Capsule design concepts and guidelines

Capsules can address a wide range of purposes. For example, a Capsule could be:

• An unstructured environment for ad-hoc analysis, allowing users to create and save their reports, analysis and models

• A highly structured application guiding users rigidly throughout a business process such as budgeting or forecasting

• An EIS (Executive Information System) application providing dashboards and executive reports

• A presentation for analyzing marketing campaign results, results of a product launch or the performance of any other business activity and process

• A financial reporting booklet or any other recurrent collection of reports and analyses

• A procedure for executing a set of maintenance tasks on a Data model

Depending on the Capsule’s purposes and the type of users that will interact with it, take into consideration the following guidelines:

• Organize your Capsules into folders: you can create folders which are visible to all users, folders visible to user groups or individual users. You can easily manage access to Capsules and editing permissions through folder security rules

• The Capsule’s main Screen (the Home Screen) should explain the Capsule’s purpose and content. Be sure to add some introductory text and a diagram illustrating how the Capsule is organized

• Limit the number of Capsule Screens to a reasonable number that allows users to clearly understand the content of each Screen. If the need arises, consider creating a new Capsule and setting links from a Capsule to another relevant one

• Avoid creating similar Screens having very slight differences: for example, two identical Screens in terms or Screen Objects only having a different selection applied. This approach would result in an unnecessary proliferation of Screens. All users should know how to use the Select, Pagers, Selectors, filters, and the drill-down features instead.

When creating Screens, consider the following guidelines:

• A Screen should load in a few seconds. Limit the number of pictures and logos used, and limit the number of data presentation Objects (charts, tables etc) in order to remain within a reasonable loading time

• Feel free to include more than one report per Screen. A Screen showing only a single report is not fully benefiting from Board’s powerful analytical features. Use more than one Screen Object and use the Master function to tailor the analysis to your needs.

Concurrent Capsule Editing. Two or more users can work together on the same Capsule, at the same time. The locking mechanism that prevents design overlaps and conflicts happens at Screen and Procedure level.

When two users are working on the same Capsule, the following scenarios apply:

• They can't develop the same Screen or Procedure at the same time

• If a user tries to edit a Screen/Procedure that is already in Design mode for another user, a Lock Message displays: when the second user closes the Screen/Procedure being worked on, the first user will be able to freely edit the Screen

• If a user creates a Screen (without saving it) and someone else creates another Screen with the same title, they will both be able to edit and save it, but only one Screen will be created in the Capsule and only the last save will be retained.