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
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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 |
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Two or more words in the same topic |
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Either word in a topic |
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Topics that do not contain a specific word or phrase |
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Topics that contain one string and do not contain another | ^ (caret) |
cat ^ mouse
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A combination of search types | ( ) parentheses |
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Modify the Visio shape
Custom widgets require a Visio shape that represents their appearance in the dashboard. You can create the shape when you design the dashboard in Visio. Additionally, you can make it reusable by saving it as a stencil. The shape that you create in Visio is the visual representation of your widget in the dashboard. In its simplest form, it is just a shape. But it can be extended to provide interactive elements that define graphical attributes, like the hole size of a donut chart.
To identify a shape as a custom widget, you must define at least two properties for the shape: opr_item_type
and opr_dashboard_item
.
You can define these properties in Visio's shape data menu:
- Make sure that Visio is running in Developer mode (Options > Advanced > General > Run in developer mode).
- Design your dashboard and add any shape that will later be used as the custom widget.
- Right click on the shape and select Data > Define Shape Data...
-
In the Define Shape Data dialog box, enter the required properties:
Name: opr_item_type
Type: string
Value: <type-of-your-widget>Name: opr_dashboard_item
Type: Boolean
Value: TRUEThese properties will tell BVD that this shape is a widget and needs to be treated like one.
opr_item_type
is used to internally identify the widget type. When BVD finds such a shape, it looks for a JavaScript file according to the value of theopr_item_type
property and adds the code to the running dashboard. Do not useopr
as a prefix for the widget type, as this prefix is reserved for BVD internal use.Example: The following is an example for a pumping circle (the full pumping circle example is available on GitHub):
opr_item_type: pumping_circle
opr_dashboard_item: TRUE - Optional. Define the additional shape data property
opr_grouping_item
. For details, see Widget shape type. - Save and export the dashboard as SVG.
- Optional. Save the custom widget's shape as stencil. For details, see Save shape as stencil.

In BVD, there are two types of widget shapes:
- Real shape: The shape that represents the real widget appearance. You can modify and adjust the appearance of the shape in your widget code. For example, you can hide the real shape and use your own instead, or you can manipulate the shape by adding and changing SVG elements and attributes.
-
Reference shape (grouping item): The shape that acts as a reference for other shapes that need to be grouped together. This type of shape will receive the channel's data, but will display the other shape in the dashboard. This kind of shape is required, for instance, if you want to display a shape that has the rules and data of another shape. Usage examples for this shape type are the Status Color Group and Status Visible Group widgets. To create a Reference shape (grouping item) widget, define one additional shape data property:
Name: opr_grouping_item
Type: Boolean
Value: TRUEIf this property is defined, the shape is removed from the dashboard and all properties assigned to it will affect the shapes grouped with this shape.

In order to make a custom widget shape reusable, you can save it as a Visio stencil. In the following example, you learn to create a new stencil and save it as a .vssx file so that it can be reused later.
To create a stencil, do the following:
- In the Shapes panel in Visio, click More Shapes > New Stencil (either US Units or Metric).
- A new stencil is created. If necessary, you can rename this stencil later when saving it to the file.
-
Drag and drop the custom widget shape to the empty area of the stencil list.
Optional. You can rename your custom widget by double clicking the image in the stencil, or by right-clicking and selecting Rename Master.
Click the Save Stencil button, or right-click the stencil and select Save. The stencil is saved in the .vssx format.
To use this stencil when creating a dashboard, you can load the stencil into Visio. Click More Shapes > Open Stencil and select your .vssx file.