Customizing

Customizing your Installation

Besides standard options to modify and customize your MediaWiki installation, FlowchartWiki has some additional customizing options.

Customizing is used to define the shapes and colors used in the diagrams created by FlowchartWiki. You can create customizing settings for different types of processes (EPK/Aris, “plain vanilla”, …) and use them in your process diagrams. Each Process needs to have one process-type assigned.

The standard distribution of FlowchartWiki includes a set of standard customizing pages that you can import (described below) and modify/adapt to your needs. The detailed documentation on how to set up the customizing is given below as well.

Import default customizing

Installation on a remote system

• Importing the customizing requires an upload of prepared wikipages from your local system to the remote system.
• The pages which will be uploaded are part of the flowchartwiki distribution and are located in the flowchartwiki/maintenance directory.
• Download flowchartwiki to your local system or download the flowchartwiki/maintenance directory from your server to your local system.

Installation on a local system

• locate the flowchartwiki/maintenance directory in your filesystem (it could be in ./apache2/htdocs/wiki/extensions/flowchartwiki/maintenance)

Importing the default Customizing

• In mediawiki choose Special pages/Import pages.
• Import the file import_customizing.xml (For sample contents see Customizing - Configure Chart)

Optional imports

• Import the file import_ShapeTest.xml
• Import the file import_FlightBooking.xml

Customizing:Configure_Chart Page(s)

See Customizing - Configure Chart for a Sample.

ModelType determines the Chart Type

Each Category Page that you use for documenting a Proces needs to contain one ModelType Tag like the one shown below.

[[ModelType::EPK]]

EPK defines that for this process the colors and shape types will be based on the EPK diagram definition in Customizing.

Configure the ModelType / Graphics

For each ModelType a customizing is required to define the shapes and colors used. To define the customizing of a ModelType you have two options:

• Use an individual Wiki Page (Customizing:Configure_EPK) to define the customizing for this ModelType.
• Use the Generic Customizing:Configure_Chart Wiki Page to define the customizing.

The first option has the advantage that this page can easily be exported and moved to other wikis or be distributed with your process documentation.

The lookup for Customizing is made in the order:

1. Customizing:Configure_[ModelType]
2. Customizing:Configure_Chart

If no customizing for the specified Modeltype is found, a standard round shape and Black&White color is used. (You may have seen this when doing your first install with the “Test” Process. After you have imported the Customizing, the Diagrams looked different.)

Available Shapes and Colors

Node-Shapes:

Not all shape types are supported currently. If you would like to test it or have it as a reference on your local installation, import the file import_ShapeTest.xml from the maintenance directory of your flowchartwiki distribution.

Colors:

Please see [Graphviz-Colors] for the list of available Colors.

Arrows:

Please see [Graphviz-arrows] for the list of available arrows.

Colors: as above

Line-Types: solid, dashed (- - -), dotted (…..)

Label: free text

Using a different Font

The font used by graphviz for the text inside the chart boxes can be changed by modifying the FlowchartWiki php script. (Thanks to Gustav from Gothenburg, Sweden)

Edit categoryBrowser.php function findPages(), approx. line 168.

• from: $params="";
• to: $params="fontname=\"helvetica\", ";

For available fonts please check the graphviz documentation. [Graphviz-Fonts]

Sample Customizing: Page

Sample Configure_Chart Page:

Some Text with Warning why this page should not be edited.
== Configuration ==
*Sample_Configure_ChartType
**Nodes
***PageType Shape Color_of_Shape [Color_of_Font Defaults to Black]
***PageType Shape Color_of_Shape Color_of_Font

The Configure_Chart Page is divided into two Section.

• The “Warning” Section
• The “Configuration” Section.

The Warning Section

The Warning Section is the initial Text in the page and is not parsed. It ends at == Configuration ==

The Configuration Section

The Configuration Section starts with == Configuration == It contains the definition for one or more chart types.

Differences between configuration formats

1.2:

*Configure_<ChartType_1>
**Nodes
***[Category <Shape> <Color_of_Shape>]
***<PageType> <Shape> <Color_of_Shape> [<Color_of_Font>, Defaults to Black]
**Arrows
***<LinkType> <Arrow-Shape> <Color_of_Arrow> [<Type_of_line>] [<Arrow_label>]

1.1:

*Configure_<ChartType_1>
**Nodes
***<PageType> <Shape> <Color_of_Shape> [<Color_of_Font>, Defaults to Black]
**Arrows
***<LinkType> <Arrow-Shape> <Color_of_Arrow> [<Type_of_line>] [<Arrow_label>]

1.0:

*Configure_<ChartType_1>
**<PageType> <Shape> <Color_of_Shape> [<Color_of_Font>, Defaults to Black]

Version 1.2 Configuration Format

The definition of a configuration is:

*Configure_<ChartType_1>
**Nodes
***[Category <Shape> <Color_of_Shape>]
***<PageType> <Shape> <Color_of_Shape> [<Color_of_Font>, Defaults to Black]
*Configure_<ChartType_2>
**Nodes
***<PageType> <Shape> <Color_of_Shape> [<Color_of_Font>, Defaults to Black]
**Arrows
***<LinkType> <Arrow-Shape> <Color_of_Arrow> [<Type_of_line>] [<Arrow_label>]

Sample:

*Configure_EPK
**Nodes
***Category   box            red
***Event      hexagon        azure3
***Decision   diamond        azure3
***Function   parallelogram  azure3
***DataSource rect           khaki1
***Person     box            chartreuse1
***Department ellipse        chartreuse1
***Product    rect           yellow
**Arrows
***Yes        box            green          dashed      Yes
***No         diamond        #ffa0a0        solid       No

• First line: *Configure_<ChartType>

  • Only Groups starting with *Configure are parsed. If you want to disable a configuration, renaming it to something different (like Disabled_Configure will disable this configuration block.
  • ChartType defines the Type of the Chart e.g. “EPK” or “Flat”. This is the type of the Diagram that is being used.

• Second line: **Nodes

  • starts the section where the PageTypes are defined.

• Definition of PageTypes on the next lines:

  • New in 1.2.:: Optional: Category: When this is included, it will show a clickable category-name on top of the chart.
  • PageType defines the Pagetypes being used in this Diagram, for Example “Person”, “Function”, “Event”, “Decision” etc.
  • Shape defines the Shape that is being used. The Definition of the shape is taken from the GraphViz Documentation at [[Graphviz - Shapes]]. Please be aware that not all shapes are supported/working.
  • Color_of_Shape defines the color that is used to render the shape. The name of the colors and a color table can be seen at [[Graphviz - Colors]]
  • Color_of_Font defines that color of the font that is used for writing the name of the process-step into the shape. If not given, it defaults to black. The same table of colors applies as before.

• **Arrows

  • starts the definition block for the arrows.
  • If the Arrow is defined in the customizing, then the properties in the definition are applied. If it is not defined, it defaults to “normal” shape, “black” color, “solid” line and no label.

• Definition of the Arrows on the next lines:

  • <LinkType> This is the type of the link that is used in the Wikipage. The <LinkType> has to be defined with the first letter capitalized as in “Yes”. (Thanks to Michael G. from Cologne, Germany) Example links to wikipage PageName with the LinkType Yes.

    [[Yes::PageName]]
    

  • <Arrow-Shape> defines the “endpoint” of the arrow. See [[Graphviz - Arrows]] for details. Defaults to “normal”.

  • <Color_of_Arrow> the same definition as in the colors of shapes applies, defaults to black.

  • [<Type_of_line>]: solid (default), dashed (—-), dotted (….)

  • [<Arrow_label>]: The label that is attached to the line in the graph. Currently only one word is supported (no blanks).

Version 1.0.x Configuration Format

The definition of a configuration is:

*Configure_<ChartType_1>
**<PageType> <Shape> <Color_of_Shape> [<Color_of_Font>, Defaults to Black]
*Configure_<ChartType_2>
**<PageType> <Shape> <Color_of_Shape> [<Color_of_Font> Defaults to Black]

Sample:

*Configure_EPK
**Event      hexagon        azure3
**Decision   diamond        azure3
**Function   parallelogram  azure3
**DataSource rect           khaki1
**Person     box            chartreuse1
**Department ellipse        chartreuse1
**Product    rect           yellow

Examples

• Customizing - Configure Chart for General Customizing and the sections for EPK and ShapeTest (for all the Shapes in the documentation of GraphViz)

Active configuration Block:

*Configure_EPK
**Nodes
***Event      hexagon        azure3
***Decision   diamond        azure3
***Function   parallelogram  azure3
***DataSource rect           khaki1
***Person     box            chartreuse1
***Department ellipse        chartreuse1
***Product    rect           yellow

Disabled Configuration Block:

*Disabled_Configure_EPK
**Nodes
***Event      hexagon        azure3
***Decision   diamond        azure3
***Function   parallelogram  azure3
***DataSource rect           khaki1
***Person     box            chartreuse1
***Department ellipse        chartreuse1
***Product    rect           yellow