Developing dashboards is all about empowering users to determine how they want to display data and configure it themselves. Here are some of the latest configuration enhancements from Cityworks.
With the release of Respond 2.0 and more recent versions, there has been a dramatic transformation regarding how you engage your data. Whether it’s the updated user interface, the new count widget, or the ability to query Storeroom data, Query Editor and Dashboards introduce new possibilities for understanding your data.
Quick Querying
The first notable addition to Respond is the basic search, which provides a fast and easy way to find work activities from some of the most common fields. In Respond, at the top right corner, the magnifying lens will expose the basic and advanced search options. From there, you can select from Permits, Work Orders, Service Requests, and Inspections to quickly open it.
The basic search is exactly that: basic. If you need more fields to search and open, then advanced search—better known as Query Editor—and Dashboards are the way to go.
Once in Query Editor, you will notice three separate panels:
• The left panel is where you can create a new query and hold previously saved queries from the logged-in user.
• The center panel is where you can enter the query criteria, such as name, whether it will query Cityworks or GIS data, the type of activity, and finally enter query parameters.
• The right panel is where the query results appear. From here, you can select the response field you’d like to view. Opening results is limited to a single selection.
The Show Query option, located right below the query name, is easy to miss but very powerful. When you click on it, you can enter query syntax to create even more robust queries than what is possible through the Query Builder below. If you are interested in using this feature, be aware that it uses a Cityworks Query Language (CQL) and that great documentation can be found by clicking on the question mark below the syntax box.
The Query Types field includes 13 options ranging from work activities to contracts, projects, and materials in addition to GIS feature and object queries. Another important tip: in the Query Builder section, the first box is the activity’s parent table while the indented boxes are child or related data tables.
Dashboard
The home icon on the left toolbar will take you back to the last dashboard you viewed. Based on user feedback about Inbox, we developed the Dashboard Management page to provide a comprehensive method for managing dashboard permissions and viewing and transferring ownerships. It also provides general dashboard management of editing, cloning, and deleting.
Using this page, a Cityworks administrator or power user can easily create a dashboard and transfer ownership to a supervisor for daily upkeep. To access the Dashboard Management page, simply tap the ellipsis at the top right toolbar, which will also take you to the most recently viewed dashboards and click Manage Dashboards as the last option.
The most visible change is apparent in configuring dashboards, a.k.a. edit mode. In the latest release, you can format the appearance of widget backgrounds, fonts, and chart colors. If you have been ready to change the default blue, now is your time.
By default, each dashboard starts with a grid of nine cells where widgets can be added. Spaces that don’t contain a widget will not display in the dashboard’s view mode, so there is no need to delete unused cells. If more rows or columns are needed, the user can easily add or even delete, but if a widget is in one of the desired deleted areas, the deletion will be prevented.
To better visualize your data, widget options include count, table, map, HTML, and chart (pie or bar). You can preview the data while you are configuring each widget, and you can also add actions. For example, a pie chart slice might display unassigned items. You can add an action to open those activities and dispatch them. If you interact with PLL data, you can choose to view tasks in Task Manager.
The table widget allows you to view child data, summarizing the number of records based on the field column, while user-configured information is presented in a modal. We added an alert symbol in the bottom right corner of the map widget to indicate activities that are not geocoded, and in the latest version, the user can now view the activities and take action. If you want a different map background, take advantage of the new GIS Definition, which displays service definitions enabled for Dashboard’s use. Another Dashboard tip: pie charts will automatically redraw the distribution when you click on the legend categories.
Both Query and Dashboard have made their way to other apps such as Storeroom, so let your customer success representative know where you would like it next. Your feedback will drive future enhancements.
► You’ll also like: Using Dashboards to Make Data-Driven Decisions
For more information on how you can start using Query and Dashboard, check out the great user guides on mycityworks.force.com. After all, collecting data is only the beginning of asset management. What you do with the analysis and how it informs your organization is what compels sustained asset management.
By Dinorah Sanchez, Cityworks subject matter expert
The post Operational Awareness: Your Data on Your Dash first appeared on Cityworks.