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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.
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Remember that you can:
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- 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.
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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:
Contacts tab:
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:
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. |
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 tbc
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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. |
You now need to load the spreadsheet that contains the data into your application.
Businesses
Business-File
and introduces the process you can follow to build an application:
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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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If you do not have the palette, your or your administrator can import it.
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- 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.
Troubleshooting
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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.
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Loading a file into PhixFlow like this sets up the properties. There are lots of options which let you load data.... |
Import data
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. |
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You model should now look like this
Hover our mouse pointer over the BusinessData stream and select
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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
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You can now pull the data from the uploaded Excel file and into the stream. This is called "running analysis".
Hover your mouse pointer over the BusinessData stream
Run analsis
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
Tick Maximised.
Name buisnesses
Opens a blank dashboard on left.
Drag stram from properites, and pick grid
Select UID to Description (not audit
Drop onto header bar
Dashboard shows the grid.
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You can show data as a table, but also as charts |
There are different ways to do this.
Split the dashboard horizontally and add a form
Add 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
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.
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
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Now you can get started with step 1 - set up an application container.