Components

In Varicent Incentives, a component is a container that is used to organize your model, done from within the Composer module.

Add components to give your model a framework and to make sure that your model is easy to use. After you add components, you can build model objects such as tables, calculations, and reports.

To learn more about using components in the Composer module, take the Creating and Connecting Incentives Components course.

Component organization

In Varicent Incentives, you can organize the Composer module in your model in many ways.

You can build your model wide by placing components side-by-side (sibling model), or you can build your model deep by placing components inside other components (parent-child model).

For example, a typical model might have all of its compensation plans represented by high-level components and all of the plan objects (tables, calculations, and data stores) contained in child components. Complex plans might have multiple levels of components that are used to separate and organize different calculation pieces.

When you are planning how to organize your model, you must also consider security and data accessibility.

Security: Security for the Composer module is defined at a component level. If you want to grant access to particular compensation pieces, but deny access to other pieces, you can put the compensation pieces in separate components. Then, by turning access on or off for a particular component, you can deny or allow access to everything in the entire component.
Data accessibility between components: While data can flow between components through connections, certain restrictions do exist. For example, any sources that must be added to a web form must be contained in the same component as the web form.

Navigation between components

In Varicent Incentives, you can move in, out and between components in the Composer module by using breadcrumbs.

Breadcrumbs can help you understand the location of components in the Composer module. They provide links back to each parent component from the current component that you are viewing. The Top breadcrumb represents the top level, or main window, in the Composer module.

Data flow between components

In Varicent Incentives, when you work with components in the Composer module, you might want to connect data in one component to another component.

To share data between components, you must create a connection between the two components. Connections can flow from parent to child components or from one sibling component to another.

Data accessibility in components

In Varicent Incentives, add outbound and inbound connections to make data inside one component in the Composer module available to another component.

You can add inbound and outbound connections to complete the following tasks:

Use table data as a source for a calculation in another component.
Use calculation results as sources for a calculation or report in another component.

Data accessibility between sibling components: You can create connections to use data from tables or calculation results that are in a sibling component. Sibling components are components that are on the same level in the Composer module.
Data accessibility between parent and child components: You can create connections to use data from tables or calculation results that are in a parent component (one level up in the Composer module). An outbound connection from the object that contains the data in the parent component must be linked to the child component. In this way, you can create an inbound connection in the child component so that the data stored in the parent component is available in the child component.

Component activities

You can add and format your components in the Composer module.

You can rename and change the color of components to make specific components easily identifiable. You can attach documents to components to show users the data that's available inside the component. You can also move components around the Composer module and organize them by cutting and pasting or wrapping them into parent components.

Adding components

In Varicent Incentives, add empty components to contain and organize objects in the Composer module.

In the Composer module, from the Palette tab in the sidebar, drag the Component object onto the canvas.
Type a name for the component.
Click Add.

Copying components

In Varicent Incentives, you can copy a selected component along with the calculations and tables that it uses or depends upon.

In the Composer module, select the component that you want to copy.
In the toolbar, click the Copy icon.
Navigate to the place where you want to paste the component and click the Paste icon.
In the Suffix field, type a suffix to add to the component so that you do not have two components with the same name and ensure that you can distinguish the copied component from the original.
If the copied component contained any connections, specify the new sources for the connections by clicking Automatch or by manually mapping the sources. You must map the old sources to the new sources.
Click Save.

The component is pasted as required. All connections (if any) stay intact.

Deleting components

In Varicent Incentives, you can delete components as long as they do not contain any objects that are used as sources for objects in other components.

In the Composer module, select the component that you want to delete.
In the toolbar, click the Delete icon.
Tip
Delete all of the component's dependencies before you delete the component.

Setting the color of components

In Varicent Incentives, you can change the color of any component in the Composer module, and you can define custom colors.

In the Composer module, click the component you want to change the color of.
Beside the name of the component, click the Change Color icon.
Select a color and click Apply.
To define a custom color, complete the following steps:
1. Click the Custom tab.
2. Define the custom color.
3. Click Apply.

Renaming components

In Varicent Incentives, you can change the name of a component after the component is added to the Composer module.

In the Composer module, select the component you want to rename.
Beside the name of the component, click the Rename icon.
Type the new name for the component.

Adding documents to components

In Varicent Incentives, you can attach files that contain data or information about components in the Composer module.

In the Composer module, click the component you want to add a document to.
Click Show More.
Click Manage documents → Add a Document.
Select the document that you want to attach.
Tip
You can select more than one document to add.

Wrap and unwrap components

In Varicent Incentives, you can organize objects in the Composer module by grouping them together inside components.

The wrap feature takes the selected objects and puts a component around them, adding connections and linking them as needed. The unwrap feature takes the selected component and moves its contents into its parent component; removing connections and relinking parent objects as needed.

Wrapping objects into components

In Varicent Incentives, you can wrap any number of objects into a component as long as they comply with these restrictions for wrapping:

If the set of selected objects would create a cycle, they cannot be wrapped. For example, if A > B > C, then you cannot wrap A and C only.
Web forms that contain sources with editable fields, row forms, multi-select, or admin forms that reference non-global tables must exist in the same component as the referenced table.
Tables with a single key column cannot be made into connections that are used by calculations.

In the Composer module, click the object you want to wrap.
Tip
To select multiple objects to wrap, press Ctrl and select.
In the toolbar, click the Wrap icon.

Unwrapping components

In Varicent Incentives, you can delete a component. The objects that were inside the deleted component are placed in its parent component.

The following list describes the restrictions for unwrapping:

If the parent component has an inbound connection with the same name as something in the target component, it cannot be unwrapped. This restriction prevents the possibility of two items with the same name in the same component.
If any connections are not linked, the component cannot be unwrapped.
Components that are empty cannot be unwrapped. A message instructs you to delete the component instead.

In the Composer module, click the component you want to unwrap.
In the toolbar, click the Unwrap icon.