Searching the Help
To search for information in the Help, type a word or phrase in the Search box. When you enter a group of words, OR is inferred. You can use Boolean operators to refine your search.
Results returned are case insensitive. However, results ranking takes case into account and assigns higher scores to case matches. Therefore, a search for "cats" followed by a search for "Cats" would return the same number of Help topics, but the order in which the topics are listed would be different.

Search for | Example | Results |
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A single word | cat
|
Topics that contain the word "cat". You will also find its grammatical variations, such as "cats". |
A phrase. You can specify that the search results contain a specific phrase. |
"cat food" (quotation marks) |
Topics that contain the literal phrase "cat food" and all its grammatical variations. Without the quotation marks, the query is equivalent to specifying an OR operator, which finds topics with one of the individual words instead of the phrase. |

Search for | Operator | Example |
---|---|---|
Two or more words in the same topic |
|
|
Either word in a topic |
|
|
Topics that do not contain a specific word or phrase |
|
|
Topics that contain one string and do not contain another | ^ (caret) |
cat ^ mouse
|
A combination of search types | ( ) parentheses |
|
Status Visible Group
Group the invisible Status Visible Group Visio shape with other shapes to show or hide the widgets depending on the result of the rule defined in the Visibility Rule property.
Tip Use the group widget when you want to show or hide non-BVD shapes, or to show or hide a large number of shapes. Then it is easier to group the shapes with the Status Visible Group and set the visibility rule in the group widget. You can also set the visibility of a widget based on its Visibility Rule property. Use this property to show or hide individual widgets.
Widget properties:

The Data Channel property enables you to select the data stream over which you want to feed data into the widget. Before you can select a data stream, you must send data to BVD, addressed to the data channel you want to select for your widget.
Example
To show the rise and fall of the temperature in your store in New York City, select the following data channel for your widget:
The data received includes the following:
type: Temperature
element: Monitor
value: 20.9 status: #008000

The Visibility Rule property enables you show or hide the widget based on the outcome of a rule.
Tip You can also use the Status Visible Group widget to show or hide a widget. Use the group widget when you want to show or hide non-BVD shapes, or to show or hide a large number of shapes. Then it is easier to group the shapes with the Status Visible Group and set the visibility rule in the group widget. See also Status Visible Group.
Visibility rules have the following format:
<property><operator><value>
<property>
- The name of the data property to use to calculate the visibility.
<operator>
- The operation that is used to compare the current value of the property with the given value. For a list of operators, see Rule Operators.
<value>
- The value the operator works on.
Example
errors>=10
If the value of the data field errors
is greater than or equal to ten, the widget is shown in the dashboard. In all other cases, the widget is hidden.

The Hyperlink property enables you to link a widget to another dashboard or to a URL. When a user then clicks the widget, the linked dashboard or URL opens. Linked dashboards open in the current browser window, while external URLs open in a new window.
You can add variables to the URL in order to link widgets to specific content based on the data channel. Use the values assigned to the data fields, or use the variables from a dashboard template. You can also combine both types of variables in one URL.

Use the data fields of your received data as variables in the URL. Specify the data field names as variables. The data field names are replaced with their associated values when the dashboard is viewed. You can add data field variables to the URL in the format #{dataField_name}
.
https://example.com/#{dataField_name}
When the value associated with the variable changes, the URL changes accordingly.
Tip You can specify only the data field name, for example #{url}
, if the data field has a complete URL as value, for example https://example.com
.
Example
A company wants to link a widget to their website, searching for the host name specified in the data channel:
east
Host A
CPU load
NYC
They specify the following URL, which later replaces the query value with the value of the dimension host
:
https://example.com/q=#{host}
When viewing the dashboard, the dimension host
is replaced with its assigned value in the URL:https://example.com/q=Host+A
If the variable is not defined, the variable expression in the URL is replaced with an empty string.

You can add variables from dashboard templates to the URL. Variables are replaced with their assigned value when an instance is viewed. You can add variables to the URL in the format ${variable}
.
Example
A company uses a URL in a dashboard template to show the floor plan of their company location. They use different instances for each location and want to show the floor plan specific to each location.
The following URL replaces the query value with the value of the variable location
that is assigned to the instance:
https://example.com/office-locations/floor-plans?site=${location}
When viewing the instance with the assigned value Atlanta
, the floor plan for the company location in Atlanta is shown. The location
variable is replaced with Atlanta
in the URL: https://example.com/office-locations/floor-plans?site=Atlanta
If the variable is not defined or the template is converted back into a dashboard, the variable expression in the URL is replaced with an empty string.
For more information on templates and variables, see Manage templates.