The top section of the screen has two parts – the screen header containing the banner text and images; and the filters. The drop-downs displayed in the filter section are multi-select lists that allow for multiple selections from the same drop-down. The check boxes with each of the drop-down indicate exclusion of that criterion. The Expand/Collapse buttons provided at the top right of each of the sections enable the user to display or hide that section.
The “Go” button regenerates the Data Grid and the charts based on the selections made by the user. The “Back” button lets the user go back one screen when they are on any of the drill-down screens. The “Save as Excel Sheet” button allows the user to save the Data Grid contents in the form of an Excel spreadsheet. The “Print Data” button allows the user to print the Data Grid contents along with the filters that are being used. The “Save as PDF” button allows the user to save the Data Grid contents and also the charts to a PDF document.
The Data Grid is generated by default when the screen is loaded. At this time it displays all the data that is available on the database table Level_Zero. The first column of the grid is for the grouping criterion or “Dimension”. The data within is presented as a link to facilitate drilling-down for details. All the column headers of the Data Grid are also links to facilitate sorting of the data in ascending order. The footer of the Data Grid contains the grand total, the Bar Chart check box and the Pie Chart picture-link. The columns to be displayed in the Data Grid can be controlled by way of appropriate entries made in the table Expressions. The system administrator also has complete control over the data that can be used to display the bar charts via this table. They can also select which column should be represented in the pie chart displayed below when the screen is initially rendered.
The application takes the first column (“Dimension” column) values as the X-axis for the corresponding row values to build the bar chart. The scale of the bar chart is automatically determined. By default the pie chart uses the data from the second column values. As already explained, this can be changed to reflect the preference of the user. Also a pie chart can be generated for any column of the user’s choice by clicking the pie chart button below that column.
The type and color schemes of these charts can be controlled through the chart settings given above the charts.