UI Widgets

One of the more interesting new features of Webshell is the concept of UI widgets.  UI widgets are a self-contained visualization of high-level data that can be placed on a page.  This content will describe how to author UI widgets using various data sources such as a data list, view data form, and Custom UI Model.

UI Widgets are built for display within the web shell user interface and will not display within the click once smart client user interface. For more information see User Interface and related FAQ.

Prerequisites

This content assumes knowledge of data lists, view data forms (data forms), and Custom UI Model. This content also assumes knowledge of how to generate a UI Model for user interface logic and how to use a html file for layout of user interface controls found within the parameters section of a data list, for example.

Note: The type of data displayed in a UI widget is usually strategic high-level rollup-type data, which means efficiency is extremely important when retrieving the data. Asking strategic questions from the production tables within the OLTP database is generally not considered a good practice as the OLTP database is used to hold day to day, tactical information pertinent to running your day to day fundraising operations. Therefore, populating a UI Widget with data will usually mean pulling data from the Blackbaud Data Warehouse or the OLAP cube or some type of snapshot output table from which to retrieve the data. A custom business process could generate a snapshot output table which could be generated as the output of a specific business process instance.

If you are unsure about any of these topics, be sure to familiarize yourself with the basics before continuing.