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Introduction

With our screen created let us now look at editing the content to better suit our needs. Ensure you are in design mode with the screen unlocked. 

Edit the Card Container

Adding a Field

We will now learn how to add content from the palette to a card container.

  1. With your Companies List screen open, in the palette navigate to the Form Field - By Data Type section.
  2. Expand the section and holding the shift key drag Date over the Role field.
  4. Name the field DOB. This will associate it to the underlying data.
    1. If you DOB field does not appear where you want it, use the layer section to move it to the right location. You will need to hold the Shift key to drop the DOB inside another component or move out of an existing component.
  5. This type of field of editing field is not really suitable for our design, so we will switch it for a text field to display the data.
    1. Right-click on the DOB field.
    2. Select Change Template.
    3. A dialog window opens with the available alternatives. Select Dynamic - Text and click Select Template.
  6. The screen is updated, but we need to tell the field the type of data it is receiving. In the properties for DOB, set Type to be Date.

Adding a Button

Next we will update the action buttons for the employee.

  1. Select the middle phone button.
  2. Right click and select Delete Selected Objects.
  3. Follow the prompts.
  4. Now from the Buttons - Additional section of the Palette, holding shift drag LinkedIn in between the two existing buttons or the Buttons area in the layers.
  5. Name it LinkedIn.
  6. To get the button where we want it, in the layer section drag the LinkedIn buutton to the end of the Buttons:
  8. The styling is slightly different, so we will correct this. Note we will be covering styles in detail later in this course:
    1. Click on the Email button and its properties open.
    2. Drag the tab header to the left of the properties.
    3. Click on the LinkedIn button and ensure its properties are on the right.
    4. The two properties windows should be open side by side.
    5. Open the styles tab on both
    6. Scroll down to the shared styles on both.
    7. Drag P_SG - Button No Background from Email to LinkedIn.
    8. In the CSS Properties of Email, drag the margin style to the CSS Properties of LinkedIn.
      1. This style is removing the spacing between the buttons.
    9. Your setup should appear like this:
    11. Click  OK on both property editors.


Configure Action Buttons

We can add action buttons to our screens that allow us to interact with the data such as Creating, Reading, Updating and Deleting data. Because of this we often refer to these actions as CRUD actions. PhixFlow has CRUD actions built in that we can apply to our buttons. These actions are called actionflows and can be enriched to suit your needs. Let us apply these CRUD actions to our buttons:

  1.  Right click on the Companies grid and select Create CRUD Actions.
  2. PhixFlow opens a wizard that will guide us through the process.
    1. The First option is Screen. Here we can select a screen we will use as our editing screen, or we an create one. We will need to create one.
    2. Click  to add a new screen.
    3. The Screen Creation Wizard opens,
      1. Name, Companies Form.
      2. Description, Add or edit a company.
      3. Template, Edit Form.
      4. Click Create Screen.
    4. A screen is created and associated to the actions for adding and editing records.
  3. Drag the actions to the appropriate buttons, note you can drag the edit action over the grid and this will set the double click action on the record:
  5. Close the Grid Actions dialog.
  6. To Access our new Companies Form screen, lock your screen and double click a record in the grid. This will open the Companies Form screen with the record selected.

Configure an Input Form

We will now setup the following input form.

HERE

  1. When opening a screen using an action it will be locked. Unlock the screen.
  2. From the toolbar select properties to open the screens properties.
    1. Untick Open Maximised.
      1. This will allow us to set a size for the screen.
    2. Untick Allow Manual Resizing.
      1. This will stop users resizing the screen.
    3. Tick Always on top
      1. This will ensure the screen always appear on top of all other screens.
    4. Click on the Styles tab.
    5. Set:
      1. Width, 400px.
      2. Height, 100%. This will ensure we fill the height of the screen.
      3. If we make no further changes the screen would open in the middle of the PhixFlow window. Depending on your design this can be desirable. However we will continue to edit our screen properties.
      4.  Top, 0px. Sets the screen to open 0px from the top.
      5. Right, 0px. Sets the screen to open 0px from the right.
    6. Click  OK. Note you may need to close and reopen the screen for the new properties to take effect.
  3. Our Screen is now sized and positioned.
  4. Because the screen was created using the wizard, PhixFlow automatically associates the it to the Companies table.
    1. To see the associated table, or if we wanted to manually associate a table:
      1. In the Layers section on the left, expand the tree.
      2. One of the top areas will have a  Table icon. This is the form and it is here where the table association is set. In our example this is called Companies Form.
      3. Click on this form.
      4. The Primary Table setting indicates where the data is coming from for this screen. Note data can be independently set for grids and card containers.
      5. We can click the  Table to show a list of available tables and drag one into this form field. For our example this is not necessary.
  5. For this reason in the toolbar you will notice the Attributes button is enabled. To see this option you will need to click the three dots. Click the Attributes button. 
  7. From the list of attributes select all the items from Company ID to Status.
  8. Click and hold these attributes and drag them onto the Companies Form.
  9. You will then be asked how you want the attributes to be displayed. Select Fields.
  11. PhixFlow recognises you are creating an input form and asks if you want to create a Save and Delete option.
    1. The reason you are asked is that you may already have an actionflow you wish to use or want to create your own actionflow.
  12. Click Yes to Add Action.
  13. PhixFlow creates Save and Delete actionflows.
    1. Drag Save Record to the Save button.
    2. Drag Delete Record to the Delete button.
  14. Close all the open dialog boxes.

Filter

When the wizard created the Companies Form it knew that it would be used for adding and editing. Therefore the screen is created with a background filter so that PhixFlow knows if a new record is being added or which record is being edited. 

To see the filter

  1. In the Layers section on the left, click on the top most item CompaniesForm. Note this has the icon  to indicate it is an Screen Element.
  2. In the properties window that opens on the right, expand the Background Filter Rules section. This is much like the filter setup seen earlier in this course.
  3. Listed are the filter rules, double click on the one in the list.
    1.  The expression is true indicating the filter below will always run. Click the filter hyperlink to open the filter condition.
    2. Notice the expression is, _form.CompanyID. _form is referring to the form backing the screen which in turn has the table Companies associated to it. Companies is then referring to the attribute CompanyID on that table.
    3. No edit is required at this time for our example.

Screen Tidy Up

While the screen is complete we can tidy it up to improve its look and feel.

  1. The background filter on our screen relies on the Company ID field, as this is the primary key for the table. However we do not want the users editing this.
  2. Click on the Company ID field to highlight it.
    1. In the properties window that opens, click on the Styles tab.
    2. We could make this form field read only, using the Read-Only tick box but this leaves the input box in place and could confuse our user. There tick Hidden.
    3. From the palette, navigate to the Form Fields - Read Only section and drag an Integer Field onto the screen and call it IDNumber.
      1. Using the layouts section ensure the new field appears at the top of the form fields.
    4. Right-click on IDNumber and select Add Backing Attribute.
    5. From the dialog box select Company ID and click Next.
      1. The screen should look like this:
      3. The Company ID is shown correctly but the field label is not ideal.
      4. Click on the field label, either on the screen on in the Layer section.
      5. In the properties set Display Text to be ID Number.
      6. Click  Save.
  3. We will change the label on the Country Name field and move it to below the Postal Code.
    1. Click on the Country Name label.
    2. In the properties, set the Display Text to be Country.
    3. Now using the layer section drag this field below Postal Code.
  4. We will change the field type for web to include a button that will load the website.
    1. Select the Web form field.
    2. Right-click and select Change Template.
    3. Scroll across to URL, select it and click select Template.
      1. If the URL is lost, right-click on the form field, select add backing attribute and choose Web.
      2. Change the label to Website.
    4. Click  Save.
  5.  We will add a number format to turn over.
    1. Select the inner input field of the Turn Over field.
    2. In the properties, click the dropdown for Number Format and select P_SG - Currency GBP (£).
      1. To set your ow number format see Number Format.
    3. Click  Save.
  6. We will add a new date format for the Customer Onboarded date.
    1. Select the inner input field of the Customer Onboarded field.
    2. In the properties, click the dropdown for Date/Time Format and select P_SG - Date (Mar-2020).
      1. To set your ow number format see Date Time Format.
    3. Click  Save
  7. Finally we will tidy the header.
    1. Click on the form header.
    2. In the Layers section under Screen Header, delete the area Right.
    3. Later in this course we will set the value of this using an actionflow to let the user know if they are editing or adding.

Check Point


About Tables → Views → Grids


Adding Data as a Grid

  1. The Grid
    1. Use Custom Data Range
  2. The View
    1. Periods
    2. Inheriting the period from the table.
  3. The Table
    1. Table Period.
  4. Combined filtering
    1. Does the grid setting override the view????
  5. CRUD Buttons
    1. Adding Crud buttons after prompt.
  6.  Attributes
    1. Adding attributes
    2. Relational Attributes
    3. Reordering Attributes
    4. Hiding Attributes
    5. Conditionally Hiding Attributes.
  7. Styling a Grid
    1. Basics
      1. Bold Text
    2. Available Styling i.e. default styles.
    3. Conditional Formatting Background Colour
      1. Cell and Row.
    4. Removing the Title
    5. Labelling and double header?
    6. Link to in depth How To guide
  8. In grid editing, link to how to.

Adding a Chart

  1. Simple Setup
  2. Colour Maps
  3. Link to setting up more chart types.

Finding Layouts and Components

It can be very useful to find a layout, component or container. There are two ways to do this:

Using Layers

The Layers pane is expandable from the left of the screen canvas. Select an item:

  • on the canvas to highlight it in the Layers pane
  • in the Layouts pane to highlight it on the canvas.

If the layer section is not visible click  Show/Hide Layer Panel. 

Using Find in Repository

Right-click any item on an unlocked screen and select  Find in Repository Alternatively, to search the repository, expand the Components section and navigate to the component. The position of the components on a screen is reflected in their order and nesting in the repository list. 


To check whether a component is shared with multiple applications, open its properties and check the Parent Details section, which names the application or package to which the component belongs. For example a component that is shared between several applications has a package as its parent; see Package.

Styles 

explanation

Style Hierarchy

  1. Application Styles
  2. Shared Style
  3. Local Styles
  4. Formatting Rules
  5. Overriding Styles Best Practice
  6. Clearing Styles

Creating Screens from the Home page

  1. Options
  2. Templates
    1. Complete
    2. Blank
  3. Screen Options
    1. Floating
    2. Size
    3. Open Maximised
  4. Creating from an ERD
  5. Creating from a Workflow
    1. Available Unused Actions.

Data Type and Formatting

  1. Date
  2. Date-Time
  3. Numbers


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