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Best practices ​

A few tips we recommend when building apps with Sintel BI.

Design order ​

  1. Create one or more data sources. A data source provides the data to the components on a dashboard. See Data sources.
  2. Design one or more dashboards. A dashboard holds components such as grids, charts, images and summary cards to visualise your data. See Components.
  3. Configure the settings and share the app. Set the app's landing page, navigation menu and theme. See How to use Sintel BI.

Design recommendations ​

One app per site ​

Create a SharePoint site (a site collection or a subsite) to host each app. This gives you finer control over the app's configuration, including who can access the app and the dashboards in it.

Use SharePoint groups for permissions ​

When you define access levels or roles in your app, use SharePoint groups rather than granting access to users directly. This makes the security set-up much easier, and the groups can be included in app templates.

App templates let you save an entire app and export it for use somewhere else. They're ideal for building an app on a test site and then importing it into a live site. They also let Sintel and our partners build complete apps that customers import into their own environment. See Import / export an app and App template permissions.

Clone data sources to save time ​

Once a data source has the columns and order you want, clone it to create a new data source with the same settings. This is much faster than building each data source from scratch.

Use separate dashboards for different roles ​

If your app has several user roles, such as Managers, IT and Finance, consider a dashboard for each. Design one dashboard, then clone it for the other roles. Add a filter component to each dashboard so each role sees only the data relevant to them, and use SharePoint groups to control who can see each dashboard.

Order the navigation menu ​

In Settings > Navigation, put the items available to everyone (public items) first, followed by the items that are restricted to specific groups or users. This keeps the navigation consistent for all users.

In Settings > Navigation you can add system links, such as Site Contents, Site Settings and Site Permissions. They make it easy for admins to change the app later. Don't make these links public: they're meant for admins.

TIP

New apps already have an Admin heading in the navigation with these system links.

When you add regular links in Settings > Navigation, use relative links such as Lists/Expenses/NewForm.aspx. That way the links still work when the app is saved as a template and used on another site.

Set a landing page ​

In Settings > General, set the Landing page of the app. It can be any dashboard, but make sure everyone who uses the app has access to it. Usually it's a dashboard shared with all users, in other words a public dashboard.

See Navigation for more on the navigation settings.

Sensitive data ​

If your app contains sensitive data, these steps help make sure users only see the data they should:

  1. Set item-level permissions on the source list. This stops users from seeing items created by other users.
  2. Create a custom group and permission level for users who need to see all data. For example, so a manager can see the data of their direct reports.
  3. Set the list's default view to show no data. This stops items from being shown if a user opens the list directly.
  4. Hide the list from Site contents. This stops users from navigating to it directly.

Need something else? ​

If you need something custom, or something you think Sintel BI can't do, contact us. Customers often ask for new features and we listen: many of our features come from customer feedback and real-life use cases.