Help on a Table with hyper link of email

#1

I have a table that has people in the list and I also have a list of thier emails.

I am trying to make it so you can click on the person name and it opens up an email with subject and what not ready to send to that person.


I set the column type to Hyperlink and then in the Hyperlink Address I put
"mailto:[Email Address]"

btw "[Email Address]" is in the tool tip and is showing that persons email address, I did this to make sure I had the correct variable.

It appears that variables do not work in the Hyperlink Address because when i hover over it all i see is "mailto;" if i add in ?subject=[Persons Name] all I get is "mailto:?subject=".


Am I doing something wrong? Do I need to script this?

Can it be done at all?


James


#2

4 thing you didn't know you could do in DundasBI

Ok so I found this and it says I can:

https://www.google.com/#q=[city]

So I tried https://www.google.com/#q=[Email Address] and the link I get is "https://www.google.com/#q=".

It is not reading the variable.

What I did should work? shouldnt it?

#3

I just tried what I thought would be a work around and it not working either. I did it with both mailto: and "https://www.google.com/#q="


http://www.dundas.com/support/support-center/support-articles/designing/navigate-to-url



#4

The hyperlink column is assumed to be used with keywords, so your example of

mailto:[EmailAddress]

shuld work. However, for this to work, the email address field has be placed on either Rows or Columns in metric set. You can remove it from the Visualization tab if you want to hide it from the table.

#5

OK I just made it a hidden column and now it working.


What gets me is that I had both a none column and a column in the link and both did not show, had the one that was a column shown that would have tipped me off to needed to make the other one a hidden column to get it to work but both did not work.


Also having that information that they have to be a column (hidden if you just want to use it in the link and not an actual column) in the direction would have avoided this entire situation.


I dont understand is why the email was working in the tool tip and why the other variable that was a coulmn was not working when in combination with a variable that was not a coulmn.

#6

This is actually mentioned in the article about formatting text, but I'll see how we can make it more clear.


I'm a bit confused about the two column comparison though, are both of them working now?

#7

mailto:[Email Address]?subject=[OrderNumber]


[Email Address] was the one not a coulmn

[OrderNumber] was (and still is) a coulmn


with [Email Address] not a coulmn (working in the tool tip) the entire mailto:[Email Address]?subject=[OrderNumber] came out "mailto:?subject="


That the same thing I dont understand. you will have to get your developers that situation and have the look into to why that happens, becuase like I said if the [OrderNumber] I might have taken the step of maiking the email a hidden coulmn.


To clarify, the email was a Row on the metric set data but did not work untill I made it a Visualization column.


#8

Wait Can I only use data from that coulmn in the hyper link, not from another coulmn?


BTW i am using the hyperlink mailto:[Email Address]?subject=[OrderNumber] on a column named customer name.


If that is so then this does not make it useful.


Trying the navigation agian....


#9

You can refer to any column in that metric set, as long as they are on Rows or Columns. For example, here is the metric set:

Image title

You can see that I removed SalesQuota from the Column visualization field:

Image title

Next, I use the following for the hyperlink:

mailto:[Name]?subject=Sales is [SalesYTD] and target is [SalesQuota]

And, when I click on Australia, I get this:

mailto:Australia?subject=Sales%20is%201,421,810.9242%20and%20target%20is%20250,000.0000


I sugget you make sure that you are using the unique name and not the caption name, and that your data actually has values coming through, but otherwise it should work.

#10

OK, due to a very unique case I had these columns frozen because I am only showing one row and it was a neater look to the table.


This is the root cause as to why the variables where not working. Also once I took it off frozen I coudl remove the email as a Visualization coulmn and leave it just on the metric set column and use it just perfectly.


Sorry I have all these weird use cases.

#11

When I had tried the Navigation way It was also because it was a frozen column.


I am liking the navigation (open in same window) for a mailto: becuase with hyperlink it not only opened a new mail in outlook for me but a new tab (that was annaoying).

Now that I am using a navgation I had to change the color of the text to look like a hyper link.


Elia, making sure I had the correct unique name was the first, 3rd 7th 9th, ect thing I did. That is why I kept saying that I am using the same one as a tool tip.

#12

Glad you found an even better solution!


As a side note, you can configure your browser to open mailto with something other than outlook (definitely works with Gmail). You cannot do that for the viewers, so not a solution, but can alleviate your personal annoyance in some cases.

#13

I was thinking about what the best setting is and it all depends on the people using the dashboard. If they use web mail then a new windows is what I want but if they use out look I dont want a new window. (we use MS Exchange)

#14

The big picture:

I have tree map of orders numbers that shows the overall status as a color (green, blue, yellow and red). The overall status is the worst of any of the 8 sub statuses.

For the size of the block I converted the colors to numbers and used the total of the sub statues as control on the size.

After that I made a layer that shows when you click on an individual block in the tree map to open up and it has on it two tables.

One table just shows the 8 sub statues and the other has detailed information like the customer name.

I at that point since I am only showing one row used the frozen column on each column, because there are also 4 Row Header Columns that do collapsing. This gave it a better look and because the overall size of the table it never needed any horizontal scrolling, I just liked the way it looked with all of them frozen.

At this point I then added the email information and started trying to get it to work with hyperlink or navigation.

I am still not sure why it break when frozen because it is not a vertical freeze it is a horizontal freeze, why would this make getting the variable data ([Unique Name] not work?

Any way had I tried doing the hyperlink before then changed to frozen there would not have been so much “What’s going on here”.

Like I said I have unusual and niche uses cases, I tend to come up with ways of doing things not previously encountered.