bottom right of the PhixFlow window and click the
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PhixFlow opens a tab. Each section has a set of pre-designed components Expand the section pf AppBuilder (Theme 1).
Click on Form Title and drag it into the form. This component is going to create an area on your form. Enter the name "Title" This is the name of the component in the repository. This adds the header area to the form. It has two parts, a Fixed section, which you can overtype , and a dynamic, which we will link to the data.
Now drag in the Form Body and name Business Body.
Now PhixFlow had added more stuff, with two parts, including some buttons "New" and "Insert". We are going to use the left to show the selected record, and the right to show its description or a map - tbc
Now go back to your stream tab - which should be pinned. If the tab is not there, you can right-click on the top of the dashboard and select Show the Stream Configuration
In the list, click to select attributes you want to show on the form, In this case UID through to Active. Shift-Drag the selected list onto the left of the form body.
If you just drag and drop then PhixFlow does not know which area you want the data to be added to.
Notice that you can drag the horizontal splitter up and down to adjust the size of the the top and bottom panels of the dashboard. PhixFlow adds scroll bars if they are needed.
Now Shift Drag Description into the right side of the form body. PhixFlow automatically adds an editing toolbar.
You can change things
All the "bits" you have added to the dashboard are stored in the repository, in a branch called Layouts.
If you expand the Business Editor Form > Business Body > Form Content Container > Form Column Container 1x2, you can see how different parts of the dashboard are repository items that are nested. These items and their container-contained relationships have been created automatically when you drag in the components from the palette.
From the palette, the form body is fixed at a 50-50 split. Double-click on Column 1 to open its properties.
Expand the Style Settings section
untick AutoSize
Now PhixFlow sets the size of area showing the fields based on their field width, leaving more space for the description.
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
Connecting the data in the grid at the top to the form at the bottom of the dashboard.
At the moment, the data at the top of screen is in a random order.
- we want to sort the data
The bottom screen only shows the first record
we want the form to show the record we have selected
In the grid at the top, hover to show the filter icon. Drag it onto the blue background of the form in the bottom and confirm.
PhixFlow opens a properties tab with Filter Details that shows how the filter works.
You can rename it to something more meaningful, such as By_UID.
Where does this filter get stored in the repository????
We want to do the header