Common Features

This chapter shows you how to develop and use the features that are common for Write! extensions. This chapter contains the following sections:

• Navigation Bar—examines the extension‘s common and individual main buttons.

• Notifications—explains how notifications work within the extension.

• Styling—explains how you can adapt the extension visualizations to your needs during app development.

• Server Settings and Write! Info—explain the options available in the Property Panel > Server Settings and Write! Info tabs.

• Write! Hybrid—explains how saved data can be viewed locally prior to a Qlik reload.

Navigation Bar

You can interact with the extension by using the associated navigation bars.

Figure 1:  Edit navigation bar

The bar consists of the following buttons:

• Save—saves the user changes in the database tables specified by the extension endpoint in Write! Management Console (WMC). WMC consecutively triggers an app reload to refresh the extension view for all users with the updated values, unless configured otherwise.

  Note:

  You need to actively save data with a mouse click as the data isn't saved automatically.

• Cancel—regenerates the extension and removes any unsaved changes. Changes are marked by an orange-colored flag in the upper right corner of the cell.

• Add row—adds a new row.

  This option is available for both Edit and Form if you have the Allow New Items feature enabled. Also, to use it in the Form extension, you need to have the Automatic Primary Key and Allow Duplicates features enabled for the endpoint that the extension is connected to. This prevents newly created rows replacing existing rows with the same dimensions. The Automatic Primary Key feature ensures that the Edit table can contain multiple rows with identical dimensions. The Allow Duplicates feature enables you to save multiple rows with identical dimensions. For more information on activating the features, see Fields Settings.

• Delete Row—removes an existing row.

You can activate the buttons in the Property Panel.

The figure below shows the navigation bar of the Plan extension:

Figure 2:  Plan navigation bar

In addition to the standard Save and Cancel functionality, it also provides four additional buttons:

• Folders—enable expanding and collapsing of the table rows.

• New Budget

• New Forecast

For more information on the New Forecast and New Budget options on the Plan navigation bar, see the Plan chapter.

Notifications

The notifications have the following colors, depending on the notification type:

• Green—displays a successful activity.
• Red—displays an unsuccessful activity.
• Orange—contains a hint.

Figure 3:  Plan extension displaying a notification

Mathematical Expressions

End users can enter mathematical expressions in all extensions. For the Edit and Form extensions, only cells with Number and Currency field types are evaluated. Write! supports a wide range of mathematical expressions:

• Addition, subtraction, division, multiplication (for example 1282.98+3572.86, 31873-425)
• Percentages of base values (add, subtract, divide, multiply; for example 100+60%=160)
• Math constants—for example e, PI,
• Many operators—for example sqrt, cos, sin, tanh, deg.
• Exponential notation— for example ^, 1e6
• Brackets— for example 0.5*(1+1) = 1

Figure 4:  Sample expressions

Styling

In the Write! Edit tables, you can configure the Edit and Plan styling, for example, to conform with the corporate identity.

In the Property Panel > Appearance, you can style the following elements of your visualization:

• Edited cells
• Navigation bar
• Progress bar
• Editable columns
• Non-editable columns

Server Settings

Server Settings is a submenu of the Property Panel. You can use it to configure the extension communication with the Write! server. The menu comprises the following settings:

• SSE—you can decide whether or not to use Server Side Extension (SSE).
• Server URL—Input for setting Write! server URL. Use https if the server uses SSL, and http if it doesn't. This option is only available if SSE is off.
• Port configuration—Input for setting the Write! port. It reads 4000 by default. You can change it in the Fiplana Management Console's (FMC) network settings. This option is only available if SSE is off.
• Endpoint configuration—Dropdown input that sets the extension associated Endpoint. Use the Refresh endpoint list button to update the dropdown list. For more information, see Endpoints.
• Endpoint as Expression — when you activate this option, the dropdown menu is replaced by the Endpoint Expression field, where you can enter an individual endpoint expression in the form of a Qlik expression. This option is suitable when there are several Qlik servers, but only one Write! server. This way, you can switch your app from a test environment to a production environment without having to rebuild it.
• Configure Endpoint—enables you to manage endpoints directly from Qlik Property Panel, facilitating the configuration process and eliminating the need to navigate to WMC. The option appears when you select the endpoint from a dropdown.
• Create Endpoints—enables users to create endpoints directly from Qlik Property Panel, eliminating the need to navigate to WMC. The option is always visible. If dimensions, measures, or periods in the Plan extension are already defined in the Property Panel and have technical field names set, these values are pre-filled in the configuration form.
• Generate Load Script—Generates the Qlik load script for the selected endpoint.

Figure 5:  Server Settings in the Property Panel

Write! Info

The Write! Info submenu in the Property Panel provides information on the extension‘s used open source licenses and shows the current release version.

Write! Hybrid

The Fiplana Hybrid submenu allows for the configuration of Fiplana Client Hybrid feature. The feature allows for bridging the timespan between saving changed data and Qlik loading those changes into its data model. To do so, the software temporarily stores the changes on the client machine, making them immediately available after a successful save operation. Cells that display Client Hybrid values are indicated with a flag in their top-right corner (default color: blue).

You can activate Client Hybrid using the Activate Client Hybrid option in the Property Panel > Client Hybrid.

After you activate Client Hybrid, the following options become available:

• Hybrid Cells Color—changes the color of the cells‘ hybrid indicators.

• updated_at—offers a dropdown menu to choose the updated_at field. Typically and by default the imported field reads updated_at.

The updated_at field data needs to originate from the extension endpoint‘s updated_at field, cf. Load script suggestions.

Figure 6:  updated_at field in the Client Hybrid submenu

The following figures show consecutive states of a Write! Edit extension with activated Client Hybrid.

Figure 7:  State 1: Edit table prior to editing.

Figure 8:  State 2: Edit table after editing and prior to saving. The orange flags indicate user changes in the respective cells.

Figure 9:  State 3: Edit table after saving the changed values

The orange flags turned blue indicating saved user changes already visible because of active Client Hybrid.

Figure 10:  Edit table after another reload

Here, the Client Hybrid is off again because the reload loaded the updated data.