Adding Hyperlinks into Tables in TIBCO Spotfire


Sometimes you would like to link certain values in your document to
external information, maybe a google search, maybe a database that
pulls back images or video, etc. You can always create a hyperlink
inside of a Text Area to goto an external website, but there is no way
to pass in specific cell values.  This is where the Link Renderer for a
Table visualization comes in handy.

Imagine you have a Table included in your Analysis file , which shows a list of films from 1920 to 1997, as shown below.


 

You
may want to link this analysis to some outside source, say the Internet
Movie Database (IMDB.com) so that if the user wants more information on
one of the films, they can be redirected to that webpage passing in a
value from one of the cells as a key.

To do this, you need to open the properties dialog for the table and click on the Column section, as shown below:


 

Then
in the 'Selected columns:' pane, select the column you wish to apply
the hyperlink to and change the 'Renderer' option from Text to Link. 
You then need to click the 'Settings' button to configure it.

In
here, you need to specify the URL that you want to connect to and you
can use the {$} keyword wherever you want to enter the cells value. 
For the IMBD URL, there is a query parameter called q which allows you
to pass in the title.  An example of this is shown below:

 

Once you click 'OK', each cell in the Title column inside your Table becomes a hyperlink:

 


Interested
in learning how to become an expert Spotfire Business Author? Enroll in
our winter bootcamps now. Bootcamps are an intensive 8 week learning
program, using a unique blended delivery model. Students get weekly
notes and training modules available to consume via our training portal
at their own convenience, and this is complemented with course forums
and also 3 live 2-hour webinars throughout the course.  Details are
available at:

http://inter.viewcentral.com/events/cust/search_results.aspx?cid=tibco&pid=1&event_id=592

If you have any questions, please contact us at spotfireregistrar@tibco.com