Follow PMFers,

Has anyone put a custom operational-data type gadget (a custom non-dimension tree: a nav tree, if you will, that could get big and needs to be very flexible in its nodes) on a dashboard that broadcasts to another custom op-data report gadget on a Today page dashboard?

I know how to do this on a WF BI dashboard but wanted to explore putting this on a PMF dash.

Anyone have any advice when researching this capability?

Thanks!

Hi Greg,

First of all please let me know if I understand this correctly. You want an operational tree controller that contains something completely foreign to PMF (so this tree is not a dimension, measure, objective, etc).

Then you want another operational gadget that will take whatever this foreign object is as a broadcast value?

Could you maybe provide a high level example of what you are trying to accomplish?

Would this foreign object be loadable as a dimension so that it could be broadcasted by using the default dimension tree?

Thanks,
Mike

Thanks, Mike, for your reply.
You have it right but now things have changed.

I now think I can make this Navigation Tree a dimension which is what I wanted in the first place. Originally, it looked like it was going to be more than 8 levels so I explored other options. The levels have maxed out to 3.

My new question for a dimension is:
Can I hide the values in a dimension depending on the Scorecard/Perspective/Objective that a user is working with?

This Navigation Dimension will allow a user to go down and up a variety of levels that have no other meaning than 'level 1', 'level 2' and/or 'level 3' as they view another report/graph gadget on the dashboard. I need to hide the dimension values that are not relevant to the Objective the user is perusing.

How can I do this?

Thanks.

Hi,
The Dimension tree in 531 automatically selects only to show the Scorecard Measure's linked dimensions. It assumes you're showing more than one measure at a time, so it shows all the dimensions linked to all Measures for the Scorecard. This is a huge improvement, but it does not have logic to deal with situations where the entire dashboard is for only one measure, so that it could additionally filter down to the dimensions for that measure. As for selecting only particular leaves within a single Dimension, that logic would get quite complex!

The gadget only sends Broadcasts and doesn't receive them. It would be interesting eventually to have to selectively receive broadcasts and automatically show what's selected regardless of who sends them... in 5.3.1 HF2 we are allowing charts to also send broadcasts and there's also the Ginsu, so a lot of broadcasters all needing various levels of integration. If you haven't seen 5.3.1, we welcome you to take a tour.

You might want to design a gadget that works more like the related properties panel, and can be done in FOCUS and then integrated as a gadget as HTML content - in other words like a report where the report does the presentation and the drills do the rest of the work. It is possible in code to determine what's selected in the current parameter bundle, which means you know the single measure that's selected, and you can write your own logic for it.

This would be a custom Gadget. It would receive as well as send Broadcasts. To deal with needing to save and clear off filters, you could go the JavaScript/DOM route we do with making buttons with xs to allow clearing, or you could have a button to Clear All.

does this help?

Good suggestions Bob!

Yes, this can get tricky fast to add custom slicing of the tree controller.

You might be able to modify the dim tree to provide a very simplistic filter. At the end of gadget_rpt_dimtree.fex you will see “where_dim” and “where_dim_val”.

These values are passed to constructFieldsDim_Nav method that resides in pmf_lib.js. This method has moved in pmf531 to pmfReport.js.

You might be able to clone and modify these methods to get what you want to work.

NOTE: This tree will be upgraded to an improved tree in the future (date unspecified). At this point your request to filter the values on the tree might become more feasible.

I would recommend doing what Bob suggests in the meantime.

Best regards,
Mike

Thanks Bob and Mike for your advice.
I created a gadget as Bob mentioned and it worked. I was just looking for a way to use the dimensions as an alternative.
Thanks again.