Hi

Just doing 'My first dashboard' today and I have encountered some questions.

1. It is possible to copy a public view to another public view to use it as a basis for a new view.
Is it possible to copy a public view to a Group view?

2. Is it possible to add a .fex or a url that is not on the domain tree in viewbuilder?

3. Although I logged on to viewbuilder as an admin, it would only show me the public domain tree. However when I logged on as a BID user (still with admin privs), I used the customise facility and was able to add items from the entire domain tree.

Does anyone know why this may be occurring?

4. When the output for a block exceeds a certain proportion of the block, scroll bars come on making the output not look like a dashboard. However reducing the image so the proportion is not exceeded results in quite a small image.

For example I divided the screen into 4 blocks which on the full screen version of the dashboard allowed me to fit a graph haxis=500,vaxis=230 before scrolling started. Relative to the size of the quadrant, this is quite small.

Is there any way to turn off scrolling to allow a larger clipped image or does the implementation as frames in a browser make this impossible?

5. How do you supply parameters to a report. We use amperautoprompt which will not appear if all parameters are supplied, but there seems to be no option to launch a .fex with specific parameters.

In the end I coded mini fexes which just called the main fex with all parameters supplied and then put these on to the dashboard domain tree.

Does anyone know a better way.

Thanking everyone in anticipation!

Regards

John

John,

Based on my experience with dashboards here are some answers...
1) Yes you can copy public views. You just click the checkbox next to the view name and click the copy button. Group views however are associated with a group name. So, you need to create a new group first and then copy the group view to the new group or delete an existing group view and copy another one to it. I'm not sure about copying public views to group views.

One thing I have done is create a new view then go out to the file system (C:\ibi\WebFOCUS76\worp\worp_custom) and copy all the files from the view 'template' to the new folder. If you look at the View Link URL info in the view builder you'll see a name like aa_gbv, ab_gbv, and so on. These correspond to the file folders that contain the view components.

2) I have not been able to figure out how to add a fex or URL that isn't already in the domain tree. If you figure that one out let me know.

3) Check the Manage Users section of the View Builder and look to see what view each of the users in question is assigned to. This is most likely where the difference is coming from.

4) I have not seen any documentation on controlling the scrolling in a content block. In the C:\ibi\WebFOCUS76\worp\worp_users\[viewfolder] there is a content.xml file where you can see the details for each of the pages and blocks. Perhaps somewhere in there you can set an attribute for scrolling.

5) If a report has parameters and the Prompt For Parameters box is checked in the report properties window the auto-prompt facility should run when the user clicks the report from the domain tree. The other option would be to create an HTML Launch Page for your report and include various controls for your parameters.

I hope this helps,

Dan

Dan

First of all let me say Thank you very much for taking the trouble to reply.

quote:

2) I have not been able to figure out how to add a fex or URL that isn't already in the domain tree. If you figure that one out let me know

Whether this is a useful technique, I am not sure myself yet. I created a new domain DASHBOARD which only contains info that I want in dashboards.


To use this info

At the PUBLIC view screens temporarily make the DASHBOARD domain a member of the PUBLIC group. You can add the items to the public view and then drop DASHBOARD from the PUBLIC MRE group.
The links will still work.

At GROUP view similarly make DASHBOARD a member of the group you are working with.

This way DASHBOARD acts as a kind of floating pallette which you can attach all kinds of stuff to without ever having to display it to any of your users.

This also resolves the security rules in that a PUBLIC view can only take from PUBLIC domains and GROUP view can only take from GROUP domains.

As suggested I am going to abandon the idea of blocked dashboard output and incorporate all of my images into a single HTML launch page. That way the scroll bar problems will disappear!

Once again Thanks

John

John,

I tried your technique of using a domain as a source of dashboard content, adding that domain to a group, placing the content in the group view and then removing the domain from the group. Once I remove the domain from the group I can no longer access the content.

I get this error:
ERROR: ERROR_MR_CANT_OPEN_DOMAIN_FOR_USER Can't open domain dashboard/dashboard.htm for user [username]

This behavior is as I would expect because the user in question no longer has permission to access the domain where the content lives.

The fact that you can still see content in the domain after you remove it from the group seems like perhaps there may be something else going on there. Can you still see your DASHBOARD domain listed in the domain tree? If so, that means the user still has access to it somehow.

In our case we can't allow multiple groups to access the same domain because report sharing is done at the domain level. Our user groups represent unique customers and that would mean every customer would have access to every other customer's shared reports!

I wish there was a way to save a BID View template that includes pages and content blocks. That would make the process of building domains a lot simpler.

Dan

Dan

I may have made a mistake in that I have only tested this technique for an admin user, who of course has access to everything!

I shall test with a non admin guy and see if we can get it to work!

John

Doh!

Yes you are correct. The only method I can think of now is to include items on the domain the dashboard is for, build the dashboard and then mark the items that are dashboard only as do not show on user's display. I can confirm this works with a non admin id.

If you prefix dashboard only stuff with dashboard_ then it is clear which items you need to set nodisplay.



The problem is that the security model is all wrong.

1. When you are in viewbuilder it should allow you access to all of the resources of the viewbuilder not to all of the resources of the view user.

Effectively if the viewbuilder wants to, he should be able to grant the viewuser access to programs outside of the viewusers domain but not the viewbuilder's domain.

Thus a domain admin would never be able to grant access to programs outside his domain unless he was also a domain admin of other domains.

2. When an MRE user accesses his tree it should only show reports to which he has access.
When an MRE user accesses any other reporting structure created by the view builder he should be able to run that report since the viewbuilder with his higher level of permission has allowed him.

With the tree the user stays within his domain, outside the tree, the assumption is that his privilege level does not apply and it is the wish of the group or domain admin he can run stuff outside of his normal domain.

3. This new model would only disable the check permission to execute on view build items so this would not cause problems with other unforseen areas.

That would be an ideal world but the first paragraph looks like a reasonable work around.

As always you only ever find out by doing!

Regards

John

This message has been edited. Last edited by: hammo1j,