Custom messages are useful for providing direction to users of a QlikView application. For example, the table chart below has quite a bit of data and depending on how much data, could potentially take a long time for the chart to load if there aren’t any filters or selections applied to it. In such cases, custom messages can be useful to instruct the user that a selection is required before the chart will render. Follow the steps below to create a calculation condition and a custom message.
1.Right click on the straight table and select Properties. On the General tab, in the Calculation Condition expression box enter the condition shown in the screenshot below. This is simply saying return the current number of selected values in the Customer Name field, which will be one, and if no values are selected then the chart will not render until a selection is made.
2. On the General tab click the Error Messages button. In the Custom Message dialog box enter a message that will be helpful to the user. Click OK when done.
3. As you can see when there is no Customer selection the chart will not display any data, instead your custom message will appear.
4. Once a customer selection is made, the chart will display the desired results.
5. Additionally, a designer can apply verbiage in the Help Text section of a chart, which will add another piece of helpful information to ad the user with navigating around the application. The help text will appear as a “?” in the charts caption. The user can either hover over or click on the question mark and a popup message will appear.
In the end, this functionality might not be utilized all that often, but it’s good to know that it’s available. Anything that can be added to reduce end user confusion will only benefit and aid in the acceptance of a QV application. As we all know, the ultimate measure of success with any BI application is end user adoption, so sprinkling helpful messages throughout the app is a good way for a designer to be proactive by providing helpful hints make the user experience as smooth and worry free as possible.
If you have any questions or comments please feel free to shoot me an email.
