Visual KPI Remote Context Service can read groups of attributes. As you organize your AF model, you’ll find that grouping AF attributes using Visual KPI keywords gives your model more readability and flexibility.
Attributes such as Pen information on trends, Info properties, and custom attributes can be grouped together.
For example, the Info settings (which can be used on any Visual KPI object) have the following properties:
- Info
- Info Numeric Format
- Info Display Format
- Info URL
You can either model all of these as a flat list of AF attributes or you can make them child attributes of Info.
In the example image above, you can see that this creates a more readable model. The AF Attribute ‘Power A’ has the Info Attributes all in a flat list and the ‘Power B’ AF Attribute has them nested. Note that if you nest these properties, the “Info” portion of the nested keywords is not needed. In this example, Info Display Format has become Display Format as a child attribute of Info.
Grouping AF attributes can be particularly useful when modeling Visual KPI Trends. Each Trend Pen can have many properties. The example image below shows the difference between the flat and nested approaches.
In the example above, we removed the beginning of the keyword phrase in the nested example, so ‘Pen 1 Color’ becomes ‘Color’ as a child attribute on Pen 1.
You can also apply grouping AF attributes to custom Visual KPI attributes. You can create up to 20 custom attributes in Visual KPI to help you group your objects.
For example, you can create custom attributes such as Plant, Unit, Region, Country, Operation Type, Department, Product Line, and so on. You can then place these custom attributes under an ‘Attributes’ attribute in your model to help keep the model clean and easy to read.
Learn more about what attribute names Visual KPI Remote Context Service looks for when deciding which Visual KPI object to create from an AF attribute.