ARIS WYSIWYG Report Writer

Hi Andre,

have a look in the help.

There you will find a folder "Create scripts", there you will find a lot of usefull information.

Regards,

Markus

Hi Markus

Thank you for the reply.

I started by working through the example in the help file in order to understand how the WYSIWYG tool works, but it does not show how to do more complex activities, like formatting the attributes in the report. Also, it does not answers questions such as whether WYSIWYG can be used to generate new models from existing ones and how it can be done.  I have also looked at scripting and it is not difficult to understand the Javascipt language and the object model can also be found in the help, but how does one start a new macro or report?

These two approaches to do more nifty things in Aris (scripting and WYSIWYG) is wrapped in mystery and the people that know how to, seems unwilling to share their knowledge and I think it is because they can charge a lot of money to do the scripts and reports.  This effectively makes Aris unusable from an output point of view, as it is difficult to generate more complex views and reports with ease.  It is also why many people are looking for extract scripts to extract the Aris data into a database from which they can easily create reports.  I am sure that I am not the only one struggling with this, so how do we solve this?

Regards

Andre

Hi Andre,

- Formatting attributes (or data fields in general) using the WYSIWYG editor works like with plain text. Just select the data fields and use the toolbar to format the text.

- The WYSIWYG report editor doesn't support manipulation of data; it is just an "output" tool.

"but how does one start a new macro or report?" - Do you mean how to run a macro or a report, or are you searching for a kind of best practices to create a completely new report?

Regards,

Markus

Hi Markus

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my questions again.

I was wondering whether there is a "best practice" way of creating a new report.  Do I start by mapping out the output in WYSIWYG and then change the generated code, or is there a good way to start with the code right from the beginning?

Also, are there any "libraries" that I can re-use or must I create my own set of re-usable libraries?  I have gone through some of the free code samples loaded on this site and although it is easy to read and understand the code (i.e. the javascript language), it is difficult for me to get going, as I am not sure what is the best way to tackle a specific report/macro (i.e. the logic) and the lack of clear documentation is not helping much.

I suppose that is why there is only a handful of ARIS script writers in South Africa... :(

Well, I don't want to labour the point.  I was just wondering whether there was a better way of doing things.

Regards

Andre