Table of Contents |
---|
Use the videos and instructions in this 30 minute Quick Start Guide to create a simple application.
PhixFlow is a flexible platform that can help you to manage your data. This Quick Start Guide guides you through the process of setting up data and building an application to view and update the data.The starting point for this quick start?? is that your business is using an Excel spreadsheet to manage a list of Business contacts. You want to make this data accessible and maintainable by more than one person, and add some simple CRM functions:
- Be able to add an description about the business
- Add multiple comments, for example about recent conversations with the business contact.
This is an example of how PhixFlow can pull in the ad hoc files that people use and maintain (shadow IT), whilst making it easy for multiple people to maintain.
The quick start?? takes you through the steps to load the Excel spread sheet and to build a simple application to interact with the data. The Application will have a single screen, called a layout, that displays the data and lets you create, read, update or delete (CRUD ) data records. These are known as CRUD actions.
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.
Tip |
---|
Remember that you can:
|
- CRM - an application
- Revenue assurance - pulling in external data and doing some calculations, with views
- billing - uses data to generate documents to send to customers
- reconciliation
- data validation and integrity
- are company names consistent
- do you want to flag up "old" dates or missing details?
- check for duplicates
- Add buttons for actions
- Add a "floating" form to add a description.
- Add the action to update stream
- Show the form in action - that is is always on top, and that save also closes the pop-up.
- Linking forms together
- Add a comments stream to the model
- Add comment cards
- As layouts are not a fixed structure, but "flow" their order in the repository is important. To reorder an item, you don't drag it in the layout, but in the repository.
- Add actions to the card
- Show the audit attributes on the card
- Add comments on the card.
Create your application: It is created with default options
Create an Analysis Model- Data and streams
Expand | ||
---|---|---|
| ||
|
Import the Spreadsheet
Create a stream
Set Period to: Transactional.
Set Audit Manual Changes to: Ticked
Set Description to: Big String
Run the Stream
Create a Comments Stream
Set Period to: Transactional.
Set Audit Manual Changes to: Ticked
Add attributesAdd the following attrinbutes:
BusinessUID as an Integer
BusinessName as a String of Size 100
Comment as a Big String
- Run the Stream
Create a new Dashboard to manage our data
Add the Businesses as a Grid to the dashboard
Split dashboard vertically
This is a place holder for the Comments
Split left area horizontally
Expand | ||
---|---|---|
| ||
You can show data as a table, but also as charts |
First Tab is for Business Details
Right click and create a new formFrom 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.
Link Tab to data
Expand | ||
---|---|---|
| ||
dddd |
From the Businesses Grid, drag the UID down onto the Business Detail form.
This creates a link, so the selected Business Is displayed.
Second Tab is for Contact Details
To be completed once we import the contact details.
Add a form for comments...
Right click on the Comments column and create a form.
Set the form to Stream Comments created in 2d
From the Palette Theme 1 Template drag the item: Comment Header, onto the new form.
From the Palette App Builder Labelled drag the item: Card Container, onto the new form.
From the Palette Theme 1 Template drag the item: Comment Card, onto the small white card in the CardContainer.
Hold shift while doing this so the items is embedded.
Add a dashboard
Create a Dashboard, this will be used to edit our comments.
Create a new form.
From the Palette Theme 1 Template drag the item: Form Floating, onto the new form.
From the Repository delete:
Column Line Break
Column 2
Drag the following attributes from the Comments Stream onto content container:
UID
Hide
BusinessUID
Hide
Comment
Give the header a sensible name and delete the dynamic text
New Comment
From the repository drag the new Comment Dashboard onto the + on the Comments header.
Mapping IdentifierDrag the UID from the Businesses Grid created in 2b onto the + on the Comments header.
Set this up to map to BusinessUID
Go into the action by right clicking the button and select Action Edit*
Create a Context variable for UID set this to _NULL
Add ActionOpen the Comments Stream
Create a new action, this is the same as the setup for the aforementioned but UID is set to Busineses.UID
Titletext
Title Anchor
Child pages (Children Display) |
---|
Watch the Video
To illustrate the process, you will create an application that looks like this:
Iframe | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Insert excerpt | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Check Your Setup
Before starting, log into PhixFlow. In the bottom right, click
Insert excerpt | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
If you do not have the palette, your or your administrator can import it.
Expand | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Now you can get started with step 1 - set up an application container.