About Data entry and Advanced Transaction Object (ATO)

Board provides a rich set of data entry features for the creation of analytical applications such as budgeting and planning models, and in general any simulation model and business application. Such models and applications usually require a high degree of interaction from end-users, as they need to set assumptions, enter data and commentaries, perform calculations and possibly review previous assumptions or modify existing values.

The Data View Object (also called Data View) provides features to enter data in Cubes and manage Relationships (read the next paragraphs in this chapter).

The Data View provides features that allow you to:

Enter data directly on Cubes (numeric data, text, files and more...)
Define validation rules in order to automatically accept or reject entered values
Define locking rules in order to block or allow data entry on cells based on another Block values
Assign or change the relationship between members of two hierarchically related Entities

To provide the end user an even more controlled and guided environment, you can enable the ATO Management option on a Screen or a Container. This option is located in the contextual right panel of the Screen editing page in Design mode.

ATO management in particular allows you to:

Give end users the ability to manually create new Entity members and manage relationships between Entities. ATO is the exact opposite of the Data Reader, which instead makes bulk and centralized changes.
ATO is activated automatically when the Entity Editor Object is added to the Screen and allows end users to execute CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) actions on Entities, Entity members, and Relationships
Control the write-back to a Cube with a procedure. This allows to run a Board procedure before or after saving data to a Cube, for example to calculate other values in different Cubes

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