By selecting to "Edit" a linked information item in the Information Item dialog, you can define parameters for the current information item.

 

Adding parameters for an information item

 

 

What are information item parameters?

An Information item parameter is additional information that can be included with your information item location to improve the accessibility of the information item. Therefore you can use the various parameters to define the properties of the information item. In addition to the default parameter choices provided, you can define any kinds of parameters if they are supported by the information item itself.

 

 

Why should I use information item parameters?

Information Item parameters provide better integration with external systems because it allows content-specific information to be used as parameters when activating external applications.

 

For example, in the picture above, the location of an information item, which is a company portal login page, includes the user login name parameter for convenience. Now if a user was browsing the model in their web browser (via dynamic web publishing), then when the user tries to open this information item, the information item would automatically open the linked location with the login name pre-filled, and thus requiring only a password to be input. This is because the login name is retrieved with the parameter. If any of the parameters are missing when the information item is opened, the Open Information Item dialog will appear, requesting values for the parameters.

 

For more detailed information, see the "Information Linking" section.

 

 

How do I use information item parameters?

A parameter can be added to the information item by double-clicking the desired parameter in the list. The parameter will be added to the information item location inside percentage signs, %, to mark it as a parameter. Because the % signs are used as parameter separators, those should not be used inside parameter names to ensure correct functionality.  When you open an information item that uses parameters and some of the parameters cannot be resolved (QPR Modeling Client first tries to search the element to which the information item is connected to for the corresponding data), the Open Information Item dialog will appear. In that dialog you are prompted to input values for the missing parameters.

 

Note also that the first two characters for custom attribute names used in information item parameters should not be a number or a letter a-f (neither A-F as the letters are case-insensitive). That is because this combination of characters is a hexadecimal reserved for an encoded URL.

 

 

The available parameters include:

User login name: This parameter takes the login name of the current user

User full name: This parameter takes the full name of the current user.

Information item name: This parameter takes the name of the information item.

Element name: This parameter takes the name of the element to which the information item is connected.

Information item ID: This parameter takes the ID of the information item itself.

Element ID: This parameter takes the ID of the element to which the information item is connected.

Custom attributes: All of the defined custom attributes within the model are available as parameters.