Vantage Fusion (vFusion)

CustomizationGuide

Abstract

This guide provides customization information for intermediate and advanced developers planning to customize VANTAGE FUSION.

Contents

  • VANTAGE FUSION Customization Guide
  • Introduction to the VANTAGE FUSION Customization Guide
  • What will you learn from these topics?
  • Who should read these topics?
  • What technologies do these topics cover?
  • For more information
  • How to Configure Directory Fields
  • How to Create Custom Reports
  • How to Create Custom Functionality
  • Copyrights

VANTAGE FUSION Customization Guide

This guide provides localization information for intermediate and advanced developers planning to customize VANTAGE FUSION. Customization of VANTAGE FUSION has three parts, configuring object attributes, creating custom reports and creating custom functionality. Topics covered in this guide will provide you with the prerequisites and procedures to successfully complete the customization process.

Introduction to VANTAGE FUSIONCustomization Guide

What will you learn from these topics?

  • Customizing object attributes
  • Creating custom reports
  • Creating custom functionality

Who should read these topics?

These topics are designed for intermediate and advanced developers planning to customize VANTAGE FUSION software for a customer. Such professionals may be in the following roles:

  • Technical team member
  • Development team member
  • Account manager

How to Configure Object Attributes

VANTAGE FUSION has numerous objects to represent real world entities, such as StudentPersonal for student, SectionInfo for course section or SchoolInfo for a school. These objects have attributes which can be accessible through user interface such as LocalId of StudentPersonal, Title of SectionInfo or Name of SchoolInfo.

These objects and attributes can be customized according to the scopes and functionalities below.

Application Scope

Hiding Attributes: Attributes marked as hidden will be invisible to the end user through out the application. Mandatory attributes can not be set as hidden.

Making Attributes Invisible: Attributes marked as invisible won’t show up in the user screens by default. They can be added to the user screens by users though.

Role/User Scope

View: Role/User can view the object or the attribute

Add: Role/User can add new objects

Edit: Role/User can edit objects and attributes

Delete: Role/User can delete object

How to Create Custom Reports

VANTAGE FUSION user screens are regular aspx pages. Most of them include a user control named ReportView which searches user controls for marked as “report” and dynamically add a link to the page regarding the report during run time. This way, developers can create external report files and add them to the relevant pages.

Ex: Let’s assume that we will create a custom report which will list the contact information of the students enrolled this year and are IDEA-eligible. The best place for this report is SchoolEnrollments.aspx since it lists the students currently enrolled for the selected year. We create a user control using our favorite asp.net editor and save it as “IdeaEligibleStudents.ascx” to the /Reports/Templates/SchoolEnrollments/ directory. Also we add an xml file with the same name “IdeaEligibleStudents.xml”. The inner text of the document is shown below.

parameters

<nameuiCulture="en-US">IDEA Eligible Students</name

<selectionModeMultiple</selectionMode

<widgettypeReport</widgettype

</parameters

Next we will add a data container control such as a GridView or Repeater to our user control. Specifying DataSource='<%#Eval("Query") %>' will automatically wire our repeater to the query returned from the page, this time IQueryable(Of StudentSchoolEnrollment). We can get this query modified by redirecting it to a function named GetIdeaEligibleStudents shown as below.

PrivateFunction GetIDEAEligibleStudents(ByVal enrollments As

IQueryable(Of StudentSchoolEnrollment)) As

IQueryable(Of StudentPersonal)

Dim students = From enrollment In enrollments _

Select enrollment.StudentPersonal

Dim eligibleStudents = From student In students _

Where student.IDEA = True

Return eligibleStudents

EndFunction

This way our new report will be seen on the page and when a user clicks on it, it will list the relevant students. Furthermore, if the user filters the enrollment let’s say for 8th graders only, our report will list students eligible for IDEA from 8th grade only.

How to Create Custom Functionality

Sometimes you may need to add custom functionality to the system such as moving a group of students to specific homeroom based on user defined criteria. To accomplish these types of tasks, you add a user control to the system as creating a custom report. All the steps above are applicable to this scenario. The main difference is in the xml file created. By specifying “Wizard” for the <widgettype> tag, you make the control appear as an application in the page which user control is created for.

User control files can interact with the page that they are inside through the ICustomReportable interface.

Each user screen in VANTAGE FUSION implements ICustomReportable interface which exposes a function named ReportQuery which returns IQueryable of current objects.

By using this interface you can access the pages data source any time you want.

Copyright

The information contained in this document represents the current view of Yuce Information Systems and Vantage Learning on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Vantage Learning and Yuce must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Yuce or Vantage Learning, and Vantage Learning and Yuce cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication.

This White Paper is for informational purposes only. YUCE MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT.

© 2008 Vantage Learning and Yuce Information Systems. All rights reserved.

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