Forum Discussion

remco_van_oosterhout's avatar
remco_van_oosterhout
Ideator III
7 years ago
Solved

How to highlight a relationship tab

Hi there,

I'm looking to highlight certain relationship tabs (say the Documents tab under a Part item). Now I've found controls to edit the CSS of various fields of the Part form, but I haven't been able to figure out how I can for instance change the background colour of the Documents tab label (in order to pull a users attention towards it, for instance).

Is it at all possible to dynamically change the look of that particular piece of the form (by firing a method on the onLoad and/or onFormPopulate events for instance), or are those controls entirely inaccessible?

Kindest regards,

Remco van Oosterhout

9 Replies

  • angela's avatar
    angela
    Catalyst II
    7 years ago

    Hi,

    this project shows how to do static coloring of tab labels:

    https://github.com/ArasLabs/set-tab-color

    The project contains an open issue with some samples for dynamic tab coloring, but it´s still a draft. Would be happy if you could share your experience. Maybe you have some additional ideas?

    https://github.com/ArasLabs/set-tab-color/issues/1

    Regarding your second request to color Form elements dynamically: This one is different form coloring the tab elements. Regular Form events should already work. Take a look at this thread:

    https://community.aras.com/f/development/3502/how-to-auto-change-the-label-color

    • remco_van_oosterhout's avatar
      remco_van_oosterhout
      Ideator III
      7 years ago

      Hi Angela,

      I got your solution to work! I used the dynamic tab coloring solution. To contribute to the performance of the solution here's my idea: You could consider adding a couple of booleans to the source itemtype that get set to true when certain relationship items are added and set to false once the last relationship is deleted. You can set these bools using SQL, which are quicker than AMLs and take a lot less time to query when looking to dynamically alter the look of a form.

      I hope this helps!

  • angela's avatar
    angela
    Catalyst II
    7 years ago

    Hi Remco,

    thanks for your feedback!
    The current solution with AML worked 90% reliable. A good rate at the first glance, but not sufficient, as sometimes the tabs were colored wrong.

    I like the SQL idea! The files flag used in the Part and Document ItemType do something similar. I already use additional indicators for AML and Documents.
    But I wonder how we can use this concept in a larger scale (~30-40 ItemTypes in my case) the most easy way?
    It's not about the technical challenge, I'm afraid of the organizational side.
    Maybe we can create a separate PolyItemtype to store the information for the different ItemTypes. This way not every single ItemType has to contain additional tab indicators. But of course we still have to take care for the relationship actions.


    We could even integrate some kind of more advanced logic. Instead of displaying content yes/no indicators, we could display some more precise information about the relationships.
    Something like this:

    BOM (105) | BOM Structure (View) | AML(3) | Documents (0) | ERP (Federated) | Goals (2)


    I have heard a rumor that Aras plans to integrate something like this in a future release. I have no exact information, but I also want to avoid double work.

    • remco_van_oosterhout's avatar
      remco_van_oosterhout
      Ideator III
      7 years ago

      You could add a server side event on the ItemType itemtype that adds a property to the parent itemtype on the OnAfterCreation event of a new relationship itemtype that has the name of that relationship itemtype. You can should then also be able to dynamically add a server side event to the newly created relationship itemtype that get fired on its OnAfterCreation event that checks if the corresponding boolean of its parent item has been set. Or it increases the corresponding integer of its parent item by one, if you actively want to keep count. You should be able to do that with a generic method. That way you'd have automated the full behavior.

      • angela's avatar
        angela
        Catalyst II
        7 years ago

        For those you are still interested in this topic. Using federation wasn´t the best approach, but a classical SQL procedure similar to the files flag function can do the job.

        Isn´t it beautiful? :-)