Best practices while planning reports and documents

• Sketch the documents you will use in your app and outline how users will navigate between them. If you are creating an app for both tablets and mobile phones, you may want to create multiple diagrams for your app, one for each screen size. Diagramming the documents and links that need to be created allows you to identify:

• If you are creating an app that uses an existing dashboard-style document, whether the content in that document needs to be reorganized to suit a smaller screen.

• If you are creating an app with documents that contain a large amount of data, consider splitting each document into multiple, smaller documents to reduce loading time. You can then use links to allow users to switch between the documents.

• The navigation tools you must include. For example, you can include a tab bar on the bottom of every document that links users to other documents or you can allow users to navigate through documents by swiping right or left. For descriptions of the navigation tools you can use, see Using links in documents.

• If users must tap on or swipe across an object, the size of those objects. In general, objects that users are meant to tap on should be at least 30 pixels wide and 30 pixels tall. For best results, make the objects larger, around 45 pixels wide and 45 pixels tall.

• If you are creating an app or a document that links to other documents, the order in which these documents must be built. Links must be created after the document they target has already been created. For instructions on creating links in mobile documents, see Using links in documents.

• Where duplicate functionality exists. If two documents display different data with the same formatting, you may be able to create one document, duplicate it, and change the datasets to save development time.

• The datasets that are needed. One dataset can frequently supply data to multiple documents, which can speed up development and reduce cache sizes on the Intelligence Server.

• Any user interactivity you may want to include, such as widgets for data visualization or changing the appearance of the app when the mobile device is oriented in landscape mode instead of portrait.

• Consider the mobile device you are designing for:

• Create your documents using fonts that are available on the device.

• Ensure that the document displays correctly on the mobile device by defining the display properties, available in the Properties dialog box. These properties include optimizing the layout for display on a device, and whether the page-by bar and re-prompt icon are displayed. For descriptions of these properties, see Creating documents for mobile devices.

• Consider the size of the device's screen when building your reports. Although users can scroll through data, reports with fewer metrics improve performance and are usually easier to read. In addition, take advantage of the larger screen size available on tablet devices.

• Design documents for tablets such that users can view all the data in a single screen without panning. If more data must be displayed than will fit on one screen, consider using panel stacks to arrange the data such that the user can navigate by swiping or using selectors.

• To take advantage of the high-resolution screens on newer iOS devices, consider using large images in your documents.

If the documents are for both older and newer mobile devices, add the suffix @2x to the image's file name. This ensures that the image is appropriately resized for older devices. For example, use http://example.com/image@2x.png. For devices with high-resolution screens, such as the iPhone 6 Plus and newer, use the suffix @3x.

• In documents for tablets, use Information Windows to show users additional information about an attribute element they select. For information on creating Information Windows, see Providing additional information to users: Information Windows.

• In documents for tablets, use the Interactive Grid widget adjacent to a panel stack, and use the Interactive Grid as a selector that targets the panel stack. This allows users to view additional information without linking to a new document.

• In general, use at least 13-point size font. Font sizes that are greater than or equal to 13-point font are easier for readers to view.

• Images are easier to manage if they are hosted on a web server, and referenced using HTTP or HTTPS URLs. That way, if you need to migrate images across environments, you do not need to change the URLs for the images.

An example of an HTTP URL to an image is http://example.com/folder/image.png.

• You can configure the mobile apps to pre-cache reports, documents, or dashboards, so that they are available to users if they are offline. If the reports and documents contain images, to ensure that the images are pre-cached, store the images on both your Mobile Server and Intelligence Server machine. By default, the folders that you can store your images in are:

• Mobile Server: C:\Program Files\MicroStrategy\Mobile Server ASPx\Images

• Intelligence Server: C:\Program Files\MicroStrategy\Intelligence Server\Images

When you add the images to your documents or dashboards, use relative paths for the image's location, for example, .\images\mobile_example.png.

• If the data in your document is frequently updated, you can have the document periodically refresh itself as it is being displayed on a mobile device. For steps, see Enabling automatic refresh for documents.

• In a Transaction Services document, you can submit a unique ID for a specific mobile device, using the Mobile ID prompt. This allows you to keep track of which mobile devices are creating which records. You can filter the transaction date by Mobile ID.

The Mobile ID prompt is a system prompt, which is a special type of prompt that does not require an answer from the user. Instead, it is answered automatically by Intelligence Server. System prompts are located in the Public Objects/Prompts/System Prompts folder in Developer. For background information on system prompts in general, see the System Administration Help.

• Use the docked panel selector to display visualizations grouped on panel stacks. For information on creating docked panel selectors, see Allowing users to easily switch between panels: docked panel selectors.

• For reports with data grouped by an attribute in the page-by pane, you can choose to display the report on an iPad as a book with a separate page for each attribute element. This option, called Enable book-style page-by navigation, is selected by default. For steps to group data in a report, see the Basic Reporting Help.