Create And Edit Panels

The layout of property pages and wizard pages is divided into sections called panels. Every property page or wizard page must have at least one panel. Additional panels can be created to group related properties together with an optional caption and separator line. Creating a panel defines a group of properties and other elements to appear on a property page or wizard page.

Panel elements are the individual items that can appear in a panel on a property page. The layout of panel elements within a panel can be defined in one of two styles:

• A static array of elements that always appear the same. This layout style is appropriate when the document types to which the property page will be assigned use all of the same properties in common.
• A dynamic array of elements, the behaviors of which can be determined by the value of a specified property for each document. This layout style is appropriate when the document types to which the property page will be assigned use different subsets of the same properties. This style allows you to define one property page that can be used with multiple document types and each document type can display a different combination of properties. You can configure the behavior of the panel elements to distinguish between document types, workflow states, user security roles, and other conditions that you require.

Panels of each type can be defined for the same property page. Convenient controls are also provided for configuring fixed field widths and visibility or read-only VBScript expressions for multiple panel elements in one operation.

To create or edit a panel:

1. In Configurator, expand Pages in the configuration tree to display the existing pages.
2. Select the page for which you want to create or edit a panel, and click the Edit button to change the page.
3. To delete a panel, select the panel in the list on the General page and click Remove.
4. To edit a panel, select the panel in the list and click Edit Panel. The panel’s Properties dialog box appears.
5. To create a new panel, click Add on the General page.
6. Click options or type values using the descriptions in the following table.

Panel general options

Option	Description
Display name (caption)	Type the name of the panel as you want it to appear as the panel’s caption if the Show caption option is enabled.
Name	A default internal name is calculated. Accept the default in most cases.
Size	Type the number of columns in which you want the panel’s items to appear in the page layout.
Show caption	Select this option to display the panel’s Display Name value as a caption at the top-left corner of the panel. A horizontal separator line will separate the caption from the other panel elements.
Display line separator under panel	Select this option to display a horizontal separator line below the panel. This can be useful if the page has multiple panels.

7. Click the Fields tab. The names of the current elements of the panel are shown in a grid of rows and columns that represent the general layout of the panel.

   Note:

   The tab is named Fields because, in this context a panel element can be a property, a command button, or static text, which are also known as fields on a form and a property page can also be thought of as a form.

8. Select an option from Layout Style, Static or Dynamic. Select Static if you will use this property page for only one document type or you will use it for multiple document types but always with the same properties visible. Select Dynamic if you will use this property page for multiple document types and it should display different panel elements depending on the value of a selected property.

9. If you selected Static, type the number of columns to arrange the elements into in Size. If you selected Dynamic, select the property from Property that you want to use to control the visibility of some or all of the panel’s elements. This property is referred to as the controlling property in the remainder of this procedure.

   Note:

   Using dynamic panels only makes sense when you know which panel elements should appear for every possible value of the controlling property. To know every possible value in advance implies that the property should use either a lookup list to present those possible values or use values that are defined for the property in the Field-Path definition. Otherwise, the panel elements that would be visible and their behavior would be unpredictable. For this reason, you should only use a property that is associated with a lookup list or has its possible values specified in the Field-Path definition as the controlling property.

10. To add or edit elements in the layout, see Create And Edit Panel Elements.
11. If the panel layout style is set to Dynamic and if the property that you selected in step 9 uses values from a lookup list, click Get values. The values of the lookup list appear as column headings in the grid. This results in a matrix that you can use to specify the behavior of each panel element for each possible value of the selected property.
    • For each cell in the grid, click the cell to select a behavior option for that combination of the panel element (row) and the controlling property value (column). Each panel element can be either Visible, Read Only, Required, or invisible (blank).
12. To more easily set a fixed width for multiple elements at the same time:
    1. Select the elements for which you want to set a fixed width. You may press and hold the Ctrl or Shift keys to select multiple elements.
    2. Enable Fix width for selected fields.
    3. Type a width in the text box. The width is saved as the Fixed width property on the Layout page of each panel element. This is the same as setting the property as described in Configure the Layout Of a Panel Element. The option is available here only for the convenience of configuring multiple panel elements at the same time.
13. To more easily set a visibility or read-only expression for multiple elements at the same time:
    1. Select the elements for which you want to set an expression. You may press and hold the Ctrl or Shift keys to select multiple elements.
    2. Click Set Visibility expression or Set Read-Only expression accordingly. The Meridian Enterprise Script Editor appears.
    3. Type a valid VBScript expression that when it evaluates to True will make the panel element visible or read-only accordingly. For information on using VBScript for configuration expressions including their limitations, see the Accruent Meridian Enterprise VBScript API Reference. The expressions are saved as the corresponding options on the Conditions page of each panel element. This is the same as setting the display conditions for individual properties as described in Configure the Display Conditions Of a Panel Element. The option is available here only for the convenience of configuring multiple panel elements at the same time.
14. Click the OK button to save your changes.