Changes to the configuration of the user interface

The Alfabet 11.8 user interface consists of other configuration items than the user interface for prior releases. The main configuration items are:
- Content Areas
  Content areas are substituting the start pages formerly defined in guide pages and the object views including object cockpits and object profiles. They offer advanced configurability for the user. While the solution designer working with Alfabet Expand provides a default configuration for content areas, users can then decide to change the content area according to their needs. They can add, remove and re-order content.
- Data Workbenches
  Data workbenches are tabular views providing inline editing functionality. Additionally, they offer advanced configurability and reporting functionality to the user. Users can change the table structure, filter the data and build reports about the data in the table. The user defined reports can be saved by the user and added to the user's version of content areas.
Click for an overview of the new user interface elements and a description of the required configuration in Alfabet Expand.
Guide pages and guide views are deprecated. Content areas are used to provide start dashboards to the user. Navigation is provided via a left side menu and via navigation to reports, standard views and data workbenches from the content area.
The Configure button has been removed from most standard views. End users were able to change the structure of data tables with the Configure button. The button was only available to users if the Allow user specific configuration attribute in the server alias configuration was activated. Tabular standard reports can be substituted with data workbenches offering a Structure button to change the table structure by default for all users. For some standard views and configured reports for which the configurability has not been removed, a Structure button will be available to the users instead of a Configure button and the handling will be the same as for data workbenches. Other than for data workbenches, the availability of the Structure button will depend on the setting of the Allow user specific configuration attribute in the server alias configuration.
The role of the view scheme has been limited to collecting the class settings which shall be used for a user profile. The exclusion of buttons is no longer part of the view scheme configuration. The availability of buttons is moved to the class settings configuration. Exclusion of buttons configured in Alfabet 10.15.x versions will be moved during automatic migration to class settings. Click for a description of button configuration capabilities.
The following changes have been made to class settings:
- With the Search Properties attribute you can alter the object class properties that are searched when a user searches for an attribute to set a reference between objects. This applies to all editing capabilities in data workbenches, property groups in class-based content areas, editors, and setting of filter fields. By default, the Name attribute of an object is searchable for most object classes. You can define multiple object class properties to be included in the search in a comma separated list. For example, organizations using the first name of colleagues in daily conversations could extend the search for the name of the user to search in both first name and name.
- The Object View attribute links to content areas instead of object views.
- Attributes of object class properties can be overwritten in the class settings to change them for specified user profiles only. You can change caption and hint, editability, and general availability.
  For reference and reference array properties, the selector for selecting the target class or target classes can be changed from the standard selector for the target class to a custom selector. If multiple object classes or object class stereotypes are selectable, the number of selectable target object classes can be limited.
  For object class properties which can be included or excluded from data capture templates via the Local Settings in the object class model, the Enable for Data Capture Templates setting in the class model can be overwritten in the class settings.
- The availability of buttons and the caption of buttons can be changed in the class settings.