Introducing WebFOCUS Designer

The Home Page is the default landing page that opens when you first sign in to WebFOCUS. It serves as a centralized place for creating, organizing, and sharing content, performing administrative tasks, scheduling reports and procedures, and working with your data. These functions are controlled by the permissions that are assigned to role of a user. To learn more about the available roles in WebFOCUS, see the WebFOCUS Security and Administration technical content.

The default Home Page is shown in the following image. The appearance of this page may vary, depending on the configuration or setup of your organization. For example, the administrator in your organization may configure a custom sign-in page and home page.

WebFOCUS Designer enables you to quickly and easily create many different types of charts. You can build charts that use filters, matrix rows and columns, calculated fields, include run-time behavior such as Insight and Auto Drill, and many other customizable features. These charts can be added to a page or workbook with other charts to provide an expanded view of your data.

To create a chart in WebFOCUS Designer, from the WebFOCUS Home Page, on the Action bar, click the Designer tab or Common tab and click Chart. In the Open dialog box, navigate to a data source that you want to use and click Select. The following image shows WebFOCUS Designer while creating a chart.

When creating a chart, the WebFOCUS Designer toolbar provides access to general properties, as well as chart-specific features to help you explore and distribute your content and provide run-time enhancements. The WebFOCUS Designer toolbar when creating a chart is shown in the following image.

The following table lists and describes the controls that you can access from the WebFOCUS Designer toolbar.

Icon	Description
	Application Menu. Opens a menu that includes the following options: Open. Opens an existing chart. When creating a workbook, this option allows you to open another workbook. New. Creates new content in WebFOCUS Designer. This option is not available when the chart is part of a workbook. Save. Saves the current chart. Save as. Saves the current chart as a new file. Export data. Downloads a spreadsheet containing the data in the chart. Export image. Downloads an image of the chart. View Source. Allows you to view the underlying source code of a chart. This enables you to see how the chart is built by exposing the code that comprises it. Specially, it is used by support technicians to help you with debugging charts. Within View Source, you can examine the contents of the procedure in a view only window. Clicking the Export button places a copy of the procedure as a .fex file into your download directory. Close. Close WebFOCUS Designer.
	Save. Opens the Save dialog box, where you can save the chart to a specific location in your environment.
	Undo. Undoes the previous action.
	Redo. Available when you have undone an action. Redoes the last undone action.
	Preview. Shows the page in preview mode, allowing you to view how the page will appear when run. To exit the preview mode of the WebFOCUS Designer, click the back arrow.
	Thumbnail. Takes a snapshot of the chart to use as a thumbnail on the WebFOCUS Home Page and in the Resource selector when creating a page. A thumbnail is an image of the chart that can be used to quickly identify the component in your repository.
	Show option. Allows you to show or hide the chart header, chart footer, or Filter toolbar.
	More. Provides options to apply Auto Drill or Auto Linking to the chart, set it to be an Auto Link target, enable Insight for the chart, and enable Automatic refresh. Note: Charts that are part of a workbook cannot be Auto Link targets or run with Insight.
	Settings. Opens the Designer Settings dialog box, where you can change the following settings: Preview data. Allows you to choose to show Live data from the data source or generic Dummy data in the canvas at design time when creating a chart. Record limit. When Live Data is selected, allows you to specify the number of records from the data source to display in the canvas at design time when creating a chart.
	Help. Launches the online Help content.

When creating a chart, you use fields from a selected data source. Placing a field into a bucket adds that field to the chart, creating, sizing, or styling chart elements accordingly. Fields can be selected from the Field panel, as shown in the following image.

The Field panel includes the Fields tab and Variables tab.

When viewing fields, the menu at the top of the panel allows you to change how the fields are displayed. You can switch between Folder view, which shows your fields organized into folders and hierarchies, and Flat view, which shows a single list of fields in your data source. You can also choose whether to split dimensions and measures into separate sections of the panel and choose whether to show the field titles, field names, or field paths. The Enforce Paths option automatically checks any joins in your data source to ensure that all fields are connected. If a field is used whose table is not joined to another table, Enforce Paths will not allow fields from that disconnected table to be used, ensuring that the request executes successfully.

To add a field to the chart, drag it into a bucket on the Display tab or onto the canvas. Right-clicking a field provides further options, depending on the type of field. These options include the ability to add the field to the chart or filter toolbar, use a dimension field as a measure or a measure field as a dimension, create bins for measure fields, or create a define field using the selected field. You can also create a define using the menu to the right of the Dimensions and Measures sections.

Drag a field into the Filter toolbar above the canvas to create a dynamic parameter filter for the chart. You are prompted to select the values that can be selected at run time.

The Variables tab contains a list of variables and preset filters defined in your data source, as well as default system variables. To add a variable to the chart to use as a filter, drag it into the Filter toolbar.

Adding fields to a chart places them in corresponding buckets that define the information displayed in the chart. Different buckets are available for different chart types. The following image shows the available buckets for a bar chart.

By contrast, the following image shows the available buckets for a ring pie chart.

The ring pie chart uses a Measure bucket that is not used in a bar chart. This is because bar charts use the Vertical and Horizontal buckets for the height and number of risers in the bar charts, as well as for matrix rows and columns. In a ring pie chart, the Vertical and Horizontal buckets are used for matrix rows and columns only, while the number and size of slices in the chart are defined by the Color and Measure buckets, respectively.

Depending on the type of chart that you create, you may see some of the following buckets:

• Vertical
• Horizontal
• Size
• Color
• Tooltip
• Animate
• MultiPage
• Measure
• Detail
• Geo
• Group

The Display tab also includes options that you can use to modify the structure of the chart. These options are also different for each chart type. The display options for a bar chart are shown in the following image.

The menu to the right of each bucket label also provides different options, depending on the bucket. These options include the ability to clear the bucket, split the x-axis for multiple measures, or use measure names in the Color field.

When placed in the Vertical and Horizontal buckets, fields display icons indicating the sort order of the field and provide an option to use the field as a matrix row or column. In the following image, the Vertical bucket contains a matrix row field and a vertical axis measure field.

When placed into buckets, aggregate field labels appear in green while sort field labels appear in blue.

You can also right-click a field label in the Display tab to access options pertaining to that field. These options include field format, sorting, and more.

The tabs above the buckets allow you to switch from the Display tab to the Style tab . The Style tab contains a set of options to format the chart. These options include general options, as well as options specific to each chart type. You can use the Quick Access menu to access different sets of formatting options. For example, the following image shows the menu to access different sets of options for a bar chart.

General options include the ability to change the theme or style sheet, format the chart frame and background, and define sizing and behavior for null values. The other sets of options contain settings for different elements of the chart and settings specific to certain chart types. For more information on these options, see the content about different formatting options and formatting specific chart types.

The current state of the chart appears on the canvas. When you add fields to the chart, either by dragging fields to buckets or onto the canvas itself, the chart on the canvas is automatically refreshed.

The canvas also contains, if enabled in the Show option menu, a Chart Heading section and a Chart Footing section. You can double-click these sections to add and edit the header and footer text for the chart.

When editing the chart header, a text toolbar appears, allowing you to make modifications to the header or footer text including font, size, style, alignment, and color. You can also drag a field from the Field panel into this area to create a dynamic header or footer containing the displayed field value.

Above the canvas is the Filter toolbar. The Filter toolbar enables you to quickly filter your chart with a dynamic parameter for the selected field. To add a filter, drag a field from the Field panel to the Filter toolbar. A prompt appears, allowing you to select filter values for the chart. The selection control changes depending on whether the field is a character field, numeric field, or date field. If no value is selected, all values will be available.

If you right-click a filter, you can set it to exclude the selected values or choose whether to allow one value or multiple selected values. If you filter for all values and then right-click the filter and click Require Selection, the chart will not load until a value is selected.

To see a run-time view of the chart, including behaviors such as tooltips and Auto Drill that are not available in the canvas, click Preview on the WebFOCUS Designer toolbar.

You can change chart types using the Chart Picker. Click a chart type to quickly change to that type of chart. The canvas and the Display and Format panel refresh accordingly. The Chart Picker is collapsed by default. When collapsed, the Chart Picker shows a default set of 14 chart types, as shown in the following image.

You can expand the Chart Picker by clicking the left arrow at the bottom. This reveals an extra set of Business charts and a Custom section containing HTML5 chart extensions that have been enabled in your environment, as shown in the following image.

A report is a tabular display of data, in which quantitative measure values are displayed in rows and columns based on categorical dimension values. As a Technical Preview feature, WebFOCUS Designer provides tools to expand on this basic structure through organization, filtering, and formatting options, among others.

To enable the Technical Preview so that you can create reports using WebFOCUS Designer, on the WebFOCUS Home Page, expand the User menu, point to Administration and click Administration Console. In the Administration Console, from the navigation pane on the Configuration tab, click Other. On the Other page, type ALL in the Technical Preview Features field, and then click Save.

To create a report, on the WebFOCUS Home Page, select the domain or folder in which you want to save your content, clickDesigner on the Action bar, and then click Report. You are then prompted to select a data source, which defines the fields that you can use to build the report. Once you have selected a data source, WebFOCUS Designer opens in report mode.

When creating a report, the WebFOCUS Designer toolbar provides access to general content-creation functionality, as well as report-specific features to help you explore and contextualize your content and provide run-time enhancements. The WebFOCUS Designer toolbar when creating a report is shown in the following image.

The following table lists and describes the controls that you can access from the WebFOCUS Designer toolbar when creating a report.

Icon	Description
	Application Menu. Opens a menu that includes the following options: Open. Opens an existing report. When creating a workbook, this option allows you to open another workbook. New. Creates new content in WebFOCUS Designer. This option is not available when the report is part of a workbook. Save. Saves the current report. Save as. Saves the current report as a new file. Export data. Downloads a spreadsheet containing the data in the report. View Source. Allows you to view the underlying source code of a report. This enables you to see how the report is built by exposing the code that comprises it. Specially, it is used by support technicians to help you with debugging reports. Within View Source, you can examine the contents of the procedure in a view only window. Clicking the Export button places a copy of the procedure as a .fex file into your download directory. Close. Close WebFOCUS Designer.
	Save. Opens the Save dialog box, where you can save the report to a specific location in your environment. Once the report has been saved, clicking Save overwrites the existing saved report.
	Undo. Undoes the previous action.
	Redo. Available when you have undone an action. Redoes the last undone action.
	Preview. Shows the report in preview mode, allowing you to view how the page will appear when run. To exit the preview mode of the WebFOCUS Designer, click the docked back arrow button or press the Esc key.
	Show option. Allows you to show or hide the page header, page footer, or Filter toolbar.
	More. Provides options to apply Auto Drill or Auto Linking to the chart, set it to be an Auto Link target, and add column and row totals. Note: Reports that are part of a workbook cannot be Auto Link targets or run with Insight.
	Settings. Opens the Designer Settings dialog box, where you can change the following settings: Preview data. Allows you to choose to show Live data from the data source or generic Dummy data in the canvas at design time when creating a chart. Record limit. When Live Data is selected, allows you to specify the number of records from the data source to display in the canvas at design time when creating a chart.
	Help. Launches the online Help content.

When creating a report, you use fields from a selected data source. Placing a field into the Rows, Columns, or Summary bucket adds that field to the report to sort it into rows, sort it into columns, or display aggregated values.

The Field panel includes the Fields tab and Variables tab.

When viewing fields, the menu at the top of the panel allows you to change how the fields are displayed. You can switch between Folder view, which shows your fields organized into folders and hierarchies, and Flat view, which shows a single list of fields in your data source. You can also choose whether to split dimensions and measures into separate sections of the panel and choose whether to show the field titles, field names, or field paths. The Enforce Paths option automatically checks any joins in your data source to ensure that all fields are connected. If a field is used whose table is not joined to another table, Enforce Paths will not allow fields from that disconnected table to be used, ensuring that the request executes successfully.

To view the selected data source and join it to additional related data sources, click the Data tab at the bottom of the Designer interface. You can return to the report by clicking the report tab.

To add a field to the report, drag it into a bucket on the Display tab or onto the canvas. Right-clicking a field provides further options, depending on the type of field. These options include the ability to add the field to the report or filter toolbar, create bins for measure fields, or create a define field calculation using the selected field. You can also create a define using the menu to the right of the Dimensions and Measures areas.

The Variables tab contains a list of variables and preset filters defined in your data source, as well as default system variables. To use a variable to filter the report, drag it into the Filter toolbar.

Adding fields to a bucket in the report defines how the report is structured. The Rows bucket creates a row for each unique value in each field within it, sorting the aggregate or detail values in the report. You can use multiple fields in the Row bucket to show more granular information in the report. In the following image, the Product Category and Sale Year fields have both been placed in the Rows bucket, with the Quantity Sold and Revenue fields in the Summary bucket providing aggregated values for each row.

The Columns bucket creates a set of measure columns for each unique value in each Column field. Like the Rows bucket, fields in the Columns bucket can be used to sort the aggregate or detail values in the report, and you can use multiple Column fields to display more granular information. In the following image, Product Category is in the Rows bucket, while Sale Year is in the Columns bucket. Since Quantity Sold and Revenue are in the Summary bucket, they are repeated in separate columns for each Sale Year value.

The Summary bucket aggregates measure field values for each sort value in the report. Measure values are summed, by default, for each sort row and sort column value. You can right-click a field in the Summary bucket and point to Aggregate to aggregate measure values using a different operation, such as average or percent. Adding multiple fields to the Summary bucket creates multiple measure columns in the report. These columns are repeated for each Column value, if any have been added.

While the Summary bucket is the default measure bucket, it is not the only option for displaying measure values. You can use the display options to change the Summary bucket to the Count, Detail, or Detail with counter bucket to display different information for the fields within it. The display options can be accessed above the buckets, as shown in the following image.

The Count bucket, enabled by selecting the Count display option , aggregates values in the report by displaying the number of records for each field within it, for each sort value. The Detail bucket, enabled by selecting the Detail display option , does not aggregate the values of the fields within it. Instead, it displays all values for the selected fields. The Detail with counter bucket, enabled by selecting the Detail with counter display option , displays all values for the selected fields, similar to the Detail bucket, and also counts the rows for each primary sort field.

The menu to the right of each bucket label also provides different options, depending on the bucket. On all buckets, this menu allows you to create a new field list parameter or clear the bucket. For the Rows bucket, you can also create a new calculation, and for the measure bucket, you can change the display option or create a new calculation.

When placed into buckets, aggregate field labels appear in green while sort field labels appear in blue. Hidden fields appear slightly dimmed. When placed in the Row and Column buckets, fields display icons indicating the sort order of the field. You can click this icon to change the sort order from ascending to descending. You can drag fields around within a bucket to reorder them, or click the X on a field in a bucket to remove it.

To remove all fields from the report, click the Clear buckets content icon above the buckets.

You can also right-click a field label in the Display tab to access options pertaining to that field. These options include field format, sorting, and more.

The tabs above the buckets allow you to switch from the Display tab to the Style tab . The Style tab contains a set of options to style and format the report. You can select a theme to provide automatic styling to different components of the report, such as headers, column titles, and data values, based on a predefined StyleSheet. You can also change the output format. You can use the default HTML format, which runs your report in a web browser, or you can use the Offline Analysis option to enable a number of in-document analytic options that allow you to interact with the report and explore the data that it was created with, even without a connection to the original data source.

The current state of the report appears on the canvas. When you add fields to the report, either by dragging fields to buckets or onto the canvas itself, the report on the canvas is automatically refreshed.

You can quickly and easily change the layout of the report by using the report picker, which is shown in the following image.

You can click a pattern in the report picker to instantly change how the field values are arranged on the report, by having sort field values display on each row instead of showing blanks to indicate repeated values, or by using stacked measures to organized measure fields in sets of rows instead of columns.

The canvas also contains, if enabled in the Show option menu, a page heading section and a page footing section. You can double-click these sections to add and edit the header and footer text for each page of the report.

When editing the header or footer, a text toolbar appears, allowing you to make modifications to the text including font, size, style, alignment, and color, as shown in the following image.

You can also drag a field from the Field panel into the heading or footing area to create a dynamic header or footer containing the displayed field value. If there are page breaks in the report that affect the field added to the header or footer, a different field value appears on each page.

Above the canvas is the Filter toolbar. The Filter toolbar enables you to quickly filter your report with a dynamic parameter for the selected field. To add a filter, drag a field from the Field panel to the Filter toolbar. A prompt appears, allowing you to select filter values for the report. The selection control changes depending on whether the field is a character field, numeric field, or date field. If no value is selected in the filter control, all values are displayed in the report, and no filtering is applied.

If you right-click a filter, you can set it to exclude the selected values or choose whether to allow one value or multiple selected values. If you click Require Selection, the report will not load until a value is selected to dynamically filter the report at run time.

To see a run-time view of the report, including behaviors such as Auto Drill, Auto Linking, or dynamic filtering that are not available in the canvas, click Preview on the WebFOCUS Designer toolbar.

You can create interactive responsive pages using content that you or other members of your organization create. Content can be added to a page by utilizing drag-and-drop actions. With the interactive canvas, you can resize and rearrange resources with ease. Additionally you can use the integrated filter control capability to create instant, compelling applications and InfoApps from your content.

To create a page, from the WebFOCUS Home Page, on the Action bar, click the Common tab or Designer tab and click Page, then select a page template.

When creating a page, WebFOCUS Designer includes the following components that contain different tools and functionality.

The WebFOCUS Designer toolbar provides access to general properties and interface controls that you use to help develop content in WebFOCUS Designer, as shown in the following image.

The following table lists and describes the controls that you can access from the WebFOCUS Designer toolbar.

Icon	Description
	Application Menu. Opens a menu that you can use to open an existing page, create a new page, save the current page, and close WebFOCUS Designer.
	Save. Opens the Save dialog box, where you can save the page to a specific location in your environment.
	Preview. Shows the page in preview mode, allowing you to view how the page will appear when run. To exit the preview mode of the WebFOCUS Designer, click the back arrow.
	Quick Filter. Configures filters that automatically appear when new unbound parameters are found in the content on the page. The badge icon shows the number of parameters available.
	Page Filter Configuration. Opens the Page Filter Configuration dialog box, where you can choose to display filters in a filter bar above your content or in a modal window.
	Info Mode. Enables the informational mode that changes the view of all content items on the canvas to display their paths in the repository and parameters configured within these items.
	Help. Launches the online Help content.
	Resources. Hides or shows the Resource selector.
	Properties. Hides or shows the Properties panel.

You can use the Resource selector to access content, containers, and controls for your page. The Resource selector has the following tabs:

• Containers
• Content
• Controls

The Containers tab is shown in the following image.

Using this tab, you can select empty containers that you can drag to the canvas and populate with the content of your choice. The types of containers available to you include the following:

• Panel
• Tabbed
• Carousel
• Accordion
• Grid
• Panel group

The Content tab is shown in the following image.

The Content tab consists of two drop-down areas, Content and Repository Widgets.

The Content area, provides access to the Resources tree, where you can navigate to your content. The initial view of the Resources tree displays the directory in which the page is created. You can navigate to other domains and folders using the back arrow. Each item on the tree is represented by a thumbnail, making it easy to locate content. The following images show the Resources tree displaying two different levels of the domain hierarchy.

The Repository Widgets area, shown in the following image, displays the Explorer and Link Tile widgets, which give you more ways to interact with your content.

The Controls tab is shown in the following image.

Using this tab, you can add a text label or a Submit button to your page.

The canvas is the design area. It provides a responsive grid for all your containers and content and resizes automatically to fit any browser or device. The canvas is shown in the following image.

When you right-click the grid area, a shortcut menu of options opens that include the following:

• Settings. Opens Section Settings inside the Properties panel, which you can use to make the current section collapsible.
• Style. Opens the Style tab of the Properties panel, which you can use to apply styling to the current section.
• Delete section. Deletes the current section.
• Insert section above. Inserts a section above the current section.
• Insert section below. Inserts a section below the current section.

The Page toolbar is located above the canvas. Here you can edit the page title by double-clicking the text and typing the new text. You can hide the page title by disabling Title in the Properties panel.

The Page toolbar also contains two options, which are described in the following table.

Icon	Description
	Refresh. Refreshes the content on the canvas.
	Filter. Toggles the page filter, which can be displayed as a filter bar or a filter modal window. This option is only visible when filters are added to the page.

You can hide the options by disabling Toolbar in the Properties panel. To hide the Page toolbar completely, disable both Title and Toolbar in the Properties panel.

You can use the Properties panel to configure properties for the element that you selected on the page. An example of the Properties panel for a page is shown in the following image. Under the Settings tab, you can toggle the title and toolbar visibility. Under the Style tab, you can configure page style and page heading.

A workbook combines a page and multiple charts into a single file. Using a workbook, you can create a data flow to engage in data discovery, create charts to analyze that data, and add multiple charts to a page for a broader perspective. Using a workbook is a quick way to explore your data in a single session, providing the ability to save multiple content components together for easy access.

To create a workbook, from the WebFOCUS Home Page, click the Common tab or the Designer tab, then click Workbook. In the Open dialog box, navigate to a data source and click Select. A new workbook opens to a chart component in WebFOCUS Designer.

The options available to create content in a workbook depend on the type of component you are editing. If you are editing a chart in a workbook, the available options are the same as for a stand-alone chart. If you are editing a page, the available options are those that you use to create a page.

The workbook contains additional options in the navigation area. You can use them to switch between components, add a chart to the workbook, and add a page to the workbook. There can be only one page component in a workbook. The navigation area is shown in the following image.

To delete a chart or report from a workbook containing multiple charts and reports, right-click the navigation tab for an item, select Delete, and then select Yes to confirm the deletion of the item. You cannot delete an item if it is currently being used in the page within a workbook. You must remove it from the page first, then delete it. Additionally, you cannot delete the only component in a workbook, or the page component.