Keywords

As an administrator, one of your goals is to build applications that need little maintenance. While some manual intervention will always be required, the need to modify an application can be kept to a minimum. You may have an application that needs to change from one reporting period to the next. For example, your reporting and data entry views reference the current period. Instead of manually changing each view from January to February to March, you can "parameterize" these views. Once the view is parameterized, you can change the value of the parameter in a single location and each view automatically picks up the new value.

This ability to parameterize views is handled by a concept called keywords. You can think of a keyword as a parameter or variable that represents member selections. These member selections can be updated on demand. Any views referencing keywords automatically pick up the latest value of the keyword when the view is opened.

For example, using a keyword called CurrentMonth, you can build views that change the selected time period, from January to February to March, by defining the view to reference the CurrentMonth keyword. You then change the value of CurrentMonth to reflect the current reporting period.

Once you create your keywords, they can be accessed through the calculator, off-grid member selection, and the Member Selection dialog box for on-grid members.