This 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:

1. Run your PhixFlow installation. If necessary:
2. Switch to   Design Mode
3. Expand the Applications branch.
4. Expand the Help Viewer.

Developing an application in PhixFlow is a simple process:

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Set up an Application 

The first step is to create a PhixFlow application. Everything you create will belong to this application.

1. In the repository, right-click on Application and select  Add. 
2. PhixFlow opens a properties tab for the application. Enter the name: Unique-name
3. Click  Save.
4. When prompted to load the application, say yes.

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Creation might create a menu

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Connect to Your Data Source  

To load the data. 

1. In your application, create model and set Basic Settings > Name enter: Businesses
2. To open the model in the workspace, click the toolbar button Display.
3. To load the Excel file, drag a  File Collector from the model toolbar into the model and set Basic Settings > Name: Business-File, then   Save the properties.
4. In the model, hover your mouse pointer over the file collector. PhixFlow displays a pop-up toolbar. Click Upload File . Browse to the Excel file.
5. In the upload window, click the   button. Your model should now look like this.
   
   

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

• Open your application.
• Right-click  Models and select  Add. PhixFlow opens a properties tab for the model.
• In Basic Settings > Name enter: Businesses
• In the toolbar for the tab, click  Display.
• In the workspace on the left, PhixFlow opens an empty model.
• To load the Excel file, drag a  File Collector from the model toolbar into the model. 
• PhixFlow opens the properties for the file collector. Add a name: Business-File and  Save the properties.
• In the model, hover your mouse pointer over the file collector. PhixFlow displays a pop-up toolbar. Click Upload File . Browse to the Excel file.
• In the upload window, click the   button. This process
  • 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. 

Set up Data Properties

Stream Properties

Have a look at the stream properties and set:

• Basic Settings → Period to Transactional
• Tick Audit Manual Changes
•   Save the stream properties and pin the stream properties to keep them open.

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1. 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. 
   

   Key concept

   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.

   
   

2. Have a look at the stream properties. The Basic Settings → Period is set to variable. In general PhixFlow assumes you are processing large datasets in batches. We are going to be making individual changes to single data records (transactions) . So that PhixFlow optimises processing for this type of data, In the Period drop-down list, select Transactional.
3. In the attributes, there is one data type that we want to change. Currently the Description is set to be a string with a maximum of 500 characters. To remove this restriction, we can change it to a "big string" which can have 4000 characters.
4. As we are going to have multiple people making changes to the data, it will be useful to be able to see who made changes. To set PhixFlow to track this for you, tick Audit Manual Changes.
5.  Save your changes. Notice that the orange background tells you that the properties have unsaved changes. When you save, the background colour returns to light green.
6. It will be useful to have  the stream properties open later, so click the Pin icon.

Data Attributes 

Modify any data attributes before loading the data into the stream. In the Attributes section, you can double-click on any attribute to open its properties and edit them. Change:

1. UID to have the name BusinessUID
2. Name:
   • to BusinessName
   • Size to 100
3. Description to have the type Bigstring 
4.  Add a new attribute and set:
   • Name to Comment
   • Expression to _NULL
   • Type to Bigstring

You attribute list should now look like this.

When you save the stream, PhixFlow automatically adds some additional attributes. Because you set the stream to:

• transactional, PhixFlow has added UID
• Audit Manual Changes, PhixFlow has added 4 attributes with names starting with Update* 

If we want to make any changes to the attributes, we need to do it before we load the data into the stream. In the Attributes section, you can double-click on any attribute to open its properties and edit them.

1. First lets change  UID. Double-click the UID line in the Attributes table. PhixFlow opens its properties. In Basic Settings → Name, change its name to BusinessUID. Click  OK to save and close the properties.
2. We will make some more changes.
3. Set Name:
   • to be called BusinessName
   • Size to 100
   •  OK
4. Set Description to have the type Bigstring and  OK
5. In the Attributes section toolbar, click Add and set:
   • Name to Comment
   • Type to Bigstring
   •  OK

Load your Data 

1. Hover over the BusinessData stream and select  Run Analysis, then click Yes to confirm.
2. Close the confirmation messages.
3. To check that the data has loaded into the stream, hover your mouse pointer over the stream and select  Stream Views then select  Default View. PhixFlow displays the data it has loaded into the stream.

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You can now load the data into the stream.

• In the model, hover our mouse pointer over the BusinessData stream and select  Run Analysis.
• In the confirmation window, click Yes to confirm.
• 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  Stream Views then select  Default View. This simply shows the data using a standard table view. You can see that the same data from the Excel spreadsheet is now loaded in the stream, with the additional columns we added to the Attributes.

Create a Screen to Maintain Your Data

Add a Dashboard

To view the data, create a dashboard.

1. In the repository,  Add a dashboard.
2. In the dashboard properties, set:
   • the name to Manage Contacts and  Save
   • Tick Open Maximised
3. Right-click on the dashboard and add a horizontal bar.

Show the data

1. From the Business File stream properties tab, drag the stream icon  onto the top half of the dashboard.
2. Select the "Table" icon.
3. Select the attributes from BusinessUID to Description.
   
4. Click X on the top right to close. 

You can now create a dashboard that uses displays data from the stream. We do this using a Dashboard. We want to have a view of the whole grid, and a form showing details of one data record.

1. In the repository, find the Dashboards branch and right-click then select  Add.
2. PhixFlow opens an empty dashboard window and a properties tab for the dashboard.
3. In the dashboard properties, set
   • the name to Manage Contacts and  Save
   • Tick Maximised ??
4. You want the top half of the dashboard to show the data and for the bottom half to have a form that displays details of the selected record. Right-click on the dashboard and add a horizontal bar.
5. It is very easy to show the stream data in the dashboard. Open the Business File stream properties tab. You can drag the stream icon from the tab onto the top half of the dashboard.
6. Select the "Table" icon.
7. PhixFlow shows a list of all the attributes. In this case we will only include some of them in the dashboard. We do not need Comment or the 4 Update* attributes. Click the box in the table header to select all the attributes then clear the ticks for the last 5. The list should look like this:
   
8. Click X on the top right to close. 

Add a Form

Show 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

Add Update actions

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.

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