cdmTicker — Help

What the app does

cdmTicker adds a scrolling news-ticker band to the Business Central role center. The band shows freely configurable key figures (KPIs) as a continuous marquee — much like a stock ticker — so that users keep their most important numbers in view without scrolling the role center or hunting for tiles.

• Live KPIs as a marquee — the ticker refreshes its values every 60 seconds without any user action.
• Clickable KPIs (drilldown) — one click opens the related list, for example Sales Orders or Customer Ledger Entries; the band pauses while the mouse hovers over it.
• Five built-in KPIs, any standard role center tile (cue field) from 16 supported cue tables, and the user's pending user tasks.
• Configured per role center — 15 standard role centers are supported; each KPI runs in one role center or globally in all enabled ones.
• Free choice of colors — background (solid or gradient) and text color via color picker or hex input.
• Extensible — custom KPI types and alternative filters can be added through integration events.
• No external services, no AI — all values are calculated inside Business Central under the user's own permissions.

This help follows the Key Usage Scenario Guide (PDF). The example used throughout is the Sales Order Processor role center in the CRONUS demonstration company.

Getting started

Requirements and installation

cdmTicker is installed like any other extension — from AppSource or, for a manual deployment, through Extension Management → Upload Extension. It requires Business Central version 28 (platform 28.0) or later and has no dependencies on other apps.

1. Install the extension from AppSource or upload the app file in Extension Management.
2. Assign the permission set cdmTicker to every user who should see the ticker and to every user who configures it. The set covers all objects of the app; no other app-specific permission is needed.
3. Keep the users' normal data permissions in mind: the ticker calculates every KPI under the permissions of the user who is looking at it. A KPI whose source table the user may not read is simply left out for that user — the rest of the band keeps running.

Initializing the KPI catalog

The Ticker Setup page is the single place where the app is configured. Open it through Tell Me (Alt+Q) by searching for "Ticker Setup"; it is listed in the Administration category. On first opening, the page creates its setup record and applies the default colors. The KPI catalog, however, is built on request so that you decide when the role center lines are created.

1. Open Ticker Setup.
2. Choose the action Initialize Standard KPIs.
3. The app now creates the 15 role center lines (only Business Manager is enabled by default), sets the default colors if all three color fields are empty, and builds the KPI catalog: for every supported role center it adds one line per countable tile of that role center's standard cue tables plus one line Pending User Tasks. All catalog lines are created disabled, so nothing appears in any role center yet.
4. Read the confirmation message — it states how many KPI lines were created.

User settings

The ticker appears in the role center that is assigned to the user's profile (role). Open My Settings, check the Role field and make sure it points to one of the 15 supported role centers — in this walkthrough Sales Order Processor. Users without a chosen profile fall back to the company's default profile.

Configuring the ticker

The Ticker Setup page

The page consists of three parts that are used from top to bottom:

• Role Centers — the list of the 15 supported role centers with their page IDs. The Enabled check box switches the ticker on or off for the whole role center. Selecting a line here automatically filters the KPIs part below to that role center.
• Appearance — the three color fields Background Color, Background Color 2 (Gradient) and Text Color, followed by the color picker with the same three colors as browser color controls.
• KPIs — the list of ticker lines: which KPI runs in which role center, in which order, under which description and with which drilldown target.

Enabling a role center

1. In the Role Centers part, locate the role center — in the walkthrough Sales Order Processor (9006).
2. Set Enabled.
3. Ask the users of that role center to reload the browser page (or switch to the role center). The band appears in the role center on the next load.

In a role center that is not enabled, the ticker collapses its row completely and takes no space at all.

Enabling KPIs from the catalog

1. Select the role center in the Role Centers part. The Role Center Filter field of the KPIs part now shows its ID, and the list shows only the catalog lines of this role center — for 9006 the nine tiles of the Sales Cue (from Sales Quotes - Open to Sales Credit Memos - Pending Document Exchange), the two approval tiles and Pending User Tasks.
2. Set Enabled on the lines you want in the band.
3. Optionally adjust Sequence to change the running order.

The Description column shows the caption that will appear in the ticker — the standard tile caption in the user's language, unless an override is entered. The Drilldown Page ID column already carries the list that opens on a click, for example 9305 (Sales Order List) for Sales Orders - Open.

Adding the built-in KPIs as global lines

Five KPIs are built into the app and need no source table: Open Orders Count, Order Backlog (Amount), Shipments Today, Invoiced Today and Overdue Receivables. They are not part of the automatic catalog and are added manually — typically as global lines that run in every enabled role center:

1. Clear the Role Center Filter field or set it to 9006|0 so that global lines are visible.
2. Add a new line and enter Role Center Page ID 0 — zero means "all enabled role centers".
3. Enter a Sequence (10, 20, 30, …) and choose the KPI Type.
4. Leave Show As at the value that fits the KPI (amount KPIs are shown as amounts, counts as quantities) and leave Drilldown Page ID at 0 — the built-in KPIs open their standard list automatically.
5. Manually added lines are enabled by default; the line appears in the band on the next refresh.

Global lines run first in the band, followed by the lines of the current role center — each group in sequence order.

Adding any standard tile as a cue field

Every countable tile of the 16 supported cue tables can be turned into a ticker line, also for role centers or tiles that are not part of the automatic catalog:

1. Add a new line and enter the Role Center Page ID (or 0 for global).
2. In Source Table No., use the lookup. It lists exactly the 16 supported cue tables. Choosing a table sets the KPI Type to Cue Field (Standard Cue) automatically.
3. In Source Field No., use the lookup. It shows only the countable fields of that table — flow fields of type Integer or Decimal that are not obsolete. Selecting a field pre-fills two more columns: Show As (Decimal → Amount, Integer → Quantity) and Drilldown Page ID from the app's built-in mapping.
4. Set Enabled if it is not set already.

Fine-tuning a line

Styling the band

The default colors come from the Business Central logo: background #09638E (deep blue) fading to #2BDABE (turquoise), text #9FF2E4 (mint).

1. In the Appearance part, pick a color in the color picker. The hex value is written to the matching field and saved immediately.
2. Alternatively, type a value in the format #RRGGBB (seven characters, leading #, hexadecimal digits). Any other input is rejected with an error message; the color picker follows a valid manual entry.
3. Leave Background Color 2 (Gradient) empty for a solid background, or fill it for a horizontal gradient from Background Color to Background Color 2.
4. Reload the role center to see the result.

To return to the logo colors at any time, choose the action Restore Default Colors in the action bar of the Ticker Setup page. After a confirmation prompt the three color fields and the color picker are set back to #09638E, #2BDABE and #9FF2E4; KPI lines and role center activations are not touched.

Using the ticker in the role center

The running band

After the configuration above, the user sees the band in its own full-width row above the activity tiles, stretched across the width of the workspace. It runs at a constant speed of 80 pixels per second and loops without a visible gap. Every item consists of the description, a colon and the value in bold, separated from the next item by a dot. The values are the same as on the tiles of the Activities part below the band.

Automatic refresh

The band requests fresh values from Business Central every 60 seconds. If nothing changed, the running animation is left alone — the marquee does not restart. If a value changed, the band is rebuilt with the new content.

Pausing and drilling down

1. Move the mouse over the band — the marquee pauses so you can read at your own pace, and the value under the pointer is underlined.
2. Click the KPI. The configured or automatically determined page opens: for Sales Orders - Open the Sales Order List, for Requests to Approve the Requests to Approve page, for Pending User Tasks the User Task List.
3. Move the mouse away — the marquee continues.

A line with Drilldown Page ID 0 and no automatic target (a few tiles have no meaningful list) reacts to a click with nothing — the band simply keeps running.

Language and formatting

• Automatic descriptions — the field captions of cue fields and the names of the built-in KPI types — appear in the language of the user's session. An override entered in Description (Override) is shown verbatim to every user.
• Amounts are formatted with two decimals followed by the currency symbol of the General Ledger Setup; quantities are whole numbers.
• Dates used in the cue filters follow the user's work date, exactly like the tiles.

When a KPI cannot be calculated

Each KPI is calculated in isolation. A line that cannot produce a value — because the user lacks permission to the source table, the source field has become obsolete after an upgrade, or the field is no longer a flow field — is skipped silently for that user. The remaining KPIs are unaffected, so a broken line never takes the whole band down.

KPI reference

KPI types

A manually entered Drilldown Page ID takes precedence over the default for every type.

Supported cue tables

The lookup on Source Table No. offers these 16 cue tables. The right-hand column shows which of them the automatic catalog assigns; the others are available for manually added lines.

Supported role centers

The ticker is embedded in the following 15 standard role centers. Activation happens exclusively through the Enabled check box in the Role Centers part of the Ticker Setup page. The last column lists the cue tables that Initialize Standard KPIs assigns to the role center; every role center additionally receives one Pending User Tasks line.

Administration

Resetting the setup

The action Reset on the Ticker Setup page asks for confirmation, then deletes all KPI lines and role center activations, restores the default colors and runs the initialization again. Use it to return to a clean catalog; manual lines, overrides and activations are lost. If only the colors should go back to the defaults, use Restore Default Colors instead — it changes nothing but the three color fields.

Rehearsal with performance test data

For a load rehearsal before the go-live, the Ticker Setup page offers two actions that are visible and executable only for users with the SUPER permission set:

• Create Performance Test Data — after a confirmation prompt, creates about 10,000 records per KPI type in the ticker's source tables (sales orders and lines, posted shipments, customer ledger entries, detailed customer ledger entries, user tasks, purchase orders). A progress dialog shows the current KPI type, the number of records inserted out of the total, the percentage and a progress bar. Every record carries the marker CDMPERF in its document number or title.
• Delete Performance Test Data — removes exactly those records again; other data is untouched.

Troubleshooting

Extensibility (for developers)

• The enum CDM Ticker KPI Type is extensible — add your own KPI types in an extension.
• OnFormatCustomKPI (codeunit CDM Ticker Data Mgt.) — calculate the value of a line yourself; set IsHandled to replace the standard calculation.
• OnBeforeApplyFilters (codeunit CDM Ticker Cue Filters) — override or extend the cue filters.
• OnCreateTestDataForCustomKPI and OnDeleteCustomTestData (codeunit CDM Ticker Perf. Test Data) — supply and remove rehearsal data for custom KPI types.

Data handling

• cdmTicker calculates every value inside Business Central. No data leaves the environment, no external service is called and no AI is involved.
• Every KPI is evaluated under the permissions of the user who views the band. The app does not elevate permissions; a value the user could not see on a tile or in a list is not shown in the ticker either.
• The setup data of the app (role center activations, KPI lines and colors) is stored in three tables of the extension in the company's database and is classified as customer content.
• The app registers a publisher telemetry connection (Azure Application Insights) as foreseen by the Business Central platform. The platform sends operational signals about the extension — for example errors and performance events — to the publisher; KPI values and business data are never part of that telemetry.

Details are in the End User License Agreement and in our privacy statement.

Support

When contacting us, please include your Business Central version, the app version (page Extension Management), the affected role center and, if possible, a screenshot of the Ticker Setup page.