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Procedure documentationTutorial part 2: Creating an App with Xcelsius Locate this document in the navigation structure

 

This tutorial is part of a course that explains the creation and registration of apps for the Dashboard Framework. In this second part, you extend a simple app with the possibility of a drill down, that is, the possibility of calling one app from another, depending on the context.

To do this, in this step, you extend the app from the first part of the tutorial with the drill down. From the graphic that displays the monthly telephone costs for the different branches of a fictitious company, you should be able to click any individual branch to open it in a detail app to display the telephone costs on a daily basis.

Prerequisites

This procedure is part of a comprehensive tutorial on the topic Creating and Registering Dashboard Apps. During this tutorial, you create and register a number of apps and their associated BW queries.

You create this Xcelsius app in the second part of the tutorial.

Note Note

Ensure that you have already performed the previous steps, as described in Tutorial Part 2: Creating an App with Additional Navigation.

End of the note.

Procedure

  1. Load the Xcelsius file ztut1_costs_month from the first part of the tutorial.

  2. You want to allow a drill down. This should be set in such a way that the user can click on the bar for any branch to display the costs for that branch on a daily basis. To do this, you need to pass the selected branch to the Dashboard Framework using an Xcelsius connection. Since the selected branch is then passed to a BW query, you need to adjust the format of this parameter correspondingly. This is because the BW requires the transferred values in a particular format.

    Therefore enter the following in cells D9:H10:

    SIGN

    OPTION

    LOW

    HIGH

    Selected Branch

    I

    EQ

    The contents of the cells E9:H9 are technically not necessary and serve only to provide a better overview (this is the row that you should leave empty for technical names – and these are precisely those technical names). The contents have the following meanings:

    • SIGN: The value can be either I (include) or E (exclude). Use exclude only if you want to create a filter with which you can exclude a range (OPTION = BT). If you only want to filter for a value (the standard case), use include.

    • OPTION: Enter either EQ (equals) or BT (between) here. Use between only if you want to filter for a range. If you only want to filter for a value (the standard case), use equal.

    • LOW: If you want to filter for a value, enter the associated default value here. (In this case, this is the selected branch.) However, you do not need to enter anything here, since you will later set up the drill down in such a way that Xcelsius enters the selected branch in this cell at runtime. If you are filtering for a range, enter the lower limit here.

    • HIGH: If you want to filter for a value, leave this field empty. If you are filtering for a range, enter the upper limit here.

  3. Create the connection described above, to be able to pass the selected branch. To do this, start the Data Manager by choosing   Data   Connections  , and on the Definition tab page, choose the + button. Enter the following data for the connection:

    • In the Range Name field, enter SEL_LOCATION as the name of the connection. During registration, you specify this connection so that the Dashboard Framework can pass the selected branch to the BW query.

      Caution Caution

      Only use upper-case letters, numbers and the underscore character ('_') for the names of connections.

      End of the caution.

    • In the Range Type dropdown list box, choose the Table entry.

    • In the Range field, specify the cells that the connection is to pass; in this tutorial, this is E9:H10.

    • In the Access dropdown list box, choose the Read entry, since you only want to grant read access to this connection externally.

    Close the Data Manager.

  4. Ensure that Xcelsius permits a drill down of this type. Whenever the user clicks the bar for a branch, you want Xcelsius to write the value for this branch in cell G10. You can achieve this by following the procedure below:

    1. Select the chart and choose the Drill Down area in the subscreen on the right.

    2. Select the Enable Drill Down indicator.

    3. In the Insertion Type dropdown list box, choose the Row entry. For an explanation of the different insertion types, choose the Info button to the right of the dropdown list box.

    4. You want the branch selected from the existing branches to be written to cell G10. Therefore, for Row1, set theSource Data as cells A3:A10 (all of the existing branches) and the Destination as cell G10. The selected branch is written to this cell.

    5. You want Xcelsius to write to the cell whenever a user clicks a bar with the mouse. Therefore, check in the Interaction Options section that in the Insert On: dropdown list box, the entry Mouse click is selected.

    6. When the user interface is called, no entry should initially be selected. Therefore, in the Standard Selection area, in the dropdown list box Element:, select the entry No selection (-1).

  5. Save the Xcelsius file locally on your computer with the name ztut2_costs_month.

  6. Generate a Flash file from your Xcelsius file (file name extension swf), by choosing   File   Export   Flash (SWF)  . Save the Flash file with the name ztut2_costs_month.

    When registering the app, you will import both the Xcelsius file and the Flash file into the MIME repository of your SAP Solution Manager system later in the tutorial.

Result

With the Xcelsius file and the associated Flash file, you have created the user interface of your future dashboard app.

Continue this tutorial by performing the next step, Tutorial Part 2: Creating the Detail App with Xcelsius. In this step, you create the user interface that displays the daily telephone costs for the last month for the selected branch.