What are Views?

A view is a framework you build to provide you exactly the information you want to see and/or work with for a specific purpose. As a framework, a view exists apart from the actual data (records) in the view. This allows your view to always show you a real-time display of the records that meet your view’s customized criteria. In other words, different records will come and go in your view as they meet, and then no longer meet, the view’s setup.

We distinguish views from reports by noting that a report, unlike a view, is a static “snapshot” of specific database records. For example, you’d build a view to show you all of your sales leads in the current month. This view isn’t built to show you all of your leads in December 2010, rather it will show your leads in whatever the current month is. If you export this view to a spreadsheet, you’ve used it to create a report.

Each view exists in a single table.  However, each view can include fields from related (parent/child) tables.  You can work with related fields just as you do other fields, meaning you can display them in the view, create filters based on them, etc.

Each view is more than just a display of records. It’s a fully interactive framework that allows you to make updates to database records (one at a time, or multiple records at once) and allows you to drill-down from a graphical display (a column in a bar chart) to the individual records underlying that part of the chart, map, calendar, etc.

Each view has permission settings  so that it may be shared with other users, or may be kept private.

Here are just a few of the customizable aspects of TrackVia’s views:

• Filters allow you to construct simple or sophisticated logical criteria to determine which records should appear in the view. Our filters include plain language, dynamic filters such as “this month,” “greater than $2000,” “assigned to the current TrackVia user,” etc.
• Display Preferences allow you to customize the appearance of each field in the view. You may want to show dollars without cents, or show only the first 200 characters in a paragraph field, etc.
• Formats allow you to visualize your view in one of several display types.

Related Features

• A dashboard page allows you to assemble multiple views, across any apps and tables, on a single page.
• Tools leverage views to determine which records should be included when applying a specific tool (email campaigns, workflow alerts, etc.).
• Favorite Views on your Home page give you 1-click links to your most frequently visited views, across any apps and tables.
• An email distribution schedule tells TrackVia to automatically email you and/or others a copy of the view (with the option to include it as an Excel attachment).
• Publish a view to a web page (public website, intranet, etc.).