News.Letter

Nov 2024 - The EngineerList SUPER KPI Card spectacular


This Month

We’ve had an influx of our favo(u)rite “can we just…” requests aimed at our Engineer.List plugin this month. List was originally designed as a legislation tracker/horizon scan tool to show how different regions were implementing rules when a map wasn’t appropriate, but we’ve seen it blossom into an asset tracker, property portfolio, patent & trademark explorer, personal task management widget and much more. We’re going to dig into some of these this month along with our new use cases:

SUPER KPI CARDS!

News Feeds

Quick Report Generator 


If you don’t have EngineerList yet, you can find out more (including pricing) here: Engineer.List 


SUPER KPI CARDS 


SUPER KPI CARDS
HighQ’s humble KPI card hasn’t seen much love in the 14 years I’ve been working with the platform. While EngineerList has been able to do counts for a little while using the isChoropleth option and totals using the sumColumn option, with a little more configuration we can create our SUPER KPIs.

Let’s say we have 4 columns in our iSheet based around task management: Task Name, Status, Priority, and Assignee. We can create a view filtered so the assignee is [me] therefore a user only sees their own tasks in List (something we can’t do with the default Home page Task widget)

Then we set the following options:
nameColumn: '2',
isChoropleth: 'true',
colorPanelBackground: 'true',

Settiing the nameColumn to 2 (our Status column) and the with choropleth grouping the data we get a KPI card that counts tasks, and the “series” is the Status. We can also add the below to get List to fit into a split Home Page to sit beside another data viz panel:
singleColumn: 'true',

We can extend this to draw focus to some KPI cards, by adding:
groupColumn: '3',

This creates groups of panels by their Priority so we can focus on key tasks.

Lastly, if you have EngineerTable you can add:

             panelLinks: 'table',
            tableOptions: {
                recordLinks: 'edit',
            }

This will allow the user to see all their tasks of a that status without leaving the page and even edit the task from here too! Super KPI cards!

Lastly, we can condense this view even further using the new countChoices option. By setting our nameColumn to our priority column (3) and enabling countChoices we get a pill per group of tasks by Status, so:

nameColumn: '3',
countChoices: 'true',

This might give you multiple layers to your chart if you have more choice columns than just Status.

Why it’s useful
This makes LPM and document review dashboards far more powerful, reducing the number of clicks and page transitions the user needs to get access to and modify their critical tasks.


News Feeds 

We don’t often think of iSheets as a Content Management System, but it can handle text and images, can sort content by date, and can assign an author, so it’s all we need for a simple CMS.

We have added a heroColumn option that makes the first panel image from your imageColumn full width:

 

heroPanels: '1',

 

You can also add a URL to a HighQ Hyperlink column or a multiline text column and set:
hyperlinkColumn: '2',

To have the user taken to a website outside of HighQ to read the full article. Useful if you’d rather drive traffic to the Firm’s website rather than have them read it in the iSheet modal (using panelLinks: 'viewItem'),

 

Lastly, there is a new panelLimit option to show only the most recent articles added to your CMS i.e.:
panelLimit: '10',

 

Why it’s useful

It allows iSheets content to be turned into a customizable content UI right in a HighQ home page. With the iSheet connector or an API connected app, it’s possible to push content to multiple HighQ sites concurrently too! 


Quick Report Generator 

List and Table can be used together to allow users to quickly create and export custom reports with just a few clicks.

With panelLinks: 'compare', each time the user clicks a panel, the iSheet row (or rows if using isChoropleth mode) are added to engineerTable.

Then the showTableFilters: 'true', option allows the user to select which columns they’d like to see in their report.
Lastly add:

             tableOptions: {

                 exportButton: 'true',

             }

To allow the user to export the finished table to CSV and download it.

Why it’s useful

Legal teams can waste a lot of billable time getting the correct data into the right format for clients to use in their own systems. EngineerList and Table can help users’ self-serve this data when they need it. 

Oct 2024 - EngineerAPI


This Month

HighQ has recently allowed access to the HighQ API direct from JavaScript without the need for any middleware. You can test this out yourself with the steps below.

·         Copy the below code into Notepad and replace the “subdomain.domain.com/context” with your own HighQ URL (so lawfirm.highq.com/lawfirm or collaborate.lawfirm.com/lawfirm)

·         Log into HighQ

·         Open the JavaScript console in your browser (usually the F12 key, and select Console)

·         Paste your modified code into the console and hit enter

fetch("https://subdomain.domain.com/context/api/18/sites", {headers: {Accept: 'application/json'}})
.then(response => response.json()).then(data => console.log(data)); 

You should get a reply that you can expand to see your list of available sites! 

Why it’s useful
We’re really excited for the possibility this brings to single page apps built into HighQ home pages meaning data can be captured and updated from a single user interface.


EngineerAPI


Our new plugin makes use of the above new API access to allow our other plugins to make API calls. We’ve used it initially to allow EngineerTable to edit iSheet rows direct from your home page or wiki page 

Why it’s useful
This allows us to create powerful dashboards that allow users to make some changes to iSheet data with just a few clicks and without needing to go to the iSheet. Task status updates, due dates and notes can be made right from a Home Page.


EngineerCalendar

To expand our LPM capability, EngineerCalendar can now use multiple date columns in an iSheet to add events to the widget. As usual, you’ll need the latest version of EngineerCalendar to enable this. More details can be found here: https://www.engineer.legal/support/calendar-support#h.2ni57jnzbwih

 

Why it’s useful
This means sites will a series of pre-defined key dates (Deposition Date, Trial Date, etc.) can now display all those columns of dates on a single calendar.


EngineerTable

We’ve been experimenting with pulling data from multiple iSheets into a single dashboard to allow something like the long-requested iSheets relational database feature. Using our new “joins” option, we can pull the contents of 2 or more iSheets into the page and display them as options in a drop-down menu next to each record in your primary table. You’ll need our newest versions of EngineerTable to do this so get in touch if you’d like to experiment.

Why it’s useful
Updating iSheets that use joins or lookups can result in long click journeys and multiple page refreshes. This can dramatically simplify case management dashboards.


Showcase

If your team want a global map, but also want to be able to “zoom in” to a regional level, then you could use our regional map templates. With a little JavaScript attached to buttons on the page, each button could load a different map template from the same iSheet data to create an effective zoom.