Editing Fields

To edit a field, click it, and use the Property pane on the right to edit it. It is also possible to select multiple fields and update properties for all selected fields at once (for more information, please refer to Editing Multiple Fields).

Field – Property Pane Section

Name

Name of field; initially set to default name of field (column) but can be edited to provide a more meaningful name.

Parent Field Folder, Parent Field

Pop-up window launched from Parent Field Folder LOV in Field Pane Section

The Parent Field Folder property provides an LOV where the user can select a parent field folder for a parent field to enable field hierarchy in BI Dashboard Builder.

A parent field folder must be selected using the LOV before a parent field can be selected from the Parent Field drop-down menu.

For example, to enable a Company Name/Job Name/Phase Name/Category Name hierarchy, the field structure would appear as follows:

Folder	Field	Parent Field Folder	Parent Field
JC Categories	Category Name	JC Job Phases	Phase Name
JC Job Phases	Phase Name	JC Jobs	Job Name
JC Jobs	Job Name	GL Companies	Company Name

Once the above setup is complete in BI Catalog Builder, to enable the hierarchy functionality in a BI Dashboard table, the following steps must be taken:

• Add at least one of the above fields to the table.

• Ensure parent field folders are added into list of selected folders for the table.

Once the above steps are taken, if the user’s BI Dashboard table visualization contains any of the fields below, their parent field will be available to be added into the table via column hierarchy context menu, if it doesn’t exist already.

• JC Categories.Category Name

• JC Job Phases.Phase Name

• JC Jobs.Job Name

• GL Companies.Company Name

For example, if the user’s table visualization is based on “JC Transactions” and “GL Companies.Company Name” field is added, then the hierarchy functionality will be enabled for the Company Name field, allowing users to add any of the related fields (e.g., Phase Name, Job Name, or Category Name).

Field Hierarchy enabled in BI Dashboard Builder table visualization

Position

Position of field node inside branch; editable to change the position of a node to control in what order fields are displayed in a folder. 

Field Properties – Property Pane Section

Column

Name of field (column); display-only.

Data Type

Field’s data type: String, Number, Date.

If the data type is “String”, users can select “URL” from this LOV instead; if set to “URL”, the field’s value is expected to be a URL and it is displayed as a hyperlink in dashboards.

Default Aggregation

Default aggregate function to use in BI Dashboard Builder for the field. This default can be changed in BI Dashboard Builder.

The aggregate functions available in this property’s LOV depend on the field’s data type.

An aggregate function is one in which a single value is outputted for multiple inputted values, e.g., SUM(), COUNT().

Description

Description of field; initially set to default description but can be edited to be more meaningful. The Edit Text icon () launches the Edit Text pop-up window where a muli-line description can be entered.

Default Format

If the field is of the date or number data type, this property has an LOV from which users can select its format for dashboards.

Length

Maximum length for field string value.

Primary Key

Indicates if this field is a primary key field.

Updatable

Indicates if this field is updatable in Card View.

NOTE: In BI Catalog Builder, any User-Defined Fields can be made updatable. However, not all non-User-Defined Fields can be made updatable. Updatability for these fields is determined by CMiC. If "Updatable" field property is not available, it means the field can't be updatable in card view.

Value Case Hint

Use this field property to set whether values in a field are always uppercase or lowercase, which allows a faster case-sensitive search in dashboard filters. Available options are “UPPER” or “lower”.

For example, since company codes are always uppercase, setting the Value Case Hint property to “UPPER” allows for faster filter searches by only returning values that are in uppercase.

The BI Catalog Builder tool automatically sets this property to “UPPER” for fields that have a common name which ends with “_CODE” or “_FLAG” (e.g., COMP_CODE, JOB_ACTIVE_FLAG, etc.).

If this property is set incorrectly, then the filters search will not return results with values that are not in the case specified in this property. For example, if the property is set to “UPPER”, but the actual column contains values in mixed case, values that contain lowercase won’t be returned.

NOTE: In order to have performance improvements, the corresponding database column must be indexed.

Visible

If set to “No”, field will not be visible in the BI Dashboard Builder tool, for simplification’s sake; otherwise, it will be visible.

Property Description – Property Pane Section

This section displays a description for a selected property in the Field Properties section.

Editing Multiple Fields

Example of selecting multiple fields and updating properties for all selected fields at once

Users can select multiple fields and update properties for all selected fields at once. To select multiple fields, use Ctrl + mouse click to select individual fields or use Shift + mouse click to select a range of fields. Users can also select multiple fields using the Search panel (for more information on search functionality, refer to Search, Sort and Filter Tree Nodes).

The Field Properties section in the property panel will only display those properties and LOVs that are applicable for the data type of the selected fields.

For example, users can select multiple fields in a folder with the same data type (e.g., amount fields in a folder which all use the NUMBER data type), as shown in the screenshot above, and update the Default Format property for these fields all at once.

If the selected fields have different data types (e.g., some of them are STRING and others are NUMBER), then the Default Format property, as well as other type-specific properties, won’t appear in the property panel.

If the selected fields have different values for a property, then such a property value will be displayed as “<<Multiple Values>>”. Users can modify this value as required.

For example, if the following two fields were selected:

• Salary

  • Description property value: “Employee Salary”

• Rate

  • Description property value: “Hourly Rate”

Since each field has a different description, the Description property value on the Field Properties panel would display “<<Multiple Values>>”. Users could update this property with the same value for both fields at once by replacing “<<Multiple Values>>” with a new description such as “This field is used for salary calculations.”

The descriptions for each of the fields would be updated as follows:

• Salary

  • Description property value: “This field is used for salary calculations.”

• Rate

  • Description property value: “This field is used for salary calculations.”

The same logic applies to properties with LOVs.  “<<Multiple Values>>” will be one of the values in a drop-down list and if it’s changed, the new value will be applied to all selected fields.

Date Fields

As shown below, every field that is of the date data type has three corresponding calculated fields: one for the year component, one for the month component, and one for the day component. As shown below, these corresponding calculated fields are added to the end of a folder’s list of fields:

In BI Dashboard Builder, these date calculated fields can be added to visualizations in order to sort or group their data by year, month or day.

NOTE: Date calculated fields cannot be deleted from a data source.