About Building a UI with Advisor

Advisor allows you to build a UI layout that consists of three areas (see Figure 9-1, "The UI Layout of a Browser-Based Application".):

Contents List
Input UI display page
Output UI display page

Figure 9-1 The UI Layout of a Browser-Based Application

Contents List

The contents list is a collapsible list that allows you to navigate an application. Clicking an item in the list loads the display pages associated with the item by linking to the appropriate pageset.

For information on how to create a contents list, see Chapter 10, "Using Advisor Contents Lists."

Input UI Display Page

Use the Input UI tab in Advisor to create the HTML file that is loaded into the Input UI Display area. This file is named pagesetName_1.htm (referred to as the Input UI display page in this guide), and displays Input UI controls, such as checkboxes. This page presents product features and allows users to make feature selections. The UI controls you create in the Input UI display page reference a Feature table that provides their values. The GETTEXT UI control is an exception. The GETTEXT UI control specifies a text box ID instead of a Feature table.

For information on how to create the Input UI display page, see "Generating Your Input and Output UI Display Page with Advisor".

Output UI Display Page

Use the Output UI tab in Advisor to create the HTML file that is loaded into the Output UI Display area. This file is named pagesetName_2.htm (referred to as the Output UI display page in this guide) and displays the following items:

Output UI controls, such as images representing a selected choice, display the recommendations to a valid feature selection made with an input UI control.
Exception messages, usually text warnings, guide users to a valid product configuration when they choose feature selections that do not match an available product. You can also use exception messages to cross-sell and up-sell. For more information, see "Creating Cross-Sell and Up-Sell Messages in Advisor".

For information on creating an Output UI Display page, see "Generating Your Input and Output UI Display Page with Advisor".