17 Creating and Configuring Data Views
- Chris Welford
- Anthony George
- Fiona Sargeant (Unlicensed)
By the end of this exercise you will be able to:
- Understand the components of a view
- Create a grid view
Finding Tables and Table Data
- Open the Analysis Model list.
- Find and open the model Screens and Forms 01-08: Views, filters and screens
- In the model place your mouse over the table Overall Debt Levels
- A hover menu will appear, press Show view and select Default View.
- The data contained in the table will appear.
Create New View
You will create a new grid view to show the data in the table in a table format. This is illustrated by the following video.
Important terminology changes: Dashboards are now referred to as Screens, and Streams are now referred to as Tables.
To recap, the steps in the video were:
- Create Screen:
- Click on Screen from the application home screen.
- Click Add New.
- Set the screen name to
Overall Debt Levels.
- Select a Template e.g. Tile No Button.
- Click the Create Screen button.
- A new screen will appear.
- Now create a new view on the screen:
- Use the tabs to navigate back to the analysis model
Screens and Forms 01-08: Views, filters and screens.
- Double click on the table
Overall debt levels.
- Pin this tables properties tab.
- Using the tabs, select the screen you just created (
) to bring this back to the front.Overall Debt Levels
- Drag the icon in the top left hand corner of the table config form onto the screen.
- Choose a Grid view.
- This creates a view on the screen, and the properties tab for the view opens on the right.
- From the attributes popup that appears drag the attributes you want (in this case, all of them) from the list onto the header of the view in the screen.
- Use the tabs to navigate back to the analysis model
You can also see your new view in the list of views for the table:
- Hover over the table
Overall Debt Levels
in the model. - From the hover menu press Show view and select
Overall Debt Levels.
Editing a View
- Open the screen
Overall Debt Levels.
- Right click on the grid in the screen, select Show view
- You can edit details of the view in the configuration form, but there are a number of changes you can make directly to the view in the screen:
Re-order Columns
To re-order columns:
- Grab a column heading
- Drag it, drop it in a new position.
Freeze Rows
You can freeze a number of columns.
First prepare some data:
- Open the model
Screens and Forms 11-13. Actions to update, insert, delete
- Run analysis on the table
Wisteria Books Inventory
- this will load data into the table. - Create a new view:
- Create a new screen:
Wisteria Books Inventory
- Drag the table
Wisteria Books Inventory
onto the screen - Select Grid view
- Add all attributes
- Create a new screen:
- Widen the columns so that you can see all (or most) of the text in each column - eventually you will see a horizontal scroll bar appear at the bottom of the view.
Freeze a column:
- Freeze the second column (this should be
Subject
): right-click on the column heading and select Freeze column. - Slide the horizontal scroll bar - you will see the first 2 columns are frozen.
Set Width
You can fix the width of a column. By default, columns are flex, which means they will consume the available space. To fix a column width:
- Grab the right hand edge of a column heading and move it to set the width.
- Click on Lock in the toolbar.
- Maximise the view - you will see that the set column stays the same size, while the remaining columns flex.
- Right click on your screen and select Unlock to continue editing your screen.
Set Flex
If you fix the width of a column, you can return it to being a flex column:
- Right-click on a column heading.
- Select Set flex column.
Column Filtering
As well as building permanent filters (you will do this in the next exercise), column filters (sometimes called quick filters) are available to you and the users you are creating this view for. To use a column filter:
- Hover over a column heading
- A Filter.
- You can select operators and enter value to filter on values in that column.
- You can add clauses to this filter.
- You can additionally filter on other columns, and these filter will apply together to further filter the data.
Column Sorting
As well as building permanent sort orders (you will do this in a future exercise), you can apply a column sort:
- Right click on a column heading in the table view
- Select Sort Ascending or Sort Descending
All of the view operations you have just performed are also possible directly on the grid view of configuration data.
Open the table Overall Debt Levels
, in the list the of table attributes try each of:
- Freeze and unfreeze columns (make the repository narrow, so that you see a horizontal scroll bar, to see the effect of this)
- Fix the width of a column, then drag the repository out so that all columns widen, other than the column you fixed
- Use column filters to find an attribute containing the text Means
- Clear the filter
- Sort the attributes by attribute name