Page Comparison

In this example, I will be adding links to specific applications in my report. The imaginary dataset that I am using in this example has 4 fields (appid, Permit Type, Permit Status, and Date Completed) and looks like this:

Note: the appid is used as a way to keep the records in the OneGov database unique and is also used for links. While the appid is not necessary to understand the information contained within the application it is still a very useful and important piece of data.

I don't want to include the appid in the final report because it is not relevant to my dataset but I do want to use it to create a link to the application. On the link step I'll start by choosing what to name the link. This could either be a static phrase like "View Application" or "Click Here to View" or it could be dynamic based on the record like "View App #{appid}" where "{appid}" is the appid for that specific record. To add the link text I have to click the three dots to the right of the "Display" label. When I do this, a gray box will appear in the spot of the three dots and the dots will move to the right of the box. The gray box signifies that if I add some sort of input, it will appear in the spot of the gray box. For this example, I want the link to display "View App #{appid}" so I need to add the text in two steps: Once to add the texts that stays the same for every record and one to add the appid. To start I will type "View App #" in the Manual Entry text box and click the green plus to the left of that text box. Once the plus is clicked, the text will move from the text box to the gray box in the link builder. Now I need to add the appid and since I want the report to use the appid for each record, I need to add the appid from the Columns section. To do this I need to click the three dots to the right of the newly added text to add a new gray box to the end of that text. Now I can click the appid column from the listing above and the link builder will add the new input to the end of the text I added. Now that the display portion of the link is created, I need to create the URL.

When creating links, the tool provides the base of the URL (https://[countyname].rtvision.com) and the report creator needs to provide the rest of the URL using the Manual Entry tool and the columns. It is important to remember that if you want to include a link to and application or an invoice, there are fields in that database that need to be included in the dataset (appid for links to an application, appid and invoiceid for links to an invoice). You also need to know the pattern of the URL to build out a link. These patterns can be found by navigating to the page and looking at how the URL is built out. For the link to an application, that URL looks like this: https://[countyname]rtvision.com/view.php?id=12345. We already know that the "https://[countyname]rtvision.com/" portion is already provided by the link builder and we can see that the number is the appid so that leaves the "view.php?id=" part of the link to add in through the Manual Entry.

Now that I know the layout of the link, I will click on the three dots within the URL portion of the link builder and enter "view.php?id=" using the Manual Entry. Then, I will add a new input by clicking the three dots again and click on appid in the Columns list. At this point in the process, the link builder should look like this:

At this point, my link is now built and I can click the green plus sign on the left side of the link builder to add the completed link to the report. When I view the created report, it will look like this: