8.2 Tabular Data View

The Layout view illustrated in Figure 8-2 provides a service catalog summary view. The colored rectangles help quickly identify the current status of individual services and the corresponding SLA health.

Figure 8-2 Service Catalog Summary View

Creating this type of view consists of:

  • Using drawing tools to create a grid for services and adding text

  • Creating rectangles to represent the current conditions for individual services and their SLAs

  • Dragging and dropping service and SLA elements to the appropriate rectangles, to bind the element conditions to the fill color of the rectangles

The following sections describe how to create the above view:

To create a grid diagram in the Layout view:

  1. First we will draw the grid:

    1. Draw a rectangle that has a blue fill as shown in the following:

    2. Add lines to subdivide the grid into rows and columns.

  2. Next we will finish the drawing components:

    1. Add text to name the rows and columns.

    2. Add a chart title at the top of the drawing.

    3. Add rectangles to represent the element and SLA conditions.

    4. Change the background color by right-clicking the background and selecting Set Background Color.

    5. Drag and drop service elements and SLAs from the Explorer pane to the rectangles in the drawing.

      By default, the element conditions bind to the rectangle fill colors.

  3. The last step is associating the shapes in the grid to elements and updating color based on the element’s condition state.

    1. Drag an element from the Explorer pane to the appropriate rectangle in the drawing.

      By default, the element condition color is used to fill the rectangle.

    2. Drag elements from any branch of the Explorer pane.

      For example, drag SLAs from the SLA branch and drag elements from the Service Models branch.

    3. Confirm the correct element is used for binding by checking the Element name displayed in the Element property pane.