Navigation Methods

Note – You should not use your browser’s Forward and Back (or Next and Previous) buttons for navigating through the STA screens. The use of these buttons could produce unpredictable results, as the data you see may be stale or out of sync with the data on the STA server. To navigate, you should always use the methods provided by STA: the Navigation Bar and text links.

Navigation Bar

The Navigation Bar is located on the left side of the STA screen. It consists of a series of vertical tabs that expand and collapse according to your selections. The vertical tabs provide a visual map of the STA screen hierarchy. The number of screens listed under each tab varies. You can expand only one tab at a time.

The Navigation Bar serves as the primary means of navigation, and all STA screens are accessible through it. Additional navigation options are offered through text links. See “Text Link Navigation”for details.

Text Link Navigation

The Navigation Bar is the primary navigation tool for STA, allowing you direct access to all STA screens (see “Navigation Bar”for details). Text links provide an additional means of navigation, especially for drilling down to detailed information about resources.

The following types of text links are available:

When you click a text link, you are taken to a screen displaying additional detail for the item(s), and the Navigation Bar updates to reflect your current location within the screen hierarchy.

In addition, by clicking a link you apply filter criteria to the resulting screen, and these criteria remain active as you navigate to other screens. This is an important point in understanding the full power of STA. See Chapter 6, “Filtering Table Data” for full details.

Resource ID Links

Resource ID links appear in List View Tables and Detail View screens. For example, the following identifiers are always active links:

Clicking a resource ID link takes you to the corresponding Detail View screen, which provides complete details for that resource. The Detail View screen may, in turn, provide links for related resources; you can click any of them to display detail about these resources.

Note – In most cases, resource IDs are unique, but in some cases they may not be, such as duplicate volsers in a library or library complex.

Aggregate Count Links

The cells within pivot tables contain aggregate counts of resources or events that meet specific criteria (see “Pivot Tables” for details).

Clicking an aggregate count takes you to the corresponding Overview screen, which provides additional detail for the resources included in the count. If the aggregate count is “1”, only one resource is displayed on the Overview screen. If the aggregate count is “0”, clicking the link displays the message: “There is no data to display.”

Note – Aggregate count links also apply filter criteria to the data displayed in the table. See “Filtering Using Aggregate Count Links” for details.