InfoAssist > Creating and Customizing Documents > Building Infographics in InfoAssist

Building Infographics in InfoAssist

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With WebFOCUS Infographics, you can produce professional infographic images. These infographic images can be built using a web-based tool that offers thousands of customizable infographic templates and design objects. Information within these infographics can then be personalized using your corporate data.

When the infographic template is built, different objects can be tagged to be replaced with your data. The template can then be uploaded into the Home Page and used to create a new infographic procedure that places the data elements in the designated locations. The infographic procedure is a specialized InfoAssist document in which each of the tagged objects becomes a data component in a compound document. InfoAssist provides specially designed functionality to allow you to easily fill each of these data components and generate data-driven infographic images.

For more information, see the Creating WebFOCUS Infographics technical content.

Procedure: How to Create an infographic Procedure in InfoAssist

  1. On the WebFOCUS Home Page, on the Other tab, click Upload File to upload the tagged template that you downloaded from the WebFOCUS Infographics Creation Tool, powered by Easel.ly.
  2. On the Home Page, locate the uploaded template, right-click it, and then select New Infographic.
  3. Once you have designated whether your data source will be based on a Reporting Object or a Master File, you will be offered to select the data source.

    The infographic opens in Infographic mode, as shown in the following image.

    InfoAssist opens the infographic procedure in Infographics mode, which is a specialized version of Document mode. In Infographic mode, functionality has been customized to allow users to easily create infographics.

    Note: If you attempt to create a new infographic, based on an .ely template, that has no tagged items, InfoAssist returns an error stating that the selected template cannot be used.

Components Supported

When working with infographics, you can insert data into four types of objects: text, images, WebFOCUS Charts, and basic charts available from the Creation Tool. Each of these objects becomes special components in the infographic document.

  • Text objects become report components that allow you to place a single value into the designated location in the infographic. You can define the text to be inserted by placing existing database fields or Defines containing calculated expressions into the SUM field container. Additionally, extended text can be inserted using Headers and Footers. All styling of text objects is defined in the template. On the document canvas, you will see this styling applied to the data you place in the component field containers.
  • Image objects also become report components. These images are defined by placing fields containing image references in your Sum field container. Image references can be a database BLOB or image field, the name of an image file in the Reporting Server application path, or a URL pointing to an image file in an external location.
  • WebFOCUS charts become chart components and can take advantage of all of the standard chart functionality. A new infographics stylesheet (infographics.sty) is available as a good starting point to style your infographic charts, taking into account the limited real estate available.
  • Basic charts available from the Creation Tool become limited chart components. As with the text objects, all styling is defined in the template. In InfoAssist, place the desired measures and dimensions in the chart field containers to fill the chart with your data.

Infographic images can be generated in image (.png) or PDF format.

  • In Image format, the infographic image is embedded into an HTML page for display. When distributed through ReportCaster, the image can be embedded into the email message or included as an attachment.
  • For PDF format, each individual infographic image is placed into a separate PDF document. Running a single infographic will display the image in the PDF.

You can define a coordinated key across all components in the infographic document. This will cause your procedure to generate individual, personalized images for each value of your selected key. In a coordinated infographic, the multiple images generated are presented embedded into HTML at run time so that they can be viewed for both image and PDF format. When burst and distributed in ReportCaster, individual images or PDF documents are generated and distributed for each key value in your target audience.

For more information, see the Creating WebFOCUS Infographics technical content.

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