WebFOCUS Designer

This section summarizes the build cycle for creating an extension and the structure and components of an extension.

Reference: Build Cycle for Writing an Extension

Creating an extension often involves cycles of writing, running, and then debugging code.

When you make changes to the properties.js file for your extension, you need to clear the WebFOCUS cache in order for those changes to be recognized. Clear the cache using the Clear cache link in the WebFOCUS Administration Console.

WebFOCUS supports the ability to add new, custom chart types to its list of built-in charts. These custom chart types are called extensions or plug-ins. An extension is a block of code that accesses resources external to WebFOCUS. This chapter describes the structure of an extension and the steps necessary to create your own and add it to the chart library.

A thumbnail is an image associated with a file that can be used to visually identify it in your WebFOCUS repository. When you create a thumbnail for a chart in WebFOCUS Designer, the thumbnail shows a snapshot or small image of the chart that is then used on the WebFOCUS Home Page. The following image of the grid view on the WebFOCUS Home Page shows some files that use thumbnails created in WebFOCUS Designer, and some files that use the default thumbnail.

As an alternative to pre-defined content, you can enable users to customize content at run time, which can make portal pages more engaging, useful, and interactive. With this feature you can also control which items users can access, by assigning a specific path to the Add content button in the Properties panel. This feature can be used with panel, tab, carousel, and accordion containers. If you enable this feature on a multi-content container, the Add content button automatically appears on every new tab, slide, or area.

A number of tools in WebFOCUS Designer support your efforts to apply pages styling. You can resize content, hide content from smaller devices if it interferes with a responsive layout, edit page, section and container properties, apply filters, themes and styles, and create custom templates.

After creating a page in WebFOCUS Designer, you can edit it at any time, in one of the following ways:

In WebFOCUS Designer, you can create interactive pages or InfoApps, using content that you create in InfoAssist as well as images and URLs to external content. You can also add content to these pages using content that was created by another user in your organization. You can access the content that is available to you from the Content tab in the Resource Selector.

You can create pages in WebFOCUS Designer that you can add to a portal or portal page to share with other users in your organization. Additionally, pages that you create in WebFOCUS Designer can be run as content items from the Home Page or directly from a browser. You can share a WebFOCUS Designer page as a stand-alone repository resource or a URL.