Dear Community,
I recently used the Graphomate Tables add-on with Design Studio 1.6 in a customer project and would like to share my experience with you.
I case you don´t know the Graphomate add-ons: They provide highly customizable visualizations according to the International Business Communication Standards (IBCS®). These are specific rules for report and presentation design which help to create easily consumable, semantically standardized reports. This is for example supported by essential features like Comparison Groups (equal scaling of charts within each group), Global Data Types (reusable definition of semantical table column design, see screenshot below) or Exceptions (flexible conditional formatting feature including several icons).
If you plan to use the Graphomate Tables add-on with Design Studio, I recommend to consider the following aspects which have been especially useful in our project:
In general it´s a component for visualization and not an analytical component. This means that you can show a lot of data but you should try to fit it all on one page without scrolling (according to Hichert Success Rule Condense). Otherwise the user has to remember the data in order to compare it with the data he´s currently showing. If that´s not possible, consider dividing the table into an overview table with selectable content (rows, columns) and a detail table, which shows details depending on user´s selection in the overview table (Overview first, details on demand).
The available micro charts visualize difference of two columns for each row (f. e. see column ∆%ACT-BUD in screenshot above). The deviations are calculated by the table component and a chart has to be rendered for each value. A lot of deviation chart columns coupled with a lot of rows in a scrollable Graphomate table could slow down your Design Studio application. Ask yourself if each of the planned deviation chart columns is really needed. By the way: Turn on the Comparison Group property to apply equal scaling to the micro charts in order to make them comparable.
There´s a property called Table Header Position Fixed which allows to freeze the table header – a very useful feature with big tables. Since column widths have to be measured continuously when this option is applied, it could have an influence on the performance of your Design Studio application. If you respect the first recommendation to put all information on screen without scrolling this is anyway out of scope.
There are surely other tips and recommendations to give in this context but the ones above have been very useful in our specific customer project.
Regards,
Stefan
I recently used the Graphomate Tables add-on with Design Studio 1.6 in a customer project and would like to share my experience with you.
I case you don´t know the Graphomate add-ons: They provide highly customizable visualizations according to the International Business Communication Standards (IBCS®). These are specific rules for report and presentation design which help to create easily consumable, semantically standardized reports. This is for example supported by essential features like Comparison Groups (equal scaling of charts within each group), Global Data Types (reusable definition of semantical table column design, see screenshot below) or Exceptions (flexible conditional formatting feature including several icons).
If you plan to use the Graphomate Tables add-on with Design Studio, I recommend to consider the following aspects which have been especially useful in our project:
In general it´s a component for visualization and not an analytical component. This means that you can show a lot of data but you should try to fit it all on one page without scrolling (according to Hichert Success Rule Condense). Otherwise the user has to remember the data in order to compare it with the data he´s currently showing. If that´s not possible, consider dividing the table into an overview table with selectable content (rows, columns) and a detail table, which shows details depending on user´s selection in the overview table (Overview first, details on demand).
The available micro charts visualize difference of two columns for each row (f. e. see column ∆%ACT-BUD in screenshot above). The deviations are calculated by the table component and a chart has to be rendered for each value. A lot of deviation chart columns coupled with a lot of rows in a scrollable Graphomate table could slow down your Design Studio application. Ask yourself if each of the planned deviation chart columns is really needed. By the way: Turn on the Comparison Group property to apply equal scaling to the micro charts in order to make them comparable.
There´s a property called Table Header Position Fixed which allows to freeze the table header – a very useful feature with big tables. Since column widths have to be measured continuously when this option is applied, it could have an influence on the performance of your Design Studio application. If you respect the first recommendation to put all information on screen without scrolling this is anyway out of scope.
There are surely other tips and recommendations to give in this context but the ones above have been very useful in our specific customer project.
Regards,
Stefan
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