Tips and Techniques: InfoAssist State of Maryland User Forum July 20, 2012

Ira Kaplan

In the beginning there was data…

The famous CAR file

which spawned FOCUS…

and end user reporting

A Little Later

A Little Code TABLE FILE CAR PRINT MODEL MPG LENGTH WIDTH HEIGHT WEIGHT DEALER_COST RETAIL_COST SALES/I6C BY LOWEST COUNTRY BY LOWEST CAR

AS 'Model' AS AS AS AS AS AS AS AS AS

'Length' 'Width' 'Height' 'Weight' 'Dealer Cost' 'Retail Cost' 'Sales' 'Country' 'Car'

ON COUNTRY SUBTOTAL AS 'Total' ON COUNTRY SKIP-LINE ON TABLE "Cars" ON TABLE ON TABLE ON TABLE ON TABLE

SUBHEAD SET PAGE-NUM NOLEAD COLUMN-TOTAL AS 'Grand Total' 'SALES' PCHOLD FORMAT HTML SET HTMLCSS ON

ON TABLE SET STYLE * INCLUDE = endeflt, $ TYPE=REPORT, SIZE=12, TYPE=TABHEADING, SIZE=18, TYPE=TITLE, SIZE=14, TYPE=DATA, TYPE=GRANDTOTAL, GRAPHTYPE=DATA, ENDSTYLE END

COLOR=WHITE, COLOR=BLACK, COLOR=BLACK,

$ STYLE=BOLD, JUSTIFY=LEFT, $ STYLE=BOLD, $ $ STYLE=BOLD, $

COLUMN=N11, GRAPHCOLOR='TEAL',

$

Alternative to programming?

InfoAssist

InfoAssist 1

3

Blank canvas or reporting object

2

Display results

4

Paint reports and graphs

Peek at the code

Tips and Techniques

1. Slicers 2. Active Dashboard Prompts 3. Coordinated Documents 4. Size and Position 5. Alignment 6. InfoMini 7. Extras

Where did you learn that?

Cover

PDF Bookmarks

http://documentation.informationbuilders.com http://documentation.informationbuilders.com/masterindex/html/html_wf_7702/wf77infoassist/wf77infoassist.pdf

You can observe a lot just by watching

Yogi Berra

Yogi Berra vs Yogi Bear When you come to a fork in the road, take it.

I’m smarter than the average bear

Slicers initial appearance Dynamically filter reports and graphs at design time InfoMini filters at run time

Slicer Examples

Text comparison operators: equal, not equal. Numeric comparison operators: equal, not equal, in from-to range, not in from-to range, greater than , less than, greater than or equal to, less than or equal to. Multiple text selection using control key. Click OK or double-click value. Clear slicer’s settings

Slicers Demo

Slicers: General Options

Slicers: Record Limit

Slicers: Group Properties

Group names

Slicers: Opening the Edit Slicers dialog

All arrows open the same Edit Slicers dialog, only initial tab or page differs

Active Dashboard Prompts (Filters) Chained or unchained (aka Cascades) Comparison operators

Active Dashboard Prompt Examples

Active Dashboard Prompts: Settings

Active Dashboard Prompts: Cascades

Prompts Demo

Coordinated Documents

Coordinated Document Demo

Size and Position Right click report, chart , image, etc.

Size

Size: absolute numbers Scale: percentage

Tip: Check (turn on) Lock Aspect Ratio

Position

Horizontal: left to right. Think “along the horizon” Vertical: up and down

Size and Position Demo

Alignment

Alignment

Use Layout > Align

Alignment

1. Activate Align: select 2+ objects 2. Selection: [Shift] + [Click] 3. Selection: [Ctrl] + [Click] 4. Selection: Mouse rubberbanding 5. Bounding box handles (little squares) must appear! 6. Go to Layout tab 7. Select Align: Left, Right, Top, Bottom

Alignment Demo

InfoMini Absolutely incredible! InfoAssist menus embedded in a report

InfoMini

1. Format menu 2. InfoMini must be highlighted to work 3. Select tabs for display 4. Interactive mode: Home, Format, and Slicers 5. Edit mode: Data, Slicer, Layout, Resources/ Field 6. Save button

InfoMini Publish Publish InfoMini report to dashboard

InfoMini Demo

InfoAssist Extras Moving objects: arrow slow, [Shift] + arrow fast Shortcut [Ctrl] + P -- save and publish report to dashboard Zoom in/out: [Ctrl] + [+] in [Ctrl] + [-] out [Ctrl] + [0] reset. number zero, not letter “Oh” Note: this is browser zoom and not InfoAssist Zoom. Hide / Show ribbon button:

More InfoAssist Extras Display WebFOCUS syntax:

Double-click prompt/filter selection values. Eliminates need to click [Ok] Design canvas not responding? Is active view Interactive or Output? Transform Report and Chart repeatedly. Document mode is one way.

Thank you Questions?