What's new in the Ginesys Web Report Installation Kit 2019.2.16?

Ginesys Web Report v2019.2.16 brings many exciting changes for users of Ginesys Web Report users - system administrators, report designers and report viewers.

Dashboard Upgrades

Ginesys has gone in for a complete overhaul of the Dashboard Designer  and  Dashboard Viewer tools with Report Kit version 2019.2.16  Below are the specifics of the fruits of our complete re-design process.

Designer Workflow
We have made simplified the workflow for designing Dashboards which means you have more time working with your data than building a useful dashboard. Building a Dashboard takes you through a left-to-right workflow on screen:

1. Add tiles from the New Tile menu on the top-left of the Designer.

2. Place the tiles on the canvas as you would like

3. Interact with the tiles in a newly designed Tile Properties Pane on the right side of the screen

Visualization Overhaul

We have overhauled Charts and visualizations built directly on the Dashboard canvas have been overhauled and are now based on Advanced Reports instead of Express View Reports. The flexible sorting, filtering, formulas and aggregation offered by the Advanced Report Designer are now available to Dashboard Visualizations, but its still easy, simple, free-flowing. Meaningful, attractive and easy to interpret visualizations can be built in as few as four steps:

Open

Filter and Parameter Menu

The Filters and Parameters menu in the Dashboard Designer has been made easier to use by grouping all content together. This Filters menu shows two Interactive Filters on a Dashboard, as well as an Imported filter from one of the reports on the canvas:

Open

Filters and Parameters contained on reports with the same data field or name will automatically consolidate into a "stack". This allows a cleaner, more intuitive filtering and interaction experience in both the Dashboard Designer and Dashboard Viewer. When filters and parameters automatically consolidate, they group together so that changing their Value will affect all of the tiles on the canvas simultaneously. Of course, this consolidation can be broken to allow granular customization as well.

The documentation on  Dashboard Filters  and  Dashboard Parameters  includes information about how these new menus work in greater detail.

Drilling Down to Dashboards

The Advanced Report Designer will now allow you to  link (or drill-down)  to a Dashboard instead of just another Advanced Report. The filtering action of drilling down is automatically applied to the tiles on the Dashboard, allowing a one-stop view of important data from another report.

Report Designer Upgrades

Changes to our Report Designer will mean enhancements for both users designing reports and for those viewing and interacting with reports. The  new toolbar  is easier to work with and easier to see.  Prompting parameters  now include dropdown lists with values from the data source that can be scrolled up or down.  Prompting filters  with a formula can also display a dropdown list of values—taking the guesswork out of filtering!  Conditional formatting with
formulas  allows more powerful conditional formatting. A new  color picker and 'sticky' headings  round out enhancements to the Report Designer for an all-around better experience for all users.

New Toolbar Icons and Layout

Advanced Report Designer toolbar in v2019.2+

The Report Designer toolbar includes a new, bold icon set. Additionally, these new icons in the Advanced Report Designer are the same icons used in other parts of the application. This means that custom themes are easier to apply, and a uniform look-and-feel is quick to accomplish.

Read more about the Toolbar  in our documentation.

Parameter Dropdowns Load All Values

When a report contains a prompting parameter, a user will now be able to select any available value from the data source. Previously, only the first 100 values
were available in the dropdown. Now, values load 100 at a time in the direction the user is scrolling. Scrolling works in both directions.

Formula Filters Show Available Filter Values In Dropdown

Whenever a filter uses a formula, a user will now be able to select any available calculated value from the data source in a dropdown. For example, a filter with
the formula {OrderDetails.Quantity} * {OrderDetails.UnitPrice} will show the results of this calculation in the dropdown when the report is run. Previously, only a text field was available where a value would need to be keyed in.

New Color Picker

A new color picker is in use throughout the application. The new color picker makes more colors available to report designers, as well as directly entering
hexadecimal or decimal color codes.

The bottom row of colors can show a default set of colors, can save preferred colors on a per-user basis or with extensibility, can be set by a system administrator.

'Sticky' Section Headers

When scrolling a report whose height or width is larger than the available screen space, section headers on the left side and top of the Advanced Report Designer will be frozen in place so you can still see them after scrolling.

Section, Page Header, Detail, Footer: Categories and Report Footer stay in place when scrolling horizontally across this report.

Conditional Format with Functions

Those of you who work with our Advanced Report Designer may be familiar with  Conditional Formatting . One application of Conditional Formatting is to
change the color of text or a cell's background. Previously, these colors changes were static choices made during the report design process. In v2019.2.16, the color attribute can be set dynamically with an Ginesys Web Report formula. This means that data fields, functions, calculations, parameters or cell values can be
used to determine the color attribute. A new 'Set by Formula' button appears in the color picker.