Actions and Action Mapping

Actions

Actions are objects which trigger specific Valuemation workflows. A workflow performs the actual task, an action takes care of triggering the workflow from the GUI.

Action Mapping

Action Mapping is the assignment of actions to the GUI. For example, an action can be linked to a particular catalog and made available as a button and a context menu item.

A particular action often makes sense only in a particular context. For instance, the 'Change Status' action makes sense in catalogs and editors of status-driven object types. Other, more generic actions (such as 'Save', 'Edit', 'New' etc.) can be re-used in multiple Valuemation elements.

Note that the ability to add actions to dialogs in this way applies to generic dialogs only. It cannot be used for administrative dialogs (e.g. Authorization Manager, User Manager, or the Customizers themselves).

Authorization

Two types of authorization exist for actions: role-based and data-based authorization.

• Role-based authorization can be used to restrict access to individual actions only to selected users or user groups. For instance, if a given user is allowed to edit only persons in his or her own department, the 'Edit' action in a 'Persons' catalog will be disabled when a person belonging to a different department is selected.
• Data-based authorization makes action availability dependent on the data the action is performed on. For instance, the user may be required to have corresponding rights to the specific object type for objects of which the action is called.

The authorizations can be used in combination. They are set up by the "Role-based authorized' and 'Data-based authorized' columns of the 'Actions' tab together with the Authorization Manager.

Places

Valuemation elements to which actions can be mapped are called 'Places' in the Action Customizer:

• Catalogs
• Editors

  In catalogs and editors, actions are called for the selected object. The following possibilities are available:

  • Buttons at the bottom of window
  • Right-click context menus
  • Dynamic menu (A menu dynamically added to the Rich Client Menu bar when a Valuemation catalog or editor is opened and selected.)
• Sidebar

  In the sidebar, actions can be added to the right-click context menu on sidebar objects.

  It is also possible to define actions on objects and relational nodes displayed when the sidebar is in the tree view mode and an object (node) is expanded. (In the tree view mode, sidebar catalogs are displayed as expandable trees of catalog objects and their relations. To enable the sidebar tree view mode, go to 'User Settings/Sidebar Settings' and enable the 'Show the objects of the catalogues in the treeview' option.)

• Relations

  Actions applied to relations change the relation target (for example, assign a different person as a department manager). Assigning actions to relations makes them available as buttons and/or context menu items in reference views and reference catalogs.