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Flex Grid – Enhanced Per-Entity Sorting Options (Asc/Desc, Code/Description, Block)
Description:
Flex Grid currently lacks the ability to customize sorting for each entity in rows or columns in the layout. Although the misalignment issue on custom/standard time entities was resolved in the latest 14.3 release, there is still no functionality to control sorting behavior at the entity level—unlike in Data View.
Proposed Enhancement:
Enable per-entity sorting options in Flex Grid, including:
• Ascending / Descending order
• Sort by Code or Description
• Sort by Block Order (as defined in the layout/configuration—entity, algorithm, or cube driven)
Example Use Case:
When three entities (Scenario, DHPQtr, and DHPMonth) are placed in columns, users should be able to configure:
• Scenario → Block order (from layout)
• DHPQtr → Description (Descending)
• DHPMonth → Code (Ascending)
Benefits:
• Aligns Flex Grid with Data View sorting capabilities, ensuring a consistent user experience.
• Provides greater flexibility for ad hoc analysis without requiring layout rebuilds.
Note:
This idea builds upon the resolved sorting misalignment in 14.3, shifting focus toward user-level sorting controls within Flex Grid.
How to use validation rule to avoid special characters in text cubes
1. Abstract
Text cubes in Board applications serve as flexible data entry points, allowing users to input free text such as comments, narratives, or descriptions. While these cubes offer a simple interface for capturing data, they also come with a set of challenges due to the variety of text input formats that users may paste or type.
A common issue is the pasting of text from various sources (e.g. PDFs, Word files, Excel sheets, Notepad). These external sources can introduce hidden or special characters that may interfere with subsequent data processing. These problematic characters might not be visible to the user, but they can cause errors when the data is extracted in a flat file and then reloaded into the system or in other systems. Some of these problematic characters are: carriage returns, line feeds, and tabs.
2. Context
This solution is applicable in any scenario where it is necessary to prevent special characters in text cubes, particularly when the data is exported to flat files. In such cases, the presence of special characters can cause issues when reloading the extracted file into Board using a Data Reader or into other systems.
3. Content
Text cubes are largely used in Board applications with different scopes like:
Enter Comments and Narratives: Text cubes are often used in situations where users need to provide contextual information or explanations related to specific data points. These can be simple comments, detailed narratives, or other forms of textual input.
Edit Entity Descriptions: Text cubes are needed to manage the localization of Entity members, where the translated descriptions are collected in cubes.
This article shows how to enable the Validation rule to prevent users from entering undesired characters in the text cube.
Let’s assume that text cubes are used to allow users to edit an entity description, in this case, the common need is to:
- Avoid the usage of special characters like ENTER, TAB
- Limit the length of the text inserted by the user
Both cases cause issues when exporting those values to be re-imported in Board using a Data Reader.
In this case, the use of Validation Rules is very helpful using the function "search" to find the special character using the ASCII code.
3.1 How to write the validation rule
Following the example, two validation rules are added to validate data entry on block a:
The rule is applied on the block “a” itself.
First validation rule: “len(a)<513” is aimed to notify and block users if the text length is higher than 512 characters. This was done because the text was then reloaded as Entity description and exported to a SQL DB where the data type for the corresponding column was a “char(512)”.
Second validation rule: “IFError(Search(Char(10),a),0)=0”. This rule is using 2 functions:
- Search(Char10,a): this function searches for the ENTER character, whose ASCII Code is Char(10), in the block “a”. This function returns the number representing the position of the specified character.
- IFError: this is added to the formula because the Search function returns an error if the specified character is not found. So, in case of the character is not found the IFError is forcing the value to 0: IFError(<search>,0)
The formula is flexible and can be used to block any special character. To do so, simply use the correct ASCII code for the desired character in the search function (e.g., TAB is represented by “Char(9)”).
4. Conclusion
The use of validation rules is highly flexible and gives users full control over the data entry process. One key advantage of using validation rules, as opposed to a background dataflow for text cleaning, is that errors are immediately visible to the user on the screen. The user is prompted to correct the error before proceeding, ensuring they are fully aware of the issue. This approach prevents data entry from continuing until the problem is resolved, which helps avoid overwriting existing data.
Enable Data Entry Validation Rules Based on Other Dataview Blocks
Hello Community,
Currently, data entry validation rules in Board are limited to conditions within the same data entry block. This limits our ability to implement advanced validation scenarios that depend on other layout blocks.
I propose adding the capability to define validation rules that reference values from other blocks on the same layout.
Thxxx
Akrem
Enable Draggable Field Mappings in Data Reader
Use case: When configuring fields in a data reader, it's not uncommon to forget a field (e.g., Customer Description in Screenshot 1 below), or the data structure may evolve, introducing new fields or changes in hierarchy over time. Currently, if a field needs to be added or repositioned, users must clear all existing fields and rebuild the entire list manually in the correct order. Or insert the missing field but it gets added to the bottom of the data reader.
You cannot simply insert or reposition a field (e.g., adding Customer Description into its intended place as shown in Screenshot 2). This can become time-consuming when creating/managing multiple or complex data readers.
Screenshot 1: Current state (missing field example)
Screenshot 2: Attempting to add a new field (unable to reposition)
Screenshot 3: Attempting to add a new field (field added to bottom of data reader)
Proposed Improvement: Introducing draggable field mappings in the data reader, allowing users to do the following:
- Reorder existing fields easily.
- Insert a new field between existing ones without having to clear the list.
This improvement could follow existing UI patterns, similar to dragging a new block into a layout with existing blocks, or using the reorder handle seen in entity custom sort configurations (Screenshot 4).
Screenshot 4: Example of draggable UI element in custom sort
Thanks for your consideration!
Hamza
Allow drag & drop reordering of cube versions
Hi there!
It would be really useful to be able to reorder cube versions by dragging and dropping them.
Right now, if you create a new version that, for performance or logical reasons, should be placed in position 2, but you already have 6 versions, you must delete all of them and rebuild them in the right order.
It would save a lot of time if we could simply choose where to position the new version, or reorder existing ones, instead of being forced to recreate everything.
Laura Villar
Print export should consider selected tab
It's great that you can add a screen to a presentation multiple times and select a different tab of the container object each time.
However, the printout does not take this tab selection into account, but always prints only the first tab if the print area contains objects other than just the tab container object.
It would be great if this could be changed accordingly.
Daniel Wolf
Multiple position selection in Menu Object
Hi all,
it would be great to have a multiple position selections in the Menu Object. That would allow us to combine different positions (folders) within one Menu Object.
Feel free to reach out if you have any further questions.
Kind regards,
Atilla
Ability to change Entity Codes en masse
This has now occurred for two clients in the past few months, so I thought of posting this idea for consideration.
In both cases, the clients moved from one ERP system to another; and updated the GL Codes or Item Master codes - and the expectation is that Board will use the new codes and historical data in Board is not lost.
Of course the solution is to extract all cubes - modify the codes in those files, clear entity, reload entity with new codes, etc. However, this is high risk , time-consuming solution especially if the solution is complex (many cubes) and the rollout is in phases.
We can manually change the codes one-at-a-time within the Entity Content screen. The benefit here is that all selections in screens, procedures, etc. are maintained intact. The suggestion is to provide an automated way to modify the entity codes either way a DR or on the screen (import code mapping). This is particularly helpful in cases where there are thousands of members.
Handling of .cfg Files in Text File Data Reader
In Board 12 & 14, the Text File Data Reader has a limitation in how it handles .cfg files when a pattern filter is used in the "Connection" tab. This impacts the automatic mapping of fields and the correct configuration of the file settings, such as delimiters, headers, and other parameters stored in the .cfg file.
Issue Overview
When a pattern filter is set to "Sales.*", Board successfully connects to the "Sales.csv" file and loads the configuration and mapping from the "Sales.cfg" file. However, when the pattern filter is set specifically to "Sales.csv", Board connects to the file but fails to load the associated .cfg information, leading to missing field mappings and incorrect file configurations.
This means that important configuration details—like separators, headers, and field structure—are not applied, even though a valid .cfg file is available. As a result, users have to manually set these parameters, increasing the likelihood of errors and adding unnecessary steps to the data import process.
Proposed Solution
In Board 10, the ASCII Data Readers consistently loaded information from .cfg files, regardless of whether the pattern filter specified file types. We propose restoring this behavior in the latest versions of Board to ensure that .cfg files are always utilized for configuration and mapping, regardless of the pattern filter applied.
FlexGrid - Pivot column collapse function enhancement
In FlexGrid, in pivot mode with at least 2 column labels, when just one block is used as a value is not possible to collapse the most detailed column label:
This is a standard behavior
The request is to change this behavior introducing the possibility to collapse column labels even if we have only one value block.
Currently this happens only with 2 column labels and at least 2 blocks:
This would increase the readability of a table.
Thanks
