Actions
Actions is a Spotfire concept that offers a wide range of possibilities to perform tasks from within an analysis, and can also include tasks that affect external systems. The actions can be added to text areas and visualizations, and they are initiated using various controls or triggers. For example, you can create actions that control the workflow through an analysis, run scripts, or let people send data externally. That is, the contents of the actions can differ a lot, and in addition, the way they are added differs depending on the context.
Actions that perform tasks within an analysis
These actions can be triggered from text areas or from some visualizations. Text area buttons and links are provided that can initiate tasks like application of bookmarks, navigation workflows, or execution of data functions and scripts. These types of actions can also be defined in KPI charts and graphical tables. You can also add triggers performing certain actions in some other visualizations. Scripts can be added as a part of an analysis. If the scripts are packaged together as actions in an action mod, they can be signed and shared as a part of the mods framework. Script actions can be added to links, images or buttons in text areas, they can be triggered when a document property is changed, or they can be triggered when you are clicking on a graphical item in a visualization.
For more information on how to create such actions, see Adding actions to a text area, Adding an action trigger to a visualization, and Adding actions performed when clicking on visualization items.
Actions that perform tasks involving external systems
Your findings in a visualization might sometimes make you want to take an action in another system. For example, you might want to send certain information and data that you see to another application. Such external actions can be triggered directly from a visualization. A configurator defines which triggers should be available in the visualizations, and what information the action should send. Anyone opening the analysis can potentially use the configured action trigger to send data. Before you give approval to send any data externally, you can review it.
See Adding a new external action to an analysis [Deprecated] for more information about external actions.