BridgeGate™

Tutorial 10: Dashboard & Data Depot

Table of Contents

Introduction

Using the BridgeGate Portal Dashboard allows you to graphically display data metrics and analytics based on the data of your choosing. The only requirement is that you must use data that was translated using BridgeGate, and you must perform some initial configuration steps. This tutorial will guide you through the process of creating a data depot to tell BridgeGate what data you want graphed. Then you will create a workflow and templates to translate data and store your data into a data depot. Finally you will create a custom dashboard to display the data graphically.

Creating a data depot

A Data Depot stores the data you want to graphically display in the BridgeGate dashboard. You create the data depot using the Workbench. Open the workbench, log into an account using a user with data depot permissions. Note: permissions are set in the Portal when you edit user permissions. Select the Repository | Data Depots… menu option to open the Data Depot dialog shown below:

To create a new data depot, right click in the list of Data Depots available and use the 'New Data Depot' menu option, or simply click the 'New Data Depot' button located on the bottom of the dialog. Name the new data depot 'dashboard_tutorial'.

Next, click on the 'Add Data Field' button on the right side of the dialog to create a field. Fields in data depots are used as criteria to display, count and group-by in the dashboard you create. You only need to create fields here for relevant data for the dashboard. Avoid creating unnecessary fields. For our tutorial, create the following Fields:

Field Data Type
invoice

CHAR
state

CHAR

Creating a workflow to populate data depot

This tutorial will use the workflow purchaseorders from the Sample1 workflow group. The workflow represents a sample of retail data translation. You are welcome to run the purchaseorders workflow in the Test by Workflow screen to familiarize yourself it.

Modify the purchaseorders inbound template to map the depot fields just created. You can access this by choosing the samples account in the bridgegate workbench, selecting inbound section from the top menu, and expanding the sample1 -> sample1tabdel inbound template.

Within the sample1tabdel template you find a listing of records and field, choose the 'Order Header Invoice ID' field. Next, checkmark 'Add to data depot' option, then use the dashboard_tutorial and invoice field you just created as the data field, similar to how is shown below:

You will also perform this same operation on the Ship to State, only use the state depot field as the data field, as shown below:

Note: the workflow out of the box may not use the proper get data paths, in this case, you will need to modify the workflow to point to the absolute path to the data file.

Once modifications have been completed upload them to the server. *Be sure to save the modifications prior to doing so.

You may verify at this point that the workflow is still working okay by running the Test Workflow within the workbench (which is beyond the scope of this tutorial).Be advised, however, that the data depots are disabled in this mode, and will only populate during production workflow processing.

Execute workflow to populate data depot

After you have setup the data depot table and modified purchaseorders to meet the desired configuration, log into the BridgeGate Portal (e.g. http://localhost:8080/) as a user with 'process workflows' rights. Note: permissions are set in the Portal when you edit user permissions. Choose from the main menu: operations, processing, and then the execute tab. If you haven't done so change the account to the samples account to access and execute the workflow. *If you cannot see this account make sure you have rights to access it. Choose the following fields and then click process workflow button:

Field value
Workflow group

Sample1
Workflow name

purchaseorders

Similar to how is shown below:

After a successfully processed transaction you should see a page similar to below screen which indicates a successfully processed workflow with a successful get data / translation.

If you do not get a successful status then check then retrace your steps and verify that the get data is pointed to the proper path and the workflow hasn't run into any other environmental issues.

Dashboard Analysis

After following similar steps to access the Portal as explained in the above section, select the dashboard menu option to view the dashboard. Make sure the user you use to login has dashboard rights. Initially when accessing the dashboard you should get an empty container or something similar to this:

Continue by selecting from the 'Add Content' drop down menu (at upper right corner of the body window) and choosing 'New Chart'. An inner window (portlet) should appear which renders the chart in edit mode.

Note the control bar at the top of the portlet: this control bar contains various portlet actions, including: edit, view, close, expand, configure, etc… More on portlets and various actions are explained in the instruction portlet (shown above) or by selecting the flashing help icon.

The chart portlet should initially render into the edit mode wizard, similar to the following:

Select PIE chart type and then click next. The next wizard determines which data depot table to use in collecting the data. Choose the data depot that you created at the beginning of this tutorial (dashboard_tutorial) and click next, similar to shown below:

Depots are grouped by account so make sure that you are in the samples account or the account used to create the depot before choosing from the data depot table drop down list. *If you cannot see this account make sure you have rights to access it.

The final step in the chart creation/edit wizard is to define what fields will be used to construct the chart data model.

Selection Field - defines the amount of items used to calculate (or in SQL terms the count(.))

Group by Field - defines data for which the selection will be grouped by

Sub group by Field - which is only applicable for BAR chart types, defines another level of grouping

Advanced Restriction Field - allows restrictions on a particular data field in the form of:

IS

LIKE *only applicable for CHAR data types

GREATER THAN *only applicable for INT, FLOAT, and DATE data types

LESSS THAN *only applicable for INT, FLOAT, and DATE data types

BETWEEN *only applicable for INT, FLOAT, and DATE data types

Transaction Status - can add restrictions to only show data for successful or failed transactions

Choose the following fields, and click finish.

Field Value
Selection

invoice
Group by

state

You may also drill down into the chart to show the metric details by clicking on a chart piece, which shows a details listing similar to: