The Visual KPI Remote Context Server can read Child Elements as AF attributes. You can place all of your Visual KPI keywords under Child Elements.
As you build out your AF Model to include Visual KPI keywords you may find that your AF model becomes quite busy, or even cluttered, with attributes that only Visual KPI cares about. For instance, it is unlikely that users viewing your AF model will care about attributes such as “Sparkline Start Time”.
To keep your model as clean as possible, you can place all of these keyword attributes under the Child Elements attribute using the name “Visual KPI Properties.”
The Child Elements attribute is not required by default; it is simply a way to tidy up your model. You can specify some or all of your attributes as Child Elements of the Visual KPI Properties attribute. The Remote Context Server will first check for this Child Elements property and then read the attributes nested below it; then it will check for attributes outside Child Elements.
The Child Elements attribute can also be used to mark an element or attribute that you want to be ignored by Visual KPI Remote Context Server. In the following example image, we have added a Level attribute to Unit 1 and set the Visual KPI Properties attribute to False, which indicates RCS should ignore this attribute and NOT create it as a Visual KPI value.
If the Visual KPI Properties attribute is either 0, False, or Omit, then the attribute or element will be ignored by Visual KPI.
If the Visual KPI Properties attribute is set to be ignored on an AF element, then the whole group will be ignored along with all the AF properties and AF Child Elements within it, as shown in the example image below.
If Unit 1 had Child Elements, they would also be ignored, which allows for entire sections of your AF model to be ignored.
There is also a setting in Visual KPI Remote Context Server called “Require Visual KPI Properties Attributes.” By default, this value is set to False. If set to True, this attribute be will be required in order to process the AF elements and attributes.
If this value is set to True and the Visual KPI Properties attribute is not found on either an AF Element or an AF Attribute, then that AF Element or AF Attribute will be ignored. This functionality toggles the logic requiring the Visual KPI Properties attribute to act as an “Opt In” rather than the default “Opt Out”.
Learn more about Using Keywords and Grouping AF Attributes.