DPC Usablity Tip - Parameter Display Order in the Load Panel

By default, parameters in the Data Process Control load panel are sorted in alphabetical order along the column headers. For example, on a process that has a "Period" and "Year" parameter defined, the column order would present itself as "Period,Year" along the load panel header. However, sometimes is makes sense to group parameters in a more logical fashion that is not conducive to alphabetical sorting.

For example, I may have a process that has parameters of "StartPeriod" and "EndPeriod" defined. In this example, these columns would present themselves along the load panel header as "EndPeriod,StartPeriod", with the EndPeriod as the first selection. From a usability perspective, this make no sense.

To solve this, in the 1.7.4 release (or greater) of the Config Builder, you can assign a number to control the presentation of the order of the parameter columns in the load panel. Using this technique on the example above, I can assign a "1" to the StartPeriod and a "2" to EndPeriod, thus displaying the parameters along the load panel header as such "StartPeriod,EndPeriod" this configures the load panel header in a more logical and usable fashion.

This functionality has always been present in the Data Process Control, even prior to the 1.7.4 release of the Config Builder. For anything prior to the 1.7.4 Config Builder release, entries can be made to the dbo.config_rqps table to achieve the same results.