There are a couple of reasons to use a datasource in BlueDolphin:
- Create Objects
- Enrich Objects
- Relationships
This article will describe the object creation from a datasource.
First follow the article Import data into BlueDolphin to make your local datasource available in BlueDolphin.
In this article I'll explain the steps you need to take to create new "Application components" based on a loaded datasource, in my case "Source_Applications".
Before executing the steps, make sure you:
- have a valid BlueDolphin environment
- are Administrator in the environment
- have the Object definition you would like to make available in your environment. See Configuring Concepts and Building blocks on how to install a template from the library.
Go to the Object definitions section of the Admin module and select the definition for which you want to create objects.
For this article I'll stick with the three object properties which are present after installing the "ValueBlue standard convention". We will fill two properties directly with the data from the datasource and for the third one we will use a Questionnaire field.
Go to the Sources section of the opened Object definition, and you will see the screen below.
As you can see, there are no source configurations present yet. Click on the Add source connection to add a new Source connection.
In the image below, you can see the configured settings:
For the Connection name, I have chosen a simple name so I can easily find it in the Sources tab. I have also selected the correct source.
I selected New objects are allowed to be created with data from the source because this source comes from the source that contains data for the object that I want to create.
Because I have a very simple setup, I just set the group value to "nvt" (the group value is used in very specific cases). My source just contains applications so there is no need to further filter the content, I want to create an object from all entries in the source.
Besides using the datasource for setting a value to the title field, I use the datasource to fill the properties Name & Version directly from the source.
After all settings are made, click OK to create the source entry. You will see the image below.
Note: To make sure an object added via a source is available, click the Save button in the top-right corner and then click the refresh button
.
As you can see I will leave Click here to enable manual source processing unchecked, as I want the objects to be automatically created/updated.
We now need to make sure the Maker property is kept in sync with the Questionnaire field. For this action, from the tab Application Component go to Object Questionnaires.
Click Add questionnaire to add an existing Questionnaire to the Object definition. A pop-up window is displayed.
Using the Choose questionnaire dropdown, you can select one of the questionnaires available in your BlueDolphin environment. After you have selected a questionnaire, you are able to link one or more questionnaire fields to the datasource value (the value of the datasource field of the datasource bound to the object is used as the fields value). For this, click the Add linked question button, select the question you want to link, and then the bound datasource and the field in the datasource you want to use as the value of the question. See the image below.
I want to use the value of the field Vendor in the datasource "Source_Applications" as the value for question Maker.
There can also be a need to use a Questionnaire value as an Object property value, for example when you want to filter on a questionnaire value or use it in a display column.
For this, from the tab Application Component click Add object property.
On the pop-up for adding a new object property, give the property a name. Select the Questionnaire and the field whose value you want to use. See the image below for the settings I configured.
All settings are done in case you want to create objects now. Go to the Sources tab and click on the refresh button. See the image below.
Note: If the source you used for importing is no longer available, all linked objects will go back to the state of the last import when you sync next. For instance, if you created objects through an import and then updated them using a source import, removing the updated source and syncing will take those objects back to their original state. Keep in mind that manually updating values turns off syncing, and these rules don't apply in that situation.
When the objects are created, I open the Application component "7Zip". On the General tab you can see that the version and name properties are set with the datasource values.
The Questionnaire Generic Application information has a question bound to the datasource value:
When I set the question Status with the value Live
and click the Save button, the object property Status should be filled with the same value. After the save operation has been completed, I reopen the general tab and you can see the Status field has been updated.
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