Seeing Your Data Your Way: Board, Gallery, List, Calendar and Pivot Views – Sapience Cloud

Overview

A table of rows is great for editing, but it is not always the best way to see your data. Orders read better as lanes moving from Pending to Delivered. Products read better as photo cards. Deadlines read better on a calendar. Totals read better as a cross-tab: a summary grid with one set of categories down the side, another across the top, and the totals where they meet.

Every table in a Sapience Database, and every saved view of it, can now be shown in any of six layouts:

Table: the familiar grid.

Board: lanes of cards, like a Kanban board.

Gallery: a wall of cards with cover images.

List: compact rows.

Calendar: each row placed on its date.

Pivot: a real cross-tab, with rows and columns that are summed or averaged for you.

Board

What you see: one lane per value of the view's Group by column, with a card per row. A select column gives one lane per option, in the option's colour; a checkbox gives Yes and No lanes; a rating gives one lane per star; a person column gives one lane per person holding a card. A No value lane collects rows with nothing in that column. An Other lane appears only when a row holds a value that is no longer a lane (say, a select option you later deleted).

What it needs: a Group by column that is a select, checkbox, person or rating column. Without one you will see "Board needs a group-by column. Edit the view and choose a select, checkbox, person or rating column."

What you can do:

Drag a card to another lane. That row's cell changes and is saved. Dropping on No value clears the cell.

Click a card to open the row.

If a save is refused, the card snaps back with "Could not move this row." That also happens on a read-only database. You cannot drop a card into Other.

Gallery

What you see: a card per row: the cover image on top, the row's name, then your chosen fields as label and value pairs. A row with no image shows a neutral placeholder.

What it needs: a Cover image (a file column) and the Fields shown. Choose no fields and each card shows the table's first four columns after the name. With no cover column, the cover area is left off.

What you can do: click a card, or focus it and press Enter or Space, to open the row.

List

What you see: compact rows with the name, then each chosen field as a small label and value. On a narrow screen the name takes its own line. A List never loads cover images.

What it needs: the Fields shown, in the order you give them (the first four columns when you pick none).

What you can do: click a row, or press Enter or Space on it, to open it.

Calendar

What you see: a month calendar (Week and Day views are available too) with each row sitting on its date.

What it needs: a Date column, which must be a date or date-time column. If the view names none, Sapience uses the table's first one. Rows with no usable date are not drawn.

What you can do:

Drag an item to another day. The row's date changes and is saved. A date-time keeps its time of day; only the day moves.

Click an item to open the row.

Items from a read-only database cannot be dragged.

With no date column in the table you will see "Calendar needs a date column. Add a date or date-time column to this table."

Pivot

A Pivot turns a long table into a summary. You choose which columns become the rows down the side, which become the columns across the top, and which numbers to calculate (the values), each using Sum, Average, Count, Min or Max. Sapience does the arithmetic.

What you see: the grid in pivot mode, opened as a ready-made cross-tab built from the view's saved rows, columns and values. The area is always at least 480 pixels tall, so the Pivot and Columns side panel is never cut off.

What you can do:

Rearrange the pivot in the grid.

On a saved Pivot view you can edit, click Save pivot above the grid. You will see "Pivot saved to this view." and the view opens that way from then on.

A pivot holds at most 5 rows, 5 columns and 5 values; beyond that you see "A pivot can save at most 5 rows, 5 columns and 5 values." Values must come from a number, currency, percent, duration or rating column.

Switching Layouts

Use the Layout: dropdown in the databases toolbar, on any table or view. It offers Table, Board, Gallery, List, Calendar and Pivot, and replaces the old Pivot toggle.

Where you are	What you see	Where your switch is kept
A view you can edit	The view's own layout	Saved to the view
A view you can only read (such as anything in the Demo Database)	Your last choice, otherwise the view's layout	Remembered in this browser only
All rows	Your last choice, otherwise Table	Remembered in this browser only

If saving to a view is refused you see "Could not save the layout." and the view keeps its old setting. The Export button appears only in the grid layouts, Table and Pivot.

Setting Up a View for Each Layout

Choose New view in the Views menu to open Create view (an existing view opens as Edit view). Pick a Layout and the dialog shows only the settings that layout uses:

Layout	Settings	Columns offered
Table	Group by, Visible columns	Any groupable column
Board	Group by	Select, checkbox, person, rating
Gallery	Cover image (or No cover), Fields shown	Cover: file columns
List	Fields shown	Any
Calendar	Date column	Date and date-time
Pivot	Pivot rows, Pivot columns, Pivot values	Rows and columns: number, checkbox, date, select, person, rating (a column is a row header or a column header, not both). Values: number, currency, percent, duration, rating

For Pivot values, click Add value, pick a column and an aggregation, and use Remove value to drop one. If you switch layouts mid-edit, only the chosen layout's settings are saved. The dialog tells you what is missing, for example "Choose a date or date-time column." or "Add between 1 and 5 values to calculate."

Faster Table Editing

In a database you can edit:

One click edits a text, email, URL, phone, number, currency, percent or duration cell. Pickers (select, date, checkbox, rating and so on) work as before, and the Name column still edits on a double-click.

Enter saves and moves down one row for single-line cells. Tab moves right.

Long text opens ready to type, with its text selected, so typing replaces it. Enter adds a new line there; Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter on a Mac) saves, and Escape cancels.

A small chevron expands a long cell, shown only when its text does not fit on one line.

A read-only database never enters edit mode.

Try It on the Demo Database

The Demo Database has a saved view for each layout. Click Databases, open Demo Database, pick the table's tab, open the Views menu, then choose the view.

Layout	View	Table	What you will see
Board	Order pipeline	Orders	Lanes for Pending, Packed, Shipped and Delivered
Calendar	Order calendar	Orders	Each order on its order date
Gallery	Product gallery	Products	Product photos with category, price and stock beneath
List	Team directory	Employees	Title, hire date, email and phone at a glance
Pivot	Sales by region and status	Orders	Order subtotals summed, regions down the side, statuses across the top

The Demo Database is read-only, so the layout you pick is remembered in your browser. To make changes, choose Actions, then Duplicate, and work on your own copy.

Quick Reference

You want to…	Do this
Change the layout	Layout: dropdown in the toolbar
Move a Board card	Drag it to another lane
Move a Calendar item	Drag it to another day
Save a pivot into a view	Save pivot above the grid
Set up a view's layout	Views menu → New view
Save a cell and move down	Enter
Save a long-text cell	Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter on Mac)

Summary

Every table and view in a Sapience Database can now be a Table, Board, Gallery, List, Calendar or Pivot, picked from the Layout: dropdown. Drag cards between lanes, drag items across a calendar, browse photo cards, or save a real cross-tab of summed values into the view. Table editing is quicker too. Try each layout on the Demo Database, then set them up on your own tables.