Built-in Dashboard with SAP Barcoding

The NLINK® ADC to SAP Solution is browser-based, using HTML5 web pages as its user interface. Since the system is designed to be “responsive”, the SAP barcode screens presented to the end users scale automatically on various mobile devices, but also on larger desktop monitors. Running an NLINK ADC screen on a desktop instead of a handheld offers lots more screen real estate which allows more data to be displayed. Over the years, we have added new screen controls focused on desktop use, such as charts and reports.

We recently took the opportunity to combine this capability with a common customer request to track user activity in the NLINK ADC to SAP Solution. We added a bit of configuration to our core solution library to store some basic usage statistics, such as user logons, SAP transaction selection, and SAP posting attempts. The NLINK server keeps these statistics locally in the Shared Store, and overwrites it on a rolling basis. Then we built a desktop-focused dashboard display to present the various data points in charts and tables.

With the release of NLINK Server 8.x, we now offer this built-in dashboard capability to new NLINK ADC to SAP Solution customers who purchase any of our standard SAP Library Transactions. We can also retrofit the statistics functionality into any existing customer deployment as part of an upgrade from NLINK Server 7.x. The built-in dashboard capability, provided at no additional cost, delivers a simple set of charts and reports but more sophisticated reporting and additional chart displays can be created as required.

And as always with our SAP Barcoding screens, we are more than happy to work with our existing customers to explore any new ideas and other options for capturing and presenting their important runtime data.

For the insatiably curious, also see the baseline Dashboard screen state chart and other details available here.