System Architect 11.3 introduces enhancements to analytics, with more features that are easier to use, that require less from the user, and maintain full backward compatibility. Users can continue to run analytics they built in earlier versions and still take advantage of the new capabilities. Creating analytics remains an advanced feature that depends on the ability of users to create Microsoft Visual Basic Application macros and customize the metamodel to gain optimum value. Analytics are usually built by an enterprise architect, who may also have use for analytics. Analytics are more often run by Domain experts, who as business users, may be interested in the results of the architecture. These users may find the new Heat Map Manager a very intuitive analytics tool.
The overall process of building analytics is as follows:
1 Build a Microsoft Visual Basic Application macro to perform the functionality that you want to perform.
For example, suppose you created an Organization Chart diagram where you classify employees by “Geography” and “RoleType” (for example, Manager, Non-Manager). You would create a macro function that gets the “Geography” and “RoleType” properties from the symbol definitions in the currently open diagram. For each symbol where the “RoleType” equals “Manager”, you can use an icon to depict the analytic.
2 Choose if and how to depict analytics on a diagram. You can depict icons with either of the following options:
▪For each Analytic definition you create, you can select an icon from the Icon File to use field in the Analytic definition. This put the icon to the left of the symbol on the diagram. This requires that the Microsoft Visual Basic Application macro be written correctly to get icon parameters, as shown in the sample Microsoft Visual Basic Application code you can link to above.
▪For each analytic definition you create, you can associate a color in the Fill Color field of the Analytic definition.
The analytic definition serves as a user interface to call the analytic, either on a diagram workspace or in general against the repository. Add necessary information to the analytic definition so that it calls the Microsoft Visual Basic Application macro properly. If you have specified parameters (variables) in your macro, you may use the analytic definition to set values for those parameters. For the example provided in step 1 above, you enter the name of icon file in the analytic definition’s “Icon File to use” field. That parameter value is passed to the macro that executes the analytic. If you want to not do this manually, create an Analytic collection definition, and then run it from the Heat Map Manager. The parameter for the color or the icon is added automatically from the Heat Map Manager, if they are not already part of the Analytic definition.
4 Choose how to invoke the Analytic definition using either of the following methods:
▪Drag and drop onto diagram: To run the analytic by dragging and dropping the Analytic definition onto the diagram, and display the analytic depictions, turn on analytic display for the diagram: click View > Show Analytic Depictions.
▪Execute analytics from the Heat Map Manager. This method requires that you create Analytic collection definitions, which contain ordered lists of Analytic definitions. To open the Heat Map Manager, click View > Heat Map Manager. Show Analytic Depictions is turned on automatically when you open the Heat Map Manager.