Web dashboard tables (OU filters and some feature requests)

jamiecarter7 · 24 October 2023 09:16

Hi everyone,

I am working on creating a hypertension dashboard and I am trying to create some tables that show data for blood pressure control rates. I am trying to replicate as close as possible this generic hypertension dashboard - Hypertension dashboard

The aim of the table is to show the breakdown one level lower (children to the current level). For example we have 5 levels - country, state, district, block, facility - so when I log into the state view I want to be able to see the all the individual child districts owned by that state in the table.

You can see an example of this in the generic dashboard (link above) titled ‘Compare sub-regions’.

Using the following settings to try and recreate this but when I login with a user at a lower level it doesn’t seem to show a sub-unit below my current user level but rather the top level country data sub-unit (states):

(not real data - sandbox)

This is not working at the level the user has access to.

Edit: I think there was some strange caching issue when logging in to different user profiles with different access levels, this seems to be working as expected showing the correct sub-unit for roles with access to different levels.

Another is that it begins to breakdown in a few specific instances:

As soon as I begin to use the ‘filter’ > ‘organisation’ options in the dashboard, the tables don’t work as expected and instead only showing the current level not the children (sub-units) at the current level. To see children I have to select both a parent and a level to get the right information. This feels quite complex, is there a way to fix the sub-unit option to the organisation filter. Currently there is no way to select the ‘sub-unit’ option and select a specific country/state/district…. It would feel more intuitive to be able to use both. Is there an option to allow both these to be used in combination? Can you suggest any other way to set this up in the dashboard so its more intuitive?

User experience questions

Is there a way to create a hyperlink, inside the table (or anywhere on the dashboard), that could automatically add a specific filter to a view. In our current dashboard we have this functionality to help the user quickly browse between children but I am unsure if there is a way to replicate this in the DHIS2 dashboard?
Is there a way to change to icons used in the filter organisation screen so that each level shows its own icon. Selecting from the dropdown menu is challenging because its hard to know what level I have currently selected, I have to count down the number of levels for my selection (for example a district is level 3), then remember to add a ‘level’ that is one level lower (in this case ‘block’ is level 4). Having some level specific icons might help reduce the mental burden during the selection process.

I am happy to also jump on a zoom call to discuss how this might be setup and then type up the answers here for others to read. Let me know if this is a preferred option.

Jamie

Gassim · 24 October 2023 16:07

Hi @jamiecarter7

Welcome to the DHIS2 Community of Practice, and thank you so much for posting about the challenges and features you’d like to see while using the DHIS2 Dashboard. The Dashboard app is certainly one of the apps that is continuously being revised, updated, and improved so let’s decided on which points could be feature requests and which ones we might be able to find a solution for.

If I make a suggestion that doesn’t seem to exactly satisfy your expectations, please feel free to add your comments.

To do that in the dashboard, I think you’d need to use two filters. First select the organization unit and then use the level ‘districts’. For example, in the screenshot below, I selected Bo as the organization unit and then selected Chiefdoms, so the dashboard will show me in the tables all the Chiefdoms in the Bo district (or I could instead select level facility):

I think the point of having the ‘sub-unit’ option is intended to make the selection specific for the OUs that are accessible to the user instead of selecting a particular OU; whereas but if you want to select a specific OU then you’d use the other option and not the ‘sub-unit’, but anyway, I am sharing this with the functional-design team and see their opinion. Could explain further where’s the complexity in selecting parent and level for specific OUs? Let’s assume that it is possible to select ‘sub-unit’ and then select the specific country/state/district, wouldn’t that be the same as selecting a parent and then a level? BTW, in the dashboard filter, only the OUs that the user has access to will appear.

That’d actually be a helpful feature. For this specific request, to save filter and have a link to it, would you like to create a feature request using your account on Projects - Jira? (or if you’d like I can create it on your behalf)

On the other hand, at this point, I think that the closest thing to this is to create a dashboard that’s already showing the filters, and since you can have direct links to the dashboard, you will be able to add a link in the other dashboard. To answer your question about adding links, yes, that’s possible by editing the dashboard and selecting the link under ‘Resources’ (but to be honest at this point, I completely forgot how we create these resource links so I will update the post when I do!)

I think it’d be interesting if icons would be helpful for other as well in this case. Would you like to create an additional feature request? Let’s see if other community members vote for it and see the response from the software team on how they could improve the selection process. However, I don’t think you need to remember the numbers since when selecting the level, you’re selecting the word and not the level number unless the naming in the maintenance app of these levels is not properly configured? It’s actually supposed to show you “district” not “level 3” and the same for “block” and not “level 4”.

I hope these help. Looking forward to hearing your reflections. If you do create the feature requests please post them back here so other members can watch/comment/vote.

Thanks!

jamiecarter7 · 30 October 2023 13:21

Thank you for the reply @Gassim.

In this post I’ll explain how I got the child data to display in the tables like we do on our example dashboard for others to use.

Aim: the aim of this setting is to show a breakdown of data for the unit (sub-unit) below the current user level.
For example we use the following units/levels:

Country
State
District
Block
Facility

If a user is set to a specific district (such as a district manager) we want this user to be able to see all the blocks inside this district listed in the table when the dashboard is loaded.

Here is an example of what the user will see:

To get this result I used the following settings:

Data
Select all the indicators etc that you want to be displayed as each column.

Organisation unit

Here I have selected the ‘User sub-unit’ option… this will show the breakdown of units one level below the user assigned unit. In this case the user is assigned to a district so it will show the ‘blocks’ (sub-units) of the assigned district in the table.

Note: we dont assign a specific district in this screen, we are saying show the level below my current level.

Period - assign a preferred period.

And the table is complete.

Hopefully this helps others looking to do the same.

Note: There is a caveat to this method, the table will show an error if viewing the bottom level of data. In our case if I want to filter a specific facility the table will not work as there is no sub-unit below facility.

Gassim · 30 October 2023 13:35

Thank you @jamiecarter7 for sharing the step by step solution!

I also have a question please, does this display in the DHIS2 Dashboard as you expected?