AnchortoctocThis 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:

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Expand the Applications branch.

Expand the Help Viewer.

Table of Contents

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Anchor11Introduction

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 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:

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.

Add buttons for actions
1. Add a "floating" form to add a description.
2. Add the action to update stream
3. Show the form in action - that is is always on top, and that save also closes the pop-up.
Linking forms together
1. Add a comments stream to the model
2. Add comment cards
3. 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.
4. Add actions to the card
5. Show the audit attributes on the card
6. Add comments on the card.

Anchor22Planning

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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 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.
How does the data connect? These connections are the data relationships.
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?

The starting point for this quick start is that your business is using an Excel spreadsheet to manage a list of Business contacts. The data represents business customers (location, turnover) and people (names and addresses), and has the following tabs.

Businesses tab:

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Contacts tab:

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The spreadsheet is currently maintained by one person, but 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
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.

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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: tbc

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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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Anchor44Create an Analysis Model

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

Open your application

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Think about data first - ERD
scroll down the properties - there are lots of options that you can set for your application

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Import data

Import the Spreadsheet

Create a stream

Set Period to: Transactional.

Set Audit Manual Changes to: Ticked

Set Description to: Big String

Run the Stream

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New Stream Anchor55

Create a Comments Stream

Set Period to: Transactional.

Set Audit Manual Changes to: Ticked

Add attributes Anchor66

Add the following attrinbutes:

BusinessUID as an Integer

BusinessName as a String of Size 100

Comment as a Big String

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Run the Stream

Add a Dashboard Anchor77

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

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You can show data as a table, but also as charts

Add a form to a tab Anchor88

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.

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Link Tab to data Anchor99

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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 Anchor1010

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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.

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Add a dashboard

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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

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BusinessUID

Hide

Comment

Give the header a sensible name and delete the dynamic text

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New Comment

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From the repository drag the new Comment Dashboard onto the + on the Comments header.

Mapping Identifier Anchor1313

Drag 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 Action Anchor1414

Open the Comments Stream

Create a new action, this is the same as the setup for the aforementioned but UID is set to Busineses.UID

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text

Title Anchor1616text introduces the process you can follow to build an application:

Child pages (Children Display)

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Watch the Video

To illustrate the process, you will create an application that looks like this:

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Check Your Setup

Before starting, log into PhixFlow. In the bottom right, click

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to open the palette tab and look for Theme 1 - App Builder

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If you do not have the palette, your or your administrator can import it.

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Download the theme file: config_Theme1_20190625.xml.
Log into PhixFlow.
In the bottom right of the PhixFlow window, click
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Menu.
Select Import Configuration.
Browse to and select the theme file and click Open.
Click
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and click
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Ignore the password prompt and click
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again.
PhixFlow loads the palette. This may take a few seconds.
To check the palette is loaded, In the bottom right, click
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to open the palette tab and look for Theme 1 - App Builder
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Note
This theme is provided by PhixFlow. It may be overwritten when PhixFlow is upgraded to the next version. If you want to adapt this palette, please take a copy and make your changes there.

Now you can get started with step 1 - set up an application container.

Get started

Versions Compared

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New Version Current

Key

Import data

Add a dashboard

New Comment

Watch the Video

Check Your Setup

Page Comparison

Versions Compared

Old Version 16

New Version Current

Key

Import data

Add a dashboard

New Comment

Watch the Video

Check Your Setup