Bookshelf v7.5.2: About The User Interface Navigational Paradigm

About The User Interface Navigational Paradigm

The user interface contains four levels of navigation.

Top level tabs (Page Tabs) allow users to navigate between screens.

Views displayed in the Show: combo box on the toolbar allow users to navigate between views. These views are often context views controlled by visibility properties, such as My Contacts, All Contacts, and My Team's Contacts. They can also be a list of all available views in a screen, such as the views displayed in the Application Administration screen.

View tabs (displayed between the top applet and the bottom applet in a typical view) allow users to navigate between master-detail views to see different kinds of data.

Views displayed in a Show: combo box that appears in the banner of a subview allow users to select between different subviews, such as different chart views.

Figure 156. Four Levels of Navigation

Each of these navigation levels are controlled by the following objects:

Page tabs. Child objects of the Application object type. Page tabs appear as the first-level navigation tabs in the user interface. Each page tab is associated with a screen. Users select the tab to navigate to a particular screen.

See Associating Screens with Page Tabs for more information.

Views. The Visibility Applet property of the view object determines whether a view appears in the Show: combo box on the toolbar or as a View tab.

If this property is not null, then the view appears in the Show: combo box. For example, views such as My Accounts, All Accounts, and My Team's Accounts appear in the Show: combo box because the visibility property is set to a non-null value.

However, if the Visibility Applet property is set to a null value, then the view appears as a View tab, as is typically the case with master-detail views.

It is useful to group views this way, because it allows you to separate the views that show the same type of data, but filter it differently based on visibility rules, from views that show different types of data. Views that show the same data but filter it differently appear in the Show: combo box and views that show different types of data appear as View tabs.

See Defining Views for more information.

When a query is performed in a view or a predefined query is executed for a view, the current query context remains when users navigate to another view using a view tab, where the driving applet is based on the same business component as the previous view.

However, a fresh query is applied when the view is visited from the Site Map.

The visibility rules of the new view are also applied. If a query is entered in an All view and then a View tab is used to navigate to a Manager view or a Sales Rep view, only the subset of records that is visible to the user as a manager or as a sales representative will be seen.

If there is a search specification on a driving applet in a view and the user navigates from this view to another using a view tab, the search specification is applied to the destination view—keeping the same query.

An explicit search specification can be specified for the applet in the target view to force a new query. For more information, see About the Search Specification Property and Siebel Object Types Reference.

Screen view. A view appears in the Show: combo box on a subview (fourth-level navigation) if the Screen View with which the view is associated has non-null values for the following properties:

Category. This is a logical representation of what category the view belongs to.

Category Menu Text. The display value that appears within the combo box.

Category Viewbar text properties. The display text of the View tab under which it appears.

NOTE: The values for Category and Category Viewbar text are generally the same.

See Defining Screens for more information about screen views.