Hi Team,

My experience with WebFOCUS tells me that it is entirely possible to drill on a graph, and pass relevant variables to the target. In PMF, it seems that drilling is reserved for report-type gadgets. Is this an option I can enable for graphs or is there a set of gadgets that I haven't noticed that are graphical but let the user drill to the Measure Detail report, for instance?

If not, I will have to start thinking about ways to make this happen. Is there a set of WebFOCUS stylesheets that are shared amongst the graph gadgets?

Cheers,

Joey

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Moogle,

Hi Team,

Further research has indicated that being able to drill on all graph objects in PMF is a 100% customization. Fair enough, and now my challenge is to find a common module or two within PMF where I can make some changes and enable drilldown.

My feeling is that there are probably some shared WebFOCUS stylesheets, that control the graphs. Seems like a likely place to start inventing a technique.

I hope that someone can point me in the right direction, such as 'All line graphs use xxxxx.sty' or something similar.

Cheers,

Joey

Hi Joey,

Most graphs are significantly different enough that a common drill include between them is not currently available.

The gadget “Perspective – Compare Performance - Vert Bars” does have a drill down on any Objective level bars that are “red”. This is the gadget on the far left of the dashboard “Strategic Dashboard – 01”. You can look at the core report for this to see how the drill down was added there (pmf_booklet_obj_graph1.fex)

Is this a capability that others would also be interested in?

Best regards,
Mike

I would think that drilling down from graphs is just as necessary as drilling down from reports. We have this capability in WebFOCUS, and end-users need and like this, so why should it not be available in PMF?

It is available of course - the static charts are GRAPH FILE. You can add the drills you want. Make sure to put the modified files in PMFCUSTOM.

The answer to any "why didn't you do THIS?" question, for anything that might not be done in PMF yet is, generally nobody asked for it. We tend to be very busy doing the things we get asked to do by our customers and maybe perhaps doing a few visionary things that we think they could use or that might make their jobs easier, but unfortunately don't have a lot of extra cycles to figure out everything they MIGHT want in the future. I'm sure you understand what that's like!

Another big reason we didn't specifically add drills is - there are literally a hundred places someone might want to drill and probably ten different places on each chart where the drill might go to a different link.

Anyway, if drills were added, anybody want to suggest what content they specifically want those drills to go to and what sort of parameters, filtering, etc they want passed on?

thanks!

Hi Bob,

When I started analyzing each graphical gadget in PMF, I quickly understood why there is little to no common code shared between each object. Some gadgets are single measure, some are multi-measure, some are grouped and filtered by dimension values and some are only filtered by dimension values. Some have time as an axis and others do not. Some, such as the sparkline gadgets, are a mix of tabular reports and graphics. Some show actuals, others show targets and actuals. Some are at the perspective level, others at the objective level and most are at the measure or measures level. All these factors would need to be considered in order to enable drill-down, and that doesn't even answer the question of what is the drill-down target. Finally, there are the Flex-based gadgets, which would be an entirely separate body of work from the WebFOCUS based gadgets.

So, I now well understand why this is the way it is. Perhaps, if you are looking for a 'simple' solution, you could make the gadgets drill to the same target as the 'Operational Report' link that can be set at a measure by measure basis. Ignore all context other than Measure Name. This might get tricky with multi-measure charts, but might be doable. This idea likely does not apply to perspective and objective level gadgets. Some of the flex gadgets would present a problem, since they already do something when you click them (IE. Metric Tree Map; my favourite!).

The context of this idea is that I've built WebFOCUS reports that the users can access from within PMF, if they want to know more granular information than that which is contained in the dimensions. They can trigger the reports from the 'Operational Report' link on Multi-Measure reports, or from the Options button on the Measure Details report, in which case it also passes the breadcrumb info for use in pre-filtering. The request that started this post was based on the idea that an author might create a dashboard that only contains graphical gadgets, and no tabular report gadgets. At that point, there is no way to trigger the drill-down reports. The above idea would solve that issue, as they could at a minimum, click anywhere on a graph and *something* would happen.

Cheers,

Joey