Overview

While WorkflowFirst creates sophisticated display screens, input forms and field editors automatically, in some cases you may need more control of how the screen looks and how the user interacts with the data. To allow for this, WorkflowFirst enables the user to create additional screens to either complement or replace the default screens. These are referred to as Custom Views. 

Custom Views, also referred to as 'Screens', appear either to replace the entire record or record list, show above or below a record, or they appear as optional 'tabs' above the record or record list. 


Showing multiple screen options above the record

There are a variety of ways to create custom views, but they can be split into either report views or HTML views.

Report views are created the same way that reports are created, which you can find out about in Creating Reports However, when creating the report you simply select 'Screen Option' in the 'Custom View' entry box in that form. This will automatically create a custom view that will display that report in-situ on the screen. 

Because reports can be quite sophisticated and aggregate a lot of information into summaries and graphical charts, using reports for custom views is an easy and efficient way to create dashboards, which we'll be discussing in this chapter. 

The second and more flexible means to create a custom view is to design some custom HTML that will be displayed in the screen. 

HTML is incredibly flexible, allowing for very dynamic layout and JavaScript to enable transitions, animations and powerful interactions. Using HTML you can also embed either Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight or ActiveX components. Depending on the browser you are targeting you may be able to use more modern HTML technology such as HTML 5, which allows for animated transitions and other graphical effects. The possibilities are endless. 

The HTML code will utilize either the JSON API or server-side DbfScript API that WorkflowFirst provides for every application, allowing you to easily retrieve any data from your application to display in your custom view. 

Note : Any tickler reports you create will automatically become available as a custom view.


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