In my Easy-to-use, visually cool, and useful - Part II --- How to build this xApp!!!!!!!, I showed you how easy it is to build an xApp. Here I’d like to improve that application. You’ll see how to add a drilldown function, a radio button to switch between a chart and a table view, and most importantly, you’ll learn how to implement a print button.
First of all, I’d like to add the drill down capability.
To do this, I add an input form and link this to all queries as second input. I add a dropdown list to this input form. You can fill this list manually or by means of another BI query. A manually filled list can look like this:
The first column contains the technical input name for the query and the second column contains the display text for the dropdown list.
As you know, we have four different BI queries and they expect different input. Here you can see the power of the Visual Composer. The mapping is very simple. It doesn’t matter whether the query input fields for these four queries are different. I click the line between the input form and the query, and match the input field to the assigned value.
In this example, the value from the dropdown box has the name @STR1 and this query expects the “Discharging_Dep_OU” as input The next query needs the “Dep_OU” as input, and I also map this to “@STR1”. With a simple mouse-click, the mapping is done. You don’t need a single line of code.
Without this dropdown list, our dashboard shows the KPIs for the entire hospital. Now we are able to drill down to a single departmental organizational unit. Now when we select, for example, Surgery,we submit this information as input in all four BI queries and get the result for our surgery unit displayed in our table and graphic.
Table or graphic? That’s a good question and a missing function in our application. For the moment I’m showing both!. The first time I demonstrated this application to a customer our dashboard only featured charts and the customer was very satisfied with that. The second customer (in another country) said, “It’s very nice, I love the animation, but a chart is not precise enough for our daily work. I like to have the KPIs in a table with two digits after the decimal point.” So we decided to implement both. To do this, I use a radio button in the existing input form. In the properties of the radio button, I use a “0” for the graphic and a “1” for the table view. In layout mode, I put the table on top of the graphic, and in the visibility condition stated that the table is to be shown if the value of the radio button is “1” and the graphic if the value of the radio button is “0” That’s it, now you are able to switch between the two modes!
Oh, I forgot one thing. The third customer said, “Oh very good. But one thing is still missing. I need a print function for that dashboard;” This is like a walk in the park. I go back into the input form and add a pushbutton. In the properties, I select system action Print and our brand new pushbutton in a print button.
Here it is!
So that’s it! Here is our Management Cockpit! Here is the chart view:
And here is the table view:
Here is the model for our Management Cockpit:
As I said in my blog entry, I’m very keen to receive your feedback and your ideas.
In my Easy-to-use, visually cool, and useful - Part IV --- How to combine different data sources and use t... entry, I’d like to show you a new composite application - the “Emergency Admission Cockpit”. Composite means in this case that I build a role-specific and user-specific application based on different data sources, such as Services, BAPIS and BI queries, and combine them in one application.
Regards from Walldorf
Stefan
To be continued…
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