About Capsules

A Capsule is a free and unstructured environment for ad-hoc analysis. Users with the necessary permissions can create their own Capsules and manage them in folders. The Capsule Design mode provides tools and Objects with native features for analysis that are used to create simple reports or sophisticated business models.

A Capsule is a collection of Screens and Procedures. Screens can be considered as reports and can contain various Objects such as tables, charts, buttons, text, and other data visualization features. Depending on your License and the Objects settings, you can also perform data entry actions, calculations in real time, and other data manipulation activities.

Procedures are customizable sequences of Actions (also called Steps), capable to execute a broad range of tasks: for example, they can be configured to update a Board Data model when a particular event occurs on the Screen, or they can be used for performing calculations, for broadcasting reports, and for navigating Capsules and Screens, among other things.

Screens

A Screen is a single workspace within a Capsule: it can take the form of a dashboard, report, data entry form, or a combination of these. A Screen is essentially a web page that allows you to interact with data in a variety of ways.

Each Screen can be customized to the smallest detail and has its own area and specific settings. It can contain one or more Screen Objects, like tables, charts, gauges, buttons, and more. Every Object retrieves, displays, and manages data through the definition of a Layout, which is a query on the selected multidimensional Data model.

A Screen can be linked to one single Board Data model: in this case, every Screen Object will access Cubes and Entities from that specific Data model.

A Screen can also include Objects (such as tables or charts) linked to different Board Data models existing in the Board Platform. In this case, the Screen is defined as a  "Multiple Data model" Screen. Screens can be organized in folders, for better clarity and easier maintenance.

A Capsule doesn't store data; it only contains Screens made of Objects which present data as it is defined in their Layouts. Whenever the Capsule is opened, the data is freshly retrieved from the associated Data models.

See About Screens for more details.

Capsules structure

Capsules usually include several Procedures, which perform various tasks: for example, they can take the user to a certain Screen or a Capsule, they can update data, perform calculations, and export or send Screens through the Broadcasting functionality. Capsule Procedures can be triggered only from the Capsule that contains them.

Capsules Screens can include navigational Objects, such as buttons or menus, to navigate between Screens in the Capsule.

Capsules can be easily customized using Masks. Masks are graphic templates that can be applied to all Screens at once and can contain Selectors and Objects that are not defined by a Layout. For example, a Mask can be configured to include navigational Objects: once the Mask has been associated with all the Screens in a Capsule, they will all share a common navigation path.

You can also upload images that can be used throughout the Capsule.

See About Screen Masks and  for more details.