Populating layouts with components

Once a layout has been created it is time to add visual components to it. The components that are available are on the right hand side of the Centara server during layout design.

Placing and configuring components within layouts

To add a component to a layout, click the << to the left of the component. A component which has already been added becomes gray in the list.

Once a component has been added to a layout, it can be expanded and re-located. To change a component, it must first be selected. To re-locate a component then click it's center and drag it. To expand the component, first select it then click and hold the bottom right corner of the component and drag to a desired size.

The point to drag when expanding a component

With the component selected, all available properties for that selected component is shown to the right within a Properties section. To add any of properties to the selected component, again click the << to the left of the desired property.

Adding role based layouts

To add a role base layout, add the Menu component. Then add the Role property and select one of the roles.

Adding fixed layouts

To add a fixed sub-layout, add the Sublayout component. Then add the Layout property and select one of the available layouts.

Adding buttons

Buttons are the visible elements on the screen that execute operations when clicked. Buttons are placed inside button containers within menus.

Buttons are configured by attaching optional properties to them. Properties contain one or more values to be entered. The following properties can be attached to buttons to alter their appearance or behavior.

• Macro

  Macro is an operation that is run when a button is clicked. A macro can be run stand-alone or with parameters that further define how the macro is executed. A button can run more than one macro in series. In that case the macros must be separated with a semi-column.

  

  Click here for a full list of available macros.

Macro without parameter

MacroToRun();

Macro with parameter

MacroToRun(RunNow=0; RunDelay=1000;);

Multiple macros to run one at a time

MacroToRun();AnotherMacroToRun();

In the case when a macro is executed without parameters, the parentheses ('()') can be omitted.

MacroToRun(); => MacroToRun;

Similarly if only one macro is executed, the semi-column (';') can be omitted.

MacroToRun; => MacroToRun

• Caption

  This is the text that appears on the button.

  
• Image

  Choose the file you want to appear on the button.

  
• Image record

  Instead of applying a file directly to a button, a reference can be added to a record in an image table. That way images can be maintained from the data source and can be reused between buttons.

  
• Style

  Style refers to the color of the button. Color can be either selected from a limited number of predefined colors or the color's triplet hex code can be manually entered.

  

Translating button caption

If more than one languages are set up, a translation button appears underneath every text property.

When clicked a translation option appears for every language configured in the system as shown in the example below.