Hiererchical data

[Daní]

Hi,

It's nice to see that telerik continuosly improves and increase its silverlight's control set. I'm really happy to see that a new Timeline control is added to the suite. Currently, I'm using a "home made" timeline control to show data in a sequential way. As usual (the same happened with FilterControl), always telerik releases a new control that may replace one of mines I try to introduce the telerik's one in my solution, because it suposes less code to main for me and if there's a thing I'm sure of is that telerik develops controls much better than me.

Data I'm showing in my "home made" Timeline control is hiererchical. To summarize, I have a collection of proces class instances, each process instance has an start date, an end date, a description and a collection of subprocesses. Subprocess class is very similar to process one, it defines an start date, and end date, a description and a collection of events. An event has no duration, using RadTimeLine nomenclature, it would be an instant event. An instant event contains a TimeStamp property (DateTime), a description and an event type property (each event type should have its own data template in the Timeline control, easy defining an ItemTemplaeSelector).

I'd like to know if you think is possible the following:

1. Create "Group Events". I mean I'd like that parent processes acts as a grouper for their children. I imagine a "Process TimeLineEvent" headered content control (or a expander or groupbox) that will contain its "Subprocesses TimeLineEvents" (another header content control,..) containing their instant events. What I'd like, is that each processes and its children being "encapsulated" in a well definied, visually, bounded region.
2. Some times, the control contains too much items, makin the view too heavy and difficult for the user to localize the "interesting" items. I'd like to show/hide items depending on zoom level. For example, when zoom is out, only high levels processes should be visible and as user is zooming in, more item should become visible. The online documentation is still poor, I supose it's under construction, and it doesn't offer many info. I've observed the GroupIntervalChanged  event, maybe this event can be used to determine the "zoom level" and hide/show items according.

Thanks and congratulations, good job.

[Tsvetie]

Hello Dani,

Straight to your questions:

1. This is an interesting idea. In this case I would recommend that you check our new GanttView control. Based on the information that you provided, I believe it is close to the behavior that you expect.
2. Your second idea is a very good suggestion as well. We did consider hiding some items, based on the zoom level, but we decided to wait for customer feedback before introducing this feature.

Thank you for your feedback and kind words. I updated your Telerik points as a small token of our appreciation for sharing your ideas.

 Kind regards,
Tsvetie
the Telerik team

[Daní]

Thanks Tsvetie for your reply

I have already checked the new GanttView control. I'm not sure wich one, GanntView o TimeLine, best suits my needs. As I told you, I have "instant events" that can occurs in the middle of a process or subprocess. GantView control is great as it allows grouping tasks in hihgher level tasks (very close to my process and subprocesses objects) but I haven't seen any "item" similar to the TimeLine "instant event", I've just seen Milestone items that I suspect cannot be in the middle of a task. Besides, GanttView Control is in CTP stage while TimeLine is already released. So, do you think I can find a workaround for "instant events" for GanttView control and it's recommended to use it in a production environtmen althoug it's in CTP stage?

Thanks again.

Daní

[Tsvetie]

Hi Daní,

Actually, the Milestones can be placed anywhere on the timeline of the GanttView, they are no restrictions for their position.

Now, regarding your question about the CTP stage - yes, the GanttView will require thorough testing before using it in production environment. You should not have problems using the control for visualization purposes. Additionally, our team that is working on the control is ready to assist you with any problems that you might run into, should you decide to use the GanttView control.

One additional thing I must mention - there might be some API changes in next versions of the GanttView control, so you should keep that in mind as well.

Regards,
Tsvetie
the Telerik team

[Daní]

Thanks again for your advises, Tsvetie

Definitively I'll try to use GanttView control for my purposes. Fortunately, I'm not in a hurry, users already have a working solution and I can move to GantView slowly and carefully.

Daní