Widget display enhancements

[JonKemp]

Hi All,

I have had several requests from users regarding the layout of period and Variance & Period Variance modes. I have opted to put them into one feature request rather than multiple. I believe these options could also be applied on pretty much all the modes.

Firstly, although custom mode could work, when you look at it on a dashboard we loose the ability to choose a custom period. In effect the custom widget would become static. In a lot of cases, having the widget more configurable (show/hide elements) it would take away a lot of the layout headaches.

Period Mode - Total Column (On/Off)
The total column (first on left) to not be present on period mode. Specifically on month trending, they may be looking at the period values only and the total is not relevant. This is especially true on dashboards, if the default is rolling 12 months and user switches to a custom period of current Fiscal year we get the total and the FY column repeating same values twice.

Can we have an new “option” in the Widget menu to suppress the total column please?
Current:

Proposed:

Variance Mode - Previous/Variance /% Variance (On/Off)
With this mode, its very useful, but quite often (depending on who you talk to in the business!) the columns are not all required. For example one user would say they don’t care about “% Var” and only want the “Var” value and vice versa. Or don’t want to see the previous value at all and only show Current and “% Var”. It would be extremely beneficial to have options to turn on which columns you wish to display.
Current:

Proposed:

This is especially useful if we looked at Period Variance, this would considerably reduce the size:
Current:

Proposed:

How it could work
Within the widget design, I propose that in the “options” gear icon there is a new menu option to allow you to configure the columns to display:

I believe this should not only provide the designer more control, it could potentially reduce render time to display and allow better use of the dashboard area.

Please let me know what you think?

Kind Regards,

Jon Kemp

[StuartH]

Yup, agree with all these - they all help Phocas expand on the “Reporting” functions, rather than just “Analysis”. People want to press a button and see the report, not have to drop it to excel and have to edit things.

[GJGerson]

I agree with these requests; I think they would be very helpful. I ran into a similar situation when trying to re-order the measures in Variance mode. I wanted Current GP, Previous GP, Variance GP, % Variance GP, and then the same order for GM (Current, Previous, Variance, % Variance). However, when I switch from Variance to Custom mode I lose the ability to select “Month to Date”, which has a drastic affect on the variances. I’m still new at Phocas, so perhaps I’m not doing something right, but it would be great to have more granular control over the ordering of the measures while in Variance mode, whether it be turning columns on or off or changing the order.

[will.marriott]

Hi @JonKemp. Thanks for your suggestions. I can understand the need for more configurable options for reporting purposes. We’re currently planning some improvements to the main query functionality which these could be included.

[JonKemp]

@Riasat / @will.marriott,
Hi,

Its been over a year regarding this requirement. A lot of users are now complaining about the control of the data output.

To refresh memories, this is where columns on the widget output are not required to be visible. For example the total column is not required and taking up space, or when in variance mode, you only want to see the percentage rather than the value, or vice-versa (see top post for illustrations).

Last update said it was “We’re currently planning some improvements to the main query functionality which these could be included”. Since this is a year old what improvements have been applied to assist in this regard?

Reagrds,

Jon

[doug.bold]

I’d like to see visibility of a widget customised so if you have a flag of active/inactive - the widget displays based on that value. Also Dynamic titling of widgets - so you can have a customer name automatically populate a widget based on a measure value. Eg A production run for company A starts and the system then classes it as active. Phocas would then display the widget. Additionally the Customer name would autopopulate to display the Customer whos’ run is in progress.

[hamish.keith]

Thanks all for your comments. We are working on this now and the functionality will initially come to the nested grid in the coming months.

We will then monitor usage and if it is a hit we will implement it in the main grid

[Jordon]

Is this functionality available now?