Some Custom Visualizations may not produce perfect outputs given the data and require some kind of user driven re-shaping, which may be hard to accomplish purely from data stored in MooD.
For example, if someone produced an automated layout of complex business processes, gathered from MooD data, but the algorithms inside the layout engine struggled with overlapping lines and some human intervention was needed to tidy the layout up; a software developer could:
- attempt to make the algorithm better - recommended
- add hints in the MooD data to provide to the algorithm via inputs.
- In Business Architect configure State data as a JSON object, specify layout hints to be sent to the custom visualization at runtime and code the visualization to interpret those hints.
- If the Custom Visualization supports editing on the Web, allow a user to alter the layout interactively in the web, and then ask MooD to store the JSON state data.
This feature helps with the last two scenarios. MooD provides a mechanism to store the state of the visualization and an API to allow pushing of state from the Web. Extra development of the custom visualization is required to support these features and is covered in the main Custom Visualization documentation.
There are two expected workflows in Business Architect for this feature:
Updating Custom Visualization with custom JSON
A user
- is asked to change the process flow model in MooD to respect new ways of working.
- views at the automated layout visualization and sees it needs tweaking.
- flips the panel in Business Architect
- edits the state JSON object manually
- saves the model
- Web Previews the model and repeat as necessary until the visualisation looks good.
Updating Custom Visualization Interactively via the Web
A user
- is asked to change the process flow model in MooD to respect new ways of working.
- views at the automated layout visualization and sees it needs tweaking.
- flips the panel in Business Architect
- changes the setting to allow the visualization to update of the state (see below).
- saves the model
- web previews the model
- alters the position of elements inside the visualization on the web page
- the visualization sends state data back to MooD
- the user flips the panel in Business Architect
- changes the setting to deny update of the state.
- Saves the model to prevent further updates.
The Edit state... option shows the JSON for the currently stored state, which can be further edited manually if required. This state data is then sent to the control when users visit the web page.
Caveats:
- The permissions model is currently primitive for this feature - MooD users with permission to edit the model have the ability to turn this option on or off.
- This option is not designed to allow per-user personalization of views.
- State data is per-panel instance, and not shared or accessible by other panels of the same type.
- Extra development of a visualization is required to support interpreting the state JSON.
- Extra development of a visualization is required to edit on the web and send state JSON back to MooD.
- Where possible improve the visualization capability through panel variables.
- The visualization might wish to create a hash of the input variables and recognize when the state data should be ignored - because the data has changed and the state data might be innapropriate.
This feature was introduced in 16.082
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