Activate Your Dashboard With InfoAssist

By Matthew Lerner

In WebFOCUS 7.7.01, Information Builders enhanced InfoAssist’s Document Mode to allow you to create Active Dashboards in both HTML and Flash using a single global prompt. With WebFOCUS 7.7.02, we are taking this capability to the next level. Instead of a single global filter, you can now insert as many prompts as you want.

This new feature, called Active Dashboard Prompts, allows you to insert as many of the following types of prompts as you would like:

Text
List
Combobox
Checkbox
Radio Button

See Screen 1 for an Active Dashboard Prompts Design View.

Screen 1

Each prompt is populated by one of the reports or charts on the Dashboard. You can then choose which of the other reports/charts the prompt filters.


Screen 2

Active Dashboard prompts in InfoAssist are based on the WebFOCUS Enable prompting model. As such, you can create independent prompts and cascaded (parent-child) prompts.

Independent prompts are not linked to other prompts.

The last prompt you interact with is the one that is currently applied. Cascaded prompts are linked together in a parent-child relationship. The parent prompt filters all of the children prompts. All linked prompts are applied to their targets.

Screen 3

Screen 3 shows Cascade Properties.

The example that appears in the screens accompanying this article shows three prompts:

Country
Product type
Profit

Country and product type are cascaded together in order, while profit is currently an independent prompt. This can be adjusted using the Cascade Properties settings. You can even create multiple cascades that are independent of one another.

Active Dashboard Prompts bring a whole new world of possibilities to InfoAssist. For the first time you can create embedded cascaded prompts without the need of a desktop product and programming knowledge.