Highlighting Data-Viewer 2.0: Now with Conditional Formatting!

If you've already read the Data-Viewer 2.0 announcment, you know about the inline editing feature. As great as that is, it isn't the as exciting as the Data-Viewer's other new feature...

The most visable change in version 2.0 of our Data-Viewer Web Part is the ability to define and display conditional formatting when data is viewed. Anyone who has played around with conditional formatting in Excel knows how valuable this functionality can be. For anyone that has not used conditional fomatting before, you've probably at least seen it at work. A common example can be found in accounting docs, where negative balances are shown using red text (aka "in the red") , and positive balances are shown in black text ("in the black").

This is a simple example, but it contains the basic elements you need to create a rule for conditional formatting, and where you find those elements in the Data-Viewer Web Part.

1) A Target

This is the value that you want to check to see if it meets your conditions. In the balance sheet example, it would be it would be the cells that contain the "Balance" values.
With the Data-Viewer Web Part, you can select an available column from your configured data source.

2) A Comparative Operator

This is "how" you want to compare your target's value to something. In this example, let's assume it is "<" (is less than).
With Data-Viewer, you can use any of the following operators for comaprison:

 3) A Comparative Value

This is the value you will check against to see if the target's value meet's your rule. For the balance sheet example, it would be "0". The combination of these three items for this example meand you are checking to see if the balance is less than zero. For Data-Viewer, you simply type in the value you want to check against.

 4) Formatting

All that checking wouldn't mean much if you didn't do something based on the answer. For the balance sheet, this would simply be changing the text color to red  (If "Balance" < 0, then TextColor = Red). 
In Data-Viewer, you can specify any number of changes to fonts, styles, sizes, colors and more. There is even a special option for applying a background color to an entire row for added emphasis.

Conditional formatting itself is a simple concept. Knowing when/where to apply it usually takes a little more thought. My personal guidelines are to focus on what is most important about the data, and use formatting judiciously. If used wisely, conditional formatting lets users quickly focus their attention on important information. 

With Data-Viewer, you can add multiple rules, and even create seperate rules for "parent" and "child" data. 

Whether you want to emphasize overdue tasks, or the fact your company beat its revenue targets, Data-Viewer lets you choose what, when, and how to display your data.