4. Creating an Advanced Maintenance Application

In this session we will begin building a feature-rich application, using the knowledge we have acquired so far and expanding on it.

Changes since the video was taken: The option for setting a decimal attribute is now called Decimal, not Scale.

 To recap the steps in the video:

Create Businesses Streams

1. Create a new Stream on the Contacts analysis model. Give it the name Businesses.
2. Set the Period of the stream to Transactional.

3. Add attributes to the stream.

   Name	Type
   UID	Integer
   Name	String
   Type	String
   Address1	String
   Address2	String
   Postcode	String
   AnnualTurnOver	Decimal
   CustomerSince	DateTime
   Description	Bigstring
   Active	TrueFalse

4. Create another Stream called BusinessNotes.
5. Set the Period of the stream to Transactional.

6. Add attributes to the stream.

   Name	Type
   UID	Integer
   NoteDate	DateTime
   NoteByUser	String
   Note	String
   BusinessUID	Integer

7. In the Contacts Stream, create a view called Business Contacts. Add all attributes and hide the UID.

Create the Dashboard

1. Create a new Dashboard with the Name Businesses, and click on Open Maximised.
2. Divide the dashboard into three portions using one vertical line, and then a horizontal line in the left pane.

Create the Grid View Portion

1. Open the configuration form for the Businesses Stream, and bring the new dashboard to the front.
2. Drag the stream icon from the configuration form onto the top left of the dashboard, to create a Grid View.

Create the Details Portion

1. In the bottom left portion, create a new Form called BusinessDetails.
2. Add a Tabs component from the palette.
3. Find the Tabs component in the repository and set:
   1. Position Settings: Top, Left, Right and Bottom to 0px
   2. Prevent Dragging: tick
4. Update the Tab Header to Business.
5. Update the Title display text to Contact Details.
6. Add a Dynamic Text component called Name.
   1. As Name is also the name of an attribute on the stream backing our form, PhixFlow will automatically display the value held in the attribute in the new component, in this case the Dynamic Text.
   2. Also note that if you give a component the name of a context variable, PhixFlow will also link the context variable value to the new component. If you have both a stream attribute and a context variable with the same name as your new component, the attribute will take precedence.
7. Use the Template StandardActionForm to create a layout on the first Tab. Drag all the attributes from the Businesses stream onto it.
8. Set the Title to Details.
9. Logically order the Attributes and hide the UID field.

Set the Default Sort Order and Link Views

1. Create a Default Sort Order.
2. Drag the UID from the Grid View onto the details section to link the two elements.

Go into App Mode and enter some data to test the new configuration.

Create a Contacts Grid

1. Exit App Mode.
2. Open the configuration form for the stream Contacts, and bring the Businesses dashboard to the front.
3. Click on the Contact Details tab on the Businesses dashboard.
4. Drag the Stream View Business Contacts from the configuration form onto the Contact Details tab.
5. Refresh the view and the results will be displayed.
   This view will be revisited in a later chapter of the course, when we will link contacts to specific businesses.