Front End – The extension in the Dashboard

Theming

Match your dashboards style using Theming. We understand the importance to match your companies branding to keep your dashboards looking great. Change the colors of the whole brand along with text and system colors. Use the typography tab to change the font style and size. 

Tabs

WriteBackExtreme allows multiple schemas to be connected to one window. This allows users to connect to multiple worksheets using different schemas. These will be shown as different tabs within WriteBackExtreme.

Dashboard parameter actions

Dashboard parameter actions will populate the extension with your connected schema when selecting your mark. Connect different schemas to different worksheets and have them appear in one window. Follow our video tutorial to set this up and see the great value it will bring.

Mapping configuration

Use the Add Data module to add comments linked to a dimension within your worksheet, if that dimension is available within multiple worksheets the comment will be shown within WriteBackExtreme. To set this up head to our blog.

Worksheet-Schema Tab

The Worksheet- schema tab keeps you in control of your schema. The dashboard creators can format the style of the form and the behavior of the schema from this tab. You will see different options depending on the module you’re connected to.

General (All modules)

Show title/description

In the general tab of the worksheet schema, this allows you to show/hide the title and description of your schema. Let your users know what the extensions use is for, or not, it’s your dashboard!

Refresh Mode

Enable a refresh on the data source when the user saves changes. This ensures data is always up to date after a save.

Refresh options (Data Helper & Add Data Only)

When saving any changes within your form, the extension will automatically refresh when enabling. It’s also possible to show the refresh button within the extension, this will help when refreshing the data takes more time. Note: These features only work if the data helper sheet is connected with a worksheet!

Refresh Button (Data Helper & Add Data Only)

Add a refresh button to your window. This can be useful for when refreshing data takes more time.

General Layout options for Add Data

Clearing the selection will…

Whenever you select a mark in the connected sheet, the extension will filter and show the appropriate data, decide whether to show all data or exclude when clearing your selection.

Allow Global Records

WriteBackExtreme allows you to add comments and records to one, none or multiple selected records in your dashboard. Dashboard creators can now force their users to only add data on a single data point. For example this will prevent any loose comments not linked to a specific mark. More control for the creator resulting in clean and focused dashboards.

Allow Multi select on marks

Enable the option to add data to multiple marks (data points) at once. This will create 1 row of data in the schema with multiple mapping rows. For example if you would like to comment on the top 3 selling items at once, highlight each one, add your comment highlighting the good sales! 

Allow Creation of separate records

Enable the option to create separate records when multi-select is enabled. Selecting multiple marks will create separate records for each mark, keeping track of any dynamically filled fields and filling them in accordingly.

Record Creation Options Menu

When enabled, users creating a new record will be shown a menu allowing them to select their desired form of record creation.

Multiple Record Customisable Default Behavior 

When enabling one or more than one of the settings above, a default option can be selected for record creation.

Filter options

Use these options to limit the amount of rows visible in the extension. Filter on certain columns you wish to have present in the extension, add more if required. Filter on date so show a certain amount of data from the last 30 days for example. Also possible to filter the top rows by adding a value in the box.

General Layout options for Data Correction

Layout

Change the layout form to a vertical layout which would help if you would want to create a form. The default layout is horizontal where fields can be side by side, allowing for a more compact form.

Clearing the selection will…

Whenever you select a mark in the connected sheet, the extension will filter and show the appropriate data. Decide whether to show all data or not.

Interpolate & Bulk Edit

Data Correction can be used to clean data, enable power tools to bulk edit your values. There’s possibilities such as adding, subtracting, dividing and multiplying with a chosen value. If there are empty values use our powerful Interpolate tool! Sometimes you want to fill in the missing data points automatically, based on related data. This is something the build-in interpolation function can help you with. Interpolation is a method of constructing new datapoints within the range of a set of known datapoints. To use the interpolation function of the Data Correction module, select multiple fields. You must provide data that can be used to interpolate, i.e. the datapoint prior and the datapoint latter to the missing datapoints. When you selected the correct datapoints, you can use the calculator icon above the column and select “Interpolate” to fill in the missing datapoints.

Refresh data sources on save

Toggle a refresh of all relevant data sources when the user saves changes. This will keep all connected data sources up to date on each save.

Allow adding records only when a condition is met

There may be situations where you want to restrict the ability of your users to add new records in WriteBackExtreme. For example, you only want your users to be able to add a comment to data within the current fiscal period, or based on the total amount of sales related to a selected mark.

Set your condition using the editor in the “worksheet-schema | general” tab in the WriteBackExtreme configuration screen. In this example, we will limit the adding of records to any mark with SUM(Sales) above 250000. This will allow your users to only add comments on marks where SUM(Sales) exceeds US$250.000.

As seen in the example below, the “add record” button (the pink + plus sign) is disabled when a mark is selected that does not match the condition setup previously (SUM(Sales) must exceed US$250.000).

Type of form field – Single Line

Creating a schema in your WriteBackExtreme management console using the Single line text as your Field Type will give you flexibility in the front end when configuring the type of form field.

Map input, Emoticons and of course text can be used. If you create a single line column in the management console you can change the layout to a Map component style. You can use specific options for the map like a default location and more. Map input allows you to use the built in mapping feature within your form to pinpoint an exact location which will be written back to your database. A super easy and powerful feature. Use the emoticons to react on sales for an example and add some color to your dashboard!

Email Validation

When your data set holds email addresses, or you wish to add email address from WriteBackExtreme to your database you can now validate that field. The email field must be validated on basic email syntaxes like [email protected]. It’s not possible to write any data back that isn’t validated. 

Paragraph

This will be the content of your form, a description of your changes, a message to accompany your input. In the configuration screen enable Rich Text (WYSIWIG). Many options to format your text will be available in your text box. Header and paragraph styles, lists and much more.

Number

Use the number field to show numbers, a percentage and currency in the form.

Rating

A very good use case for WriteBackExtreme is allowing users to rate certain dashboards using our star method. The Rating option presents a stars where users can click on each star which will then write back the score to your table, for example. Configure how many stars will be shown, size and spacing.

Slider

Convert the number to a slider, this would be ideal for users to use if a precise range isn’t necessary and an approximate would suffice.

Progress bar

As it says on the tin, users can update their dashboards using the progress bar to share their projects progress. A clear indication of how well your projects are doing.

Using the Multi-Select you can decide to have the selections shown in a drop down menu or use our new Radio button option. Decide what will best suit your dashboard and user base. Using the radio button allows users to quickly and easily choosing their selection with a click of a button.

 

Boolean

If your form requires a simple true or false answer then use the Boolean field type. This can be formatted to display a simple checkbox or a switch, to show a completed field in your form. Use the Boolean field type to allow your users can give a clear indication of their thoughts by giving it a big thumbs up or down! Edit the color under format so when the users check a clear color will be shown in the form.

Date/Datetime

When creating a schema you will get the option to include the time to be shown in the form. Format the label to show what’s being displayed in the form. It’s now possible to auto populate an updated_at and created_at field. For updated_at it will every write action generate a new timestamp and store it in this column and for created_at; will only set an timestamp on create of a new record. When updated_at is tick created_at will automatically be disabled. In the schema field we keep an option for auto_datetime_updated and auto_datetime_created, both are booleans.

With the flexible Form Builder of WriteBackExtreme you can control what the form for your WriteBack users looks like. You control what fields are mandatory, what fields are shown in the form and what overview look like.

First of all it is important to know that the properties of the fields in your schema (Created in the Management Console, check this section to learn more on the Management Console and creating/managing schemas) are of great influence in using the Form Builder.

• Non nullable fields in your schema are always mandatory fields in your Form Builder. If you want to use a non mandatory field in your form, make sure it is ‘nullable’ in your underlying schema.
• Field types are set in the Schema and cannot be changed with the Form Builder. You cannot change a number field into a text field with the Form Builder.

The sections below will cover these basic Form Builder options:

1. Change the order of the fields
2. Set column width in the form
3. Show Hide fields in the overview and/or edit forms
4. Enable / Disable mandatory fields

We will use the WriteBackExtreme Gallery demo workbook with the DATA HELPER dashboard to illustrate the possibilities. You can download a copy of the demo workbook by registering for a free trial over here. For this demonstration we configured the DATA HELPER Demo schema to have a few nullable fields so we can illustrate the usage of mandatory and non mandatory fields in the forms. Learn more about managing your schemas in the Management Console over here.

Change the order of the fields

The steps to change the order of the fields in your forms are:

1. Goto the configuration screen of your extension by clicking the Pinwheel and select “CONFIGURE EXTENSION”
2. In the modal (pop up) select the “Worksheet-schema” option in the colored horizontal menu bar
3. Select the second tab called “Form Builder”
4. click on the up/down arrows present for every field to change the order of the fields
5. Make sure you press the “Save” button in the top right corner of the colored menu bar to save your changes.

Use mandatory and non mandatory fields

By default all fields being used in the extension are set to Mandatory fields in the entry form. The Form Builder allows you to also mark these fields as non mandatory. You can only set fields to non mandatory in the Form Builder if the fields are nullable in the “Schema” you are using in the extension. Learn more about creating and managing schemas in this section of the Management Console. When a Schema field is “nullable” you can not set it to non mandatory in the Form builder. The form builder will show a pink switch indicating that the field cannot be set to non mandatory.

The steps to change the order of the fields in your forms are:

1. Go to the configuration screen of your extension by clicking the Pinwheel and select “CONFIGURE EXTENSION”
2. In the modal (pop up) select the “Worksheet-schema” option in the colored horizontal menu bar
3. Select the second tab called “Form Builder”
4. Change the switches to set fields as “Required” (mandatory) or “Not Required” (non mandatory)
5. Make sure you click the “Save” button in the top right corner of the colored menu bar to save your changes.

Show/Hide fields with the Form Builder

The Form Builder allows you to show and hide fields of your underlying schema in the edit and overview forms of your extension. Make sure that hidden Mandatory fields do contain the proper content otherwise you will not be able to store your form entry in the database. You can show/hide any field you want in the edit form of the extension or in the overview (list view) of the extension. Make sure you do not hide forms that require input before storing otherwise you will not be able to save the entry (when a hidden field without content is mandatory) or end up with NULL values.

The steps to change the order of the fields in your forms are:

1. Goto the configuration screen of your extension by clciking the Pinwheel and select “CONFIGURE EXTENSION”
2. In the modal (pop up) select the “Worksheet-schema” option in the colored horizontal menu bar
3. Select the second tab called “Form Builder”
4. Change the switches to show or hide a field in the edit form (user input – entry of data) or the overview (list view in the extension that in some occasions is used to show all entries)
5. Make sure you click the “Save” button in the top right corner of the colored menu bar to save your changes.

Read Only

It may be important to show fields but for them not to be editable. Enable Read Only on the fields that should be left alone. These fields may have been dynamically filled so editing shouldn’t be a possibility.

Change the width of the fields in the edit form

The steps to change the order of the fields in your forms are:

1. Goto the configuration screen of your extension by clciking the Pinwheel and select “CONFIGURE EXTENSION”
2. In the modal (pop up) select the “Worksheet-schema” option in the colored horizontal menu bar
3. Select the second tab called “Form Builder”
4. Change the Width of each field from a preselected drop down
5. Make sure you click the “Save” button in the top right corner of the colored menu bar to save your changes.

Use dynamic default values in WriteBackExtreme

Use values that are present in your dashboard and store them in fields of your form. This feature hugely improves your flexibility and control. In this way, you can also gather information on dimensions and measures from your dashboard without user input! To add have this powerful feature, open up the configuration screen within your extension. Click on the Worksheet-schema tab where the list of your schemas will be shown, click on desired schema and open the Form builder tab.

 

Under ‘Default value’ header is where you will be able to make your values dynamic. Simply click underneath the Default value header on the schema(s) you wish to change to have dynamic values. You will be presented with a pop up window where you can choose between none, static & dynamic values. When choosing dynamic simply choose your desired worksheet and column within that worksheet. NOTE: Make sure that the data type of the selected column is similar to that of the form field. See it in action here: Dynamic values

Now possible to dynamically add when editing too, the values will be pre-filled by clicking the ‘Use default value to override the current value on edit’