Tutorial part 6: Creating an App with Xcelsius

This tutorial is part of a course that explains the creation and registration of apps for the Dashboard Framework. In this part of the tutorial, you enhance a simple app with translatable texts, i.e. you use the dashboard infrastructure to flag texts as translatable, and to translate them.

In this step, you enhance the app from the first part of the tutorial with text elements, and specify the title and subtitle of the app as to be translated. You must connect the cells in the Excel table to the Dashboard Framework via an Xcelsius connection. When you register the app in the next step, you tell the framework that the connections are to translatable texts.

Prerequisites

This procedure is part of a comprehensive tutorial about 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 sixth part of the tutorial.

Procedure

Load the Xcelsius file ztut1_costs_month from the first part of the tutorial.
You want to specify the title and subtitle of the app, in the cells D2 and D4, as translatable. You must create the Xcelsius connection. As in other connections, you must leave a cell area above the cells whose contents are to be connected to the dashboard app, free, for each connection, and add it to the cell area of the connection.
Create a connection for the title first. Start the Data Manager by choosing Data Connections... , and create the relevant connection on the Definition tab page by choosing the + button. Enter the following data for the connection:
- In the Area Name field, enter the name TITLE.
- In the Range Type dropdown list box, choose the Row/Column entry.
- In the Area field, specify the cells in which the query output is to be written; in this tutorial, this is D1:D2. You need to select the empty first cell as well, since it is required by the Dashboard Framework.
- In the Access dropdown list, choose Write.
Then create a connection for the subtitle; in the Data Manager, in the Definition tab, choose +. Enter the following data for the connection:
- In the Area Name field, enter the name SUBTITLEN.
- In the Area Type dropdown list, choose Row/Column.
- In the Area field, specify the cells in which the query output is to be written; in this tutorial, this is D3:D4. Select the empty first cell as well, since it is required by the Dashboard Framework.
- In the Access dropdown list, choose Write.
Close the Data Manager.
Note
- You have created two separate connections for title and subtitle. You could have also created one common connection for both texts. In this case, the the connection area for a column would be three cells, one empty cell above, and one each for title and subtitle. The contents of each cell are translated separately, later in the process, so each cell must contain independent terms or complete sentences, to be translatable on its own.
- The cells (here D2 and D4), are filled at app run time by the Dashboard Framework, so their contents when you specify them in Xcelsius are irrelevant. They are also not part of the translation process.
End of the note.
Save the Xcelsius file locally on your computer with the name ztut6_translatable.
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 ztut6_translatable.
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 6: Registering the App. In this step, you register the app in the Dashboard Framework.