This sort of feature is also very interesting for us. We would like to have the possibility to move measures, dimensions, scorecards,... from one environment to another. It is a big project and I will be keeping an eye on this topic as I will probably have some input ideas and suggestions as a customer.

Amanda

Regarding transport of gadgets...

Besides a GUI based Dashboard Designer, 5.2.1 will have the capability to export Gadgets to a portable file, and thence to Register that Gadget on another PMF system.

This is primarily designed to support Gadgets that are portable. E.g., if you were to build a Gadget that ran an operational WebFOCUS report against your own operational DBs - say you have an HR data DB, and a Manufacturing DB, etc. and gadgetized WebFOCUS reports that you'd written for these. Although these would be portable within your site, they would not be portable since the data wasn't managed (e.g., as PMF metrics & dimensions).

So to make this work as a transport mechanism, we'd probably look to find some way to make sure you were only moving the gadget around within your site then.

The cool part of this is of course if the gadget uses data or content that's portable across systems - a public web gadget from the Internet for example, or a way of looking at Metrics, Objectives, Risks, Perspectives, etc., this would give you a way to leverage work and develop a set of additional standard gadgets. It would open the result of PMF development done in the field to the rest of the world. And that's the real purpose of this.

But we would look into making this a way of possibly allowing you to move your own content from one server/client to another within your site.

thanks

Here's a new feature request:

Ability to sort measures on a multi-measure report, such as Rolling 5 periods.

Currently PMF does an alpha sort on the measure name. Users ALWAYS want to see certain measures grouped together, regardless of name. I've seen two solutions to handle this:

-add a number / letter in front of the measures name to force the alpha sort that you wish to see. IE:

1a - Measure Z
1b - Measure X
2a - Measure B
3a - Measure A

I've also seen a client implement a sorting table behind the scenes and do some heavy customization to join all report output to that sort table. NOT sustainable at all, but it works... for now.

So, I suggest a new field on the Measure metatdata screen called Sort Order. Three characters ought to be enough for everyone, and it should be the BY field right before the Measure Name on all the reports. No need to show it though, so it should be NOPRINTed.

That's my NFR.

Now, as for the Migration ability between environments, I support this entirely. I don't think there is any real problem with setting up new dimensions manually, but typing in Measure metadata between environments is a huge pain. I think we should have the ability to migrate just the measure setup screens. If a dimension does not exist in the new environment, the measure transfer should fail or remove the letter from the metadata screen with a log file saying this happened. The measure loader screen should NOT be part of this transfer process, as it's not that hard to duplicate. That's my two cents.

Cheers,

Joey

PMF 5.1.3
WF 7.6.10
Oracle DB
Tomcat on Linux