In Tableau dashboard it is possible to create a number of elements (like sliders) which can be used by user to set values of some parameters. Further these parameters are used in combination with data as input for some calculations. The results of the calculations are displayed back to the user.
The default behavior of Tableau is that the calculations are triggered each time as soon as one of the parameters is changed by a user. It might be not optimal if there are many parameters and each recalculation takes several seconds. A user might want first to set the values of all parameters and only then trigger the calculations.
How can one get this behavior?
ADDED
I found out that I can choose "pause auto updates" (here). In this way a change in one of the parameters does not trigger the calculations (as I want). Then I can trigger the calculations (after all parameters are changed) by pressing "Refresh" button. The problem with this solution is that I, as a dashboard developer, have this button but the user will not have it. I guess the user can also update the dashboard by pressing F9 button on the keyboard, but it might be not user friendly. I would prefer to put a "Refresh" button into the UI (into dashboard directly). Is it possible?
ADDED 2
Here I see a question that is identical to mine. The proposed solution is to use "Pause" and "Run" buttons. However, as I have already mentioned, it does not seems to be a "full solution" since it works only for the developers of dashboard and not the final users (since they do not have access to these buttons). So, my question remains: How can I add the "Pause" and "Run" buttons to the dashboard?
You can factor out portions of your dashboard, such as user input, into HTML inputs and then use the Tableau JavaScript API to control aspects of Tableau's behavior, such as when it refreshes. You can then style your controls with CSS etc. At the cost of maintaining a bit of HTML and JavaScript.
It may not be worth the hassle compared to just putting a note on the dashboard to say, "use pause and resume when ..." but it does give you more control over look, feel, behavior and integration with other apps
Related
I have an input form in which users submit multiple types of information to the database.
Is there any way I could provide an example input of what should go in each field, upon the form loading?
Some fields I'd expect a small paragraph of text, others are dropdowns. The dropdown fields I wouldn't need to put an example of course, just the string text fields. If I try and include an example in the Default value for example, it would save the default value, which I wouldn't want.
Any help is greatly appreciated - It's worth noting I'm quite new to Access & coding in general.
I agree you probably don't want to use default values, or actually enter dummy data into the actual controls for the reason you mention: saving dummy values to the table.
A few possibilities:
Use a custom tooltip. You can do this by editing a control's "controltip text" property. Keep in mind that tooltips are only visible to the user when they hover the cursor over the specific control.
Add a label below the input control that describes the information that should be put in the control. This would always be visible, but can quickly cause your form to be cluttered and difficult to read.
I should say though, that you want to attempt to make your forms as intuitive as possible. For example, if you expect a paragraph of text, make the textbox much larger than a control only expecting a 6 character string. The more you are concerned with UX (user experience), the greater the chance that users will pick up on expectations using subtle design hints. I highly recommend researching the topic if you are concerned that your users will be unable to decipher the purpose of your form/controls. Be sure to check out the UX page on SE.
Furthermore, you can utilize a control's "AfterUpdate" event to validate the input placed in the control as soon as the user moves away from it. For example, you could test if the input IsNumeric() to validate that numbers were entered instead of text. If text is found, you can use a message box to alert the user, and move the cursor back to the control that is invalid.
Of course, that's the customized approach to just using the control's validation rules. The only issue I have had with the standard validation rules is user exhaustion. It can be irritating for a user to deal with validation messages when they are already aware that a typo was made. With an unbound entry form that requires a save button, I usually batch all control validation into the save procedure. This allows the user free reign to skip controls in the tab order without being blocked by constant validation exceptions.
Basically, what pros/cons are there to using multiple forms in the same web page vs one form with multiple submit buttons? Any difference at?
Ah? Multiple submit buttons on a single form will all submit the entire form when pressed... there's really no advantage to having multiples, unless you're overriding how the submit process works so each button only submits it's own area. In this case they'd probably not even by submit buttons, but just buttons with sum JS code to handle submission.
Multiple forms are discrete spaces of data collection, each can have it's own submit button... but only one of them can be sent at a time (and depending on the browser you may loose what's in the other forms).
Neither approach is particularly good from a user interface perspective since it'll be confusing.
The real question is, what are you trying to do that prompts you to ask this?
The two behave differently and there are good reasons to choose one over the other.
Multiple Forms on a page allow you to send data to two different locations. A common example is to have an input form as the main focus of a page going to one location, and a search form that appears as part of the generic header/footer. These both go to separate locations and submit only the HTML form elements within their appropriate <form/>
Multiple submit buttons offer you the ability to give different purpose to a submitted set of form elements. E.g. One form may have a bunch of submit buttons all with name attributes, meaning you can add conditional logic on the server side to say: "Continue", go " Back" or even "Save for later". All reference only the form elements within it's parent tag.
Two side notes are: 1) You can't nest forms. 2) JavaScript can change this default behaviour if you wanted it to. :)
Edit: with reference to a comment you made, if you wanted to do without JavaScript (a wise choice while it's not needed), you could do some careful thinking and keep POSTing the form to itself. Each time checking which form button has been clicked (top tip, give them all the same name and you can just switch case through it) and do whatever you need to do, including performing validation. E.g: When they hit "add media", you'd save the media uploaded and return a reference of it to the screen as a hidden input. The user can then continue to add things to the other boxes and when complete, hit your save button, at which point you do all the main saving work and make sure you tie the uploaded file to it as well.
You effectively keep adding stuff to their screen until they hit the save and then you perform a save method and redirect to a thank you page (or whatever logic suits your scenario). :)
All fields in a form are sent when one of their submit button is clicked. It's for you to see if you need all fields or not.
I want to be able to search an html page that is refreshing every 10 seconds for the word "stat". If the word is found I then want to alert the user through a pop up dialog and possibly a repeating sound until the user acknowledges it.
UPDATE:
Sorry the question was a bit ambiguous. I do not know a great deal about this stuff I just do it as a hobby.
OK so here is the deal. I work as Biomedical Electronics Technician for a hospital. We have a work order system that is web based. Nurses can enter a work order into this system. I have a browser window open at all times that refreshes periodically through an add-on for IE so I can always be up to date on the status of the work orders coming in. When a nurse the enters enters a work order they have the option of choosing Stat, High, Medium, or Low for the priority. When a stat work order is placed our response time should be within five minutes theoretically. I want some way to alert myself when a stat work order has been placed so I can respond accordingly. And I know a repeating sound would be annoying, but that might be the best way to get my attention.
Another caveat to this is the work order status can be changed by me, the tech. So when a work order is initially placed the status is Not assigned or something like that. Once I go start on a work order I change the status to In Progress. If I have to order a part I change the status to Hold for Parts, etc. So basically, what I am saying is I don't want to alerted if the status is anything but "Not assigned". If it will help I will get a copy of the source of the page when I get to work tomorrow.
Our IT department seems unwilling to help and the company that made the product is so busy chasing the daily bugs that show up to add new features such as this at this time. If I knew more a Google search might help, but alas I am a bit noobish in the programming realm, however I am 2 years from a C.S. degree so I am not a complete novice.
To answer another question, I do not have access to the page I am just viewing it so any sort of script would need to run on my client machine.
Thanks
I found this, try it https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3028/
Maybe it can search for STAT on the entire page?
Based off your description, it doesn't sound like you have access to the server to change the code of the page itself, correct?
If that's the case, spend some time learning how to use Greasemonkey (or rather Greasemonkey for IE). It allows you to add functionality to a web page from the client (browser) side, regardless of what's on the server.
You'll need to find the elements that hold the "stat" term your after, and have it check periodically those elements periodically. Look into the setTimeout method for that periodicity. The rest you'll have to work out specific to that page.
What you're looking for, since you have python available, is to build a simple, easy to use webscraper.
First link is how i would do it quick and dirty.
http://www.ehow.com/how_4436125_read-web-page-using-python.html
Second link is a bit more robust and nifty with BeautifulSoup
http://www.builderau.com.au/program/python/soa/Build-a-basic-Web-scraper-in-Python/0,2000064084,339281476,00.htm
Basically, read the page (even set the whole loop on a 10 second refresh timer).
Go line by line with a while readline loop.
See if one of your magic words exists with a regular expression
...
profit?
(... meaning do your alert song and dance)
(profit being rejoice!)
my company's software product has a feature that allows users to generate forms from Word templates. The program auto fills some fields from the SQL database and the user can fill in other data that they desire. So we have a .dotx template that holds the design of the form, and then the user gets the .docx file to fill out when they call it from our program.
The problem we're having is that some of our users have been finding that the forms take an exceptionally long time to open up and then, once open, are so slow to respond (scroll around, etc) that they're unusable. So in my investigations so far, I've found out that the problem systems are one with lower powered CPUs (unfortunately it happens for systems above our system requirements) and the Word forms that cause the problems are ones with large amount of ActiveX style checkboxes on them. I verified that reducing the ActiveX checkboxes fixes the form loading problems.
So I have the following questions about solutions (we're using Word 2007):
1) Is there any way to configure Word, or some other settings, so that there won't be such a strain opening a Word form with lots of ActiveX checkboxes? Any way of speeding up Word's opening?
2) Using Legacy style checkboxes instead of the ActiveX ones makes the forms load fine, but it looks like the user has to double-click the checkbox and change Default Value->Checked. Is there a way to configure it so that they can simply click on the checkbox to tick it? "Legacy Forms" checkbox as a name kind of worries me (Legacy…), does that mean a future version of word at some point wouldn't load the checkboxes because they're "legacy"?
3) Yes, it became clear to me after a little bit of research into solutions that Word is not the tool for the job for forms like I'm describing. InfoPath seems to be exactly what we should have been using all along but unfortunately I wasn't involved in the decision making or development of these forms, just tasked with coming up with a solution.
I'd appreciate answers to any of these, or if anyone has any other ideas for solutions to this problem.
Thanks
I'm about 3 years too late, but if you want a legacy checkbox to act like a checkbox, you have to restrict editing on the document or section. (You can lock just a section, if you want.) Locking--on Word 2010 it's called "Restrict editing"--is an option under either the Developer tab or the Review tab.
If you restrict editing in this way, the user cannot edit the text but can fill in the form field, so if the form field is a checkbox, the user can click the checkbox on or off; if the form field is a text box, the user can fill the text box.
If you choose to lock off just a section, you'll probably want to use continuous section breaks (Page Layout > Breaks > Continuous) and specify which section. (In the space where you choose form editing as your kind of restriction, there's a small link that lets you specify which section or sections are locked.)
I know pop ups are not good and should be avoided if possible but is that really true that now, whenever i think of using a pop up, i should always be considering other options? Are there any exceptions? And the last question is: what is the default replacement for pop ups?
You can use any javascript based dialog. Look for example at jQuery UI Dialog
The "Web2.0" pop-up might be a lightbox. I hope these are just a passing fad, because they are kind of annoying (a lot like pop-ups).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightbox_(JavaScript)
Banners, like you get at the top of Stack Overflow to tell you about badges, comments, see the FAQ if you're a new user are my favorite. They don't really get in the way and can link to the main content.
It depends on what you are trying to accomplish. Pop-ups are completely acceptable in certain contexts. The aversion to pop-ups arose from having pop-up foisted on users in the form of advertisements. I think that pop-ups are still a valid device in the correct case.
My rule of thumb is to not make any decisions for the user that they can make themselves. This typically includes opening a pop-up since they could right-click and choose "open link in new window" if they so desired.
Do you want to capture of a piece of user input without allowing any further interaction? A modal dialog is your friend.
there are cases where you want to offer a bit of useful info or a quick reference that doesn't necessitate closing off the rest of the web page or navigating to a different location. This could be addressed using some javascript and floating div's but many times a pop-up will do what you want without being obtrusive to a user.
I tend to read resources from the likes of 37 signals and UIE to keep up with the best ways to enhance user experience without alienating a user.