A powerful yet often overlooked feature of
Statit piMD is its customizability, and the
simplicity of implementing these changes. Any
user designated as a Statit piMD administrator
has the power to edit the default properties
used by the system through simple, web based
forms. These properties can be used to customize
output sizes, labels, default values, etc. Following
is a brief discussion of some of the more common
output elements that users typically modify.
If you are not already familiar with Statit
piMD, we recommend you view
our 10 minute guided tour to familiarize
yourself with the output discussed in this article.
The Statit piMD tabbed properties
interface
Image / Window Sizes
Image sizes can be customized for 3 different
types of output: Web Images (the output seen
when viewing output in the browser), Printable
images (the size of images when you click a
"Printable Version" link) and Thumbnail
images (small images with a reduced amount of
labeling used in some output, such as the Indicator
Trend Matrix). The height and width of each
style of image can be specified to best meet
your output needs.
Window sizes can be customized for 3 different
types of pop-up windows: Web output (the standard
pop-up used to view indicator output), Printable
output (the window used to preview printable
versions) and the Class card (the window displayed
when comparing the performance of different
entities by clicking a point on the overall
trend chart). As is the case with image sizes,
these window sizes can have both their height
and width modified as desired.
Labels / Appearance
A common request from customers has been to
modify the labels or appearance of output elements
to better match their corporate standards. One
frequently requested customization is the ability
to modify the "Target Line" - the
reference line used on graphical output to represent
the target value of an indicator. By default,
the label for this line is "Target"
and the line is green in color. Changing the
label to "Goal" and the color to "Blue",
for example, is easily accomplished by typing
the new label, using a point and click color
chooser to select the new color and saving your
changes.
Default Values for Comments and Action Plans
A powerful feature of Statit piMD is the ability
to annotate a chart by associating comments
with a particular point. Statit piMD refers
to these annotations as "Comments",
and each comment can have an associated "Action
Plan" (of course, these labels are customizable
in a manner similar to that discussed above).
When entering these comments and action plans,
many customers find it useful to provide some
explanatory text to "guide" the person
adding the Comment/Action Plan. This explanatory
information can be supplied using the web based
properties interface and will be loaded into
the input form when a comment is initially created,
where it can be appropriately modified.
As you can see, many changes to Statit piMD
can be easily accomplished with nothing more
than a web browser. For more advanced customizations,
it is possible to modify the HTML templates
on which most Statit piMD output is based. We
invite you to view the article discussing the
customization of HTML templates which can be
found here.
Additionally, Statit piMD output can be exported
to a variety of formats and subsequently edited.
Many customers use this capability to generate
standard reports that can then be customized
in almost any way imaginable. Stay tuned for
an in depth discussion of this capability in
our next issue.
