2.5

Collection Container improvements 

Collection Container element has become a more powerful tool for Template creation. Now Template Editor can pick only the necessary entities to use for Publications: 

1. By Field value filtering (see Filtering feature) 

2. By setting the exact index range of elements (see Display elements feature) 

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Filtering feature 

Once the Collection Container is added to the Editor Area, Template Editor allows opening the Filters popup from the Data tab, where Filtering Rules can be set: 

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On the Edit Filters dialog, Template Editor can: 

1. Add Filtering rules, which could be applied on all field types (Text, Date, Numeric, Boolean) 

2. Reorder Filtering Rules – filtering rules are applied on Collection in accordance to the set order. 

3. Delete Filtering Rules 

4. Group Filtering Rules by And/OR logic operators 

 Filtering Rules condition operators depend on Selected field type: 

1. For Text fields: 

   1. Equals 

   2. Contains 

   3. Doesn’t contain 

2. For Numeric fields: 

   1. = 

   2. <> 

   3. > 

   4. < 

   5. >= 

   6. <= 

3. For Date fields: 

   1. Today 

   2. This week/month 

   3. Last week/month 

   4. Before some date 

   5. After some date 

4. For Boolean fields: 

   1. True 

   2. False 

Display elements feature 

In the Display elements section Template Editor can range indexes of entities to pick from Collection:  

• Starting element – first index of Collection entity to pick from Collection. 

• Quantity of elements – number of elements to be picked after Starting Element. 

This could be useful when you want to use in Publication only the exact quantity of elements from the selected collection (e.g., the last 5 recorded tasks), or when you want to pick an element with the exact index (e.g., to display a second Picture from all attached pictures). 

Display elements feature can be applied to any type of Collections, including Attachments. This means that now Template Editor can pick any image from the Attachment Collection by its index: 

1. Add Collection Container element – after the element is added to Editor Area, you should adjust it on the Data tab: 

2. Set Collection name, where images are stored – may depend on Data Source structure (Attachments collection for Salesforce). 

3. Adjust Display elements section: 

4. Quantity of elements = 1 

5. Starting element = index of necessary image to pick from Collection. 

6. Add Dynamic Image element into adjusted Collection Container. 

 Display elements feature settings are applied on Collection/Dynamic Container as the last step after Filtering and Sorting rules are applied. This could be useful when you want to use in Publication only the exact quantity of records (e.g., Top 10 of relevant options). 

Table Container improvements 

Table Container is an advanced version of Collection Container, which allows creating Dynamic Tables, with each row filled with field values of Collection entities. 

In addition to Filtering and Display Elements features, Table Container elements now include another important feature, which allows customization of content on final Publications – the Sorting feature. 

Sorting feature 

After Table Container is added to Editor Area, Template Editor can open Sort by dialog from the Data tab, where Sorting Rules can be set: 

On Sort by dialog, Template Editor can: 

1. Add several Sorting rules, which could be applied to field types: Text, Date, and Numeric. 

2. Reorder Sorting Rules - Sorting rules are applied on Collection by the set order. 

3. Delete Sorting Rules 

 Available Sorting operators depend on selected field types: 

1. for string fields: “from A to Z” (default), “from Z to A” 

2. for numerical fields: “Smallest to Largest” (default), “Largest to smallest” 

3. for date fields: “Oldest to newest” (default), “Newest to oldest” 

Aggregation Function element 

A new Aggregation Function element is available from the list of Dynamic elements on the Content tab. It allows displaying the aggregated information about items in the Collection: quantity of items in the Collection, the average value of a specific numeric field in the Collection, etc.  

Aggregation Function element has the following available operators: 

• Count (default) – allows displaying the number of elements within the Collection. Does not require field setting. 

• Sum – allows evaluating the sum of certain field values within Collection. 

• Max - allows displaying of the maximum value of certain field values within Collection. 

• Min - allows displaying the minimum value of certain field values within Collection. 

• Avg - allows evaluating the average value of certain field values within the Collection. 

Since the result of the Aggregation Function on the final Publication is a numeric value, all Numeric Formatting settings are available for adjustment. 

Conditional values for Text fields 

Another huge improvement in terms of conditional rendering is Conditional Values for Text Fields, which allow to set of conditional rules, to display custom text on final Publications, which are based on initial field values. 

Once Template Editor has mapped the Text field to the Dynamic text element, Conditional Values settings become available on the Data tab.

On the Conditional Values dialog, Template Editor can: 

1. Add several Conditional Rules, which could be applied to field types: Text, Date, and Numeric. 

2. Reorder Conditional Rules - Conditional rules are applied by the set rules’ order. 

3. Delete Conditional Rules. 

4. Set Else Value – value that will be displayed on final Publication in case none of the set Conditional Rules were applied. 

Available Conditional Operators: 

1. Equal 

2. Not 

3. Contains 

4. Doesn’t contain 

5. Is blank 

6. Is not blank 

Data Format management 

In this Release, we paid special attention to Data formatting to allow our Users to adjust Templates and generated Publications by local date and number formatting rules.  

Dynamic date element: custom Date formats 

We have reworked the Date Formatting approach for Dynamic data elements. Now Template Editor can fully customize Date and Time formatting, simply typing the formatting pattern into the corresponding field: 

1. Date format is the date formatting pattern that will be applied to the selected Date Field (default value can be set in Organizational Settings). 

2. Time format is the time formatting pattern that will be applied to the selected Date/Time Field (can be set to None to hide time values). 

Format chars that could be used in any combination for formatting pattern creation are listed in the tables below. A preview of the formatting pattern is displayed in the Date Preview section. 

1. List of Date-Format chars: 

2. List of Time-Format Chars: 

 Dynamic text element: custom Numeric formats 

Also, we have added a Custom Numeric format option for Dynamic text elements with mapped Numeric fields. This option allows adjusting fields with numeric data according to the Field content and Business logic of the created Template. 

With Custom Numeric format option selected, Template Editor can specify: 

1. Any char as thousands separator 

2. Any char as a decimal separator 

3. Number of decimal digits to display. 

4. Text before the number: custom prefix text, which will be added before the Numeric value (e.g. to add special currency symbols) 

5. Text after number: custom text, which will be added after the Numeric value (e.g. for specifying UoM for the field) 

Number format preview is available in real time. 

Style controls improvements 

In this release, we also introduce several additional Style controls, which allow implementing Templates with modern design. 

Border width controls 

Border width for each element can now be set separately for each border from the Decorations sub-tab on the Style tab. 

First of all this feature was implemented for Table elements, and brings sufficient flexibility in terms of table design. 

Publication margins 

Publication margins now can be set in the Template settings dialog. This feature allows you to set Publication margins separately for each side of the template. Moreover, it allows to set Publication margins only for Publications with Pagination enabled: 

Additional CSS properties 

To provide additional customization options for paginated Publications, we have included several additional CSS options to control the behavior of Template elements, when they do not fit the page during PDF generation. These options are available in the Extra sub-tab of the Style tab: 

• Page break inside – adjusts page breaks inside the current element. 

• Page break after – adjusts page breaks after the current element. 

• Page break before – adjusts page breaks before the current element. 

• Border collapse – sets whether cells inside a <table> have shared or separate borders. 

Other Improvements  

Default templates redesign 

In this release we have reworked our default templates, to demonstrate the flexibility and power of Composer Online. The idea of new template designs is to demonstrate a variety of different styles, ideas, and layouts available, so Template Editors can find the most suitable Template to address business needs.