#1364
- Created on2015-05-01 16:37
- Reported by
- StatusFeature Request
- PriorityHigh (2)
- Assigned to
- Milestone
- Plan Level-
- Estimate0.0
- Due Date-
Reporting Wizards to Improve Usability
One of the areas users struggle with most is report creation since it's more advanced and can be clunky. Do you have recommendations for improving this? Perhaps we could create BIRT wizards?
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Is it sufficient to implement a very simple wizard that creates a header, and allows users to add a set of queries and a map?
Rich: Also need a wizard for graphs. I am thinking that the user should be asked “What do you want to add”, then get presented with a list of options including:
Title
Sub-title
Text box
Image
Query
Map
Graph
They then have the option to click and drag the element they added to the position on the page where they want it to appear.
Rich: Also need a wizard for graphs. I am thinking that the user should be asked “What do you want to add”, then get presented with a list of options including:
Title
Sub-title
Text box
Image
Query
Map
Graph
They then have the option to click and drag the element they added to the position on the page where they want it to appear.
PK: With the understanding that Rich's full list of options is desired, this is a large task. We agree that this will provide very useful functionality. We don't have enough information to provide a precise estimate. Are there any tools that Rich or others use that provide an example of how they want the Report Wizard to work? Did/does MIST do anything nice for reports? A report creation workflow is needed.
-I am not aware of other tools that do this, short of something like PowerPoint or Excel that has wizards for adding graphs, provides drag and drop functionality, etc. I am not sure what additional info I can provide here.
-I am not aware of other tools that do this, short of something like PowerPoint or Excel that has wizards for adding graphs, provides drag and drop functionality, etc. I am not sure what additional info I can provide here.
Hi Rich and all,
>-I am not aware of other tools that do this, short of something like PowerPoint or Excel that has wizards for adding graphs, provides >drag and drop >functionality, etc. I am not sure what additional info I can provide here.
Unfortunately I'm not aware of any prototyping tools for Eclipse wizards specifically that are worth their weight.
What I would suggest for designing a report wizard(s) is to:
1) Use either hand-drawn pages and/or screenshots (or both) to draw each of the wizard pages and sequence them. If there's a drawing tool that everyone is able to use (at least to view) then use that as well but don't introduce a new prototyping tool.
2) Attach screenshots and/or scanned pictures to this bug and/or use other sharing mechanisms.
3) Start very coarse (not much details about the behavior of visual elements), and get progressively more detailed through multiple passes (e.g. get a basic sequence of wizard steps/pages, and then begin to detail the widgets and behavior on each one).
4) Find and take screenshots of designs from other tools and domains (e.g. Excel, Powerpoint, BIRT for business reporting, Eclipse IDE, etc) and include in 1 as appropriate.
From a quick examination it does seem as if BIRT has an 'Reporting Engine' API, that would allow the wizard-based construction of a custom report. If desired I can probably find some more expertise among BIRT committers and/or Eclipse project leadership. I myself know the JFace APIs fairly well and have created wizards in the past although I'm not what I would call a UI expert programmer. I will examine the BIRT RE and other APIs as the designs are done to be assured that the designs can be implemented.
If these suggestions don't help, please let me know what would be more helpful.
>-I am not aware of other tools that do this, short of something like PowerPoint or Excel that has wizards for adding graphs, provides >drag and drop >functionality, etc. I am not sure what additional info I can provide here.
Unfortunately I'm not aware of any prototyping tools for Eclipse wizards specifically that are worth their weight.
What I would suggest for designing a report wizard(s) is to:
1) Use either hand-drawn pages and/or screenshots (or both) to draw each of the wizard pages and sequence them. If there's a drawing tool that everyone is able to use (at least to view) then use that as well but don't introduce a new prototyping tool.
2) Attach screenshots and/or scanned pictures to this bug and/or use other sharing mechanisms.
3) Start very coarse (not much details about the behavior of visual elements), and get progressively more detailed through multiple passes (e.g. get a basic sequence of wizard steps/pages, and then begin to detail the widgets and behavior on each one).
4) Find and take screenshots of designs from other tools and domains (e.g. Excel, Powerpoint, BIRT for business reporting, Eclipse IDE, etc) and include in 1 as appropriate.
From a quick examination it does seem as if BIRT has an 'Reporting Engine' API, that would allow the wizard-based construction of a custom report. If desired I can probably find some more expertise among BIRT committers and/or Eclipse project leadership. I myself know the JFace APIs fairly well and have created wizards in the past although I'm not what I would call a UI expert programmer. I will examine the BIRT RE and other APIs as the designs are done to be assured that the designs can be implemented.
If these suggestions don't help, please let me know what would be more helpful.
SMART already makes use of the BIRT reporting engine API, and yes we can make a wizard to generate a report.
The bigger issue is to determine what they want in the wizard and balance that against how long it will take to implement the UI components to support these requirements.
I had a quick look to see if BIRT already provides a wizard functionality and it does not. But what it does supply are report templates. We should look further to see if there are any addons to BIRT that provides wizards that we could reuse.
The bigger issue is to determine what they want in the wizard and balance that against how long it will take to implement the UI components to support these requirements.
I had a quick look to see if BIRT already provides a wizard functionality and it does not. But what it does supply are report templates. We should look further to see if there are any addons to BIRT that provides wizards that we could reuse.
>We should look further to see if there are any addons to BIRT that provides wizards that we could reuse.
Yesterday I posted this question to the BIRT forum: https://www.eclipse.org/forums/index.php/t/1071550/
I will pursue other more direct BIRT communication channels if this query isn't responded to.
I agree with Emily that
>The bigger issue is to determine what they want in the wizard and balance that against how long it will take to implement the UI components to support these >requirements
Suggestion: before designing and implementing the necessary UI components, look among various Eclipse and other OS projects for supporting functionality. There have been lots of add-on UI components libs created for Eclipse (e.g. Nebula project: http://www.eclipse.org/nebula/ ). And in various projects (WTP, DTP, BIRT).
Yesterday I posted this question to the BIRT forum: https://www.eclipse.org/forums/index.php/t/1071550/
I will pursue other more direct BIRT communication channels if this query isn't responded to.
I agree with Emily that
>The bigger issue is to determine what they want in the wizard and balance that against how long it will take to implement the UI components to support these >requirements
Suggestion: before designing and implementing the necessary UI components, look among various Eclipse and other OS projects for supporting functionality. There have been lots of add-on UI components libs created for Eclipse (e.g. Nebula project: http://www.eclipse.org/nebula/ ). And in various projects (WTP, DTP, BIRT).