A Brief Guide To Data Manipulation with Telerik’s mighty PivotGrid for ASP.NET AJAX

Since we introduced the RadPivotGrid for ASP.NET AJAX in Q2 2012 we have been working hard to bring new functionalities and make our next grid control the best on the market. Now with the release of Q3 2012 we are happy to tell you that we are even closer to achieve desktop-like experience in the browser. The new Telerik’s PivotGrid ConfigurationPanel is a perfect showcase of what RadControls could do and how the web could encapsulate rich client-side interactions with heavy CPU intensive backend calculations. Let’s go through the details.

ConfigurationPanel basics - separation between data and field manipulations

The panel is perfect when you need to make a clear distinction between data and logic. In scenarios where lots of field manipulations are required - reordering, showing, hiding, sorting and filtering data, the configuration panel conveniently separates these operations from the table which display the data which improves user experience and provides easier learning curve for the end user.
But everything you read so far comes at a price – a RadPivotGrid EnableConfigurationPanel property should be set to true ;). The panel demo perfectly showcases the idea and everyone interested could try it out here. 

Moving things around

The fun part is when you start dragging and dropping items around. Of course, that is not the only way to move fields. You could also use the convenient Telerik’s ASP.NET ContextMenu. All functionalities could be toggled by Boolean properties under the RadPivotGrid.ConfigurationPanelSettings. Try it out! I bet you will like it and feel the intuitive interface.

Layouts and positioning

You have the freedom to position the panel at five places in four different layouts. This makes whole twenty variants if my school teacher has taught me right :). I recommend you to place the panel in the Fields RadWindow so you could use the whole page for displaying the important data and leave the floating window to do the rest.

Defer Layout Update

“Defer Layout Update” is a mode, part of the many features the ConfigurationPanel introduces. It will give you the opportunity to boost performance by queuing operations. Page postback occurs only when the Update button is clicked. The functionality is very useful when a lot of field manipulations are required.

What’s next

Try the feature yourself to get your own impressions of it. The documentation here will surely help you throughout the process. We are waiting for you feedback.

Keep an eye on our releases because we are not done yet. We will bring lots of new functionalities and improvements for the next release to all our controls. So be in touch!