Creating a user friendly pick and choose catalogue

Question

Hi,

I have been working on a script to ease the data flow (reformatting, restructuring, calculations etc) for a large group of scientists providing them with the specific outputs they need. The challenge is now that due to very different user prerequisites I need this script to be:

1) very user friendly

2) able to take input from users on certain predefined variables (eg the user inserts a certain date & time) from a list or calendar etc which will then be populated in the data set and used in the script.

So my question is now what is the best way to do this? Display boxes? Application builder?

Or something entirely different?

Br Julie

gzmorgan0 · Answer

@JulieSAppel, Both DisplayBox scripting and ApplicationBuilder has a learning curve. I agree with jim, @txnelson, that ApplicationBuilder has some advantages. for example the constructors (boxes) have the properties list displayed and easily accessible help. However, if your prompts are sequential or conditional, then it might take a bit more scripting than a series of dialogs. I do not know the scope of this application nor your JMP scripting knowledge. For novice JSL scripters, I point to one of the JMP scripts written in the JMP Scripting Guide, and listed below. For ApplicationBuilder novices, I suggest Help > Sample Data > button - Open Sample Applications Directory > Launcher With Report.jmpappsource. This UI dialog is similar to a platform dialog, getting user input regarding the current data table. Even though that does not sound like your goal, it is a good application to try adding different constructors and playing with them and demonstrates the two tasks: geting user input (UI) and generating a report/table. Good Luck! win = New Window( "New Window Example", <

txnelson · Answer

Not knowing the specific details of your requirements, I would suggest that you take the Application Builder approach.

Mark_Bailey · Answer

I will let other more qualified experts answer questions about the scripting or Application Builder approaches that will help you. I just want to say that JMP itself is designed to be user friendly and offers many powerful, interactive capabilities. So I guess I am saying that some training about how to generally use JMP might go a long way towards reducing the demands placed on your solution. I do not mean to say that learning JMP is the only, complete answer. It just might help a lot.