How to pin TOC by default in Innovator 12?

Hi community,

When users login to Innovator 12 the first time, they only get a huge white welcome page with deactivated TOC. This is confusing, as people may think Innovator is not working. I remember my first steps with Innovator 12. I was literally waiting 3 minutes cause I assumed Innovator is still loading. I even assumed the installation went wrong and checked the browser debugger for potential error messages. I needed an eternity until I finally accidentally clicked on the main navigation button in the top left corner to get the TOC.

I want to avoid that my users face the same frustrating experience. Is it possible to pin the TOC by default? I have discovered that the ItemType Core_GlobalLayout contains the property core_toc_pinned. This one is used to store the preference for the pinned TOC. I changed the default value of this property from 0 to 1, but this customization is not enough to pin the TOC by default. The preferences are set when users log out, so we cannot use the default value in the ItemType for this purpose.

There are some codetree files that reference to this property. I assume one of them also sets the "real" default value for the property. Does anybody know where I can do this customization?

Many thanks!

Angela

  • core_toc_pinned is the attribute, but as you mentioned first login the preference is not yet there till you log out.

    Did you check aras_objects.js in javascript folder in code tree for logout function?

  • Hi Angela,

    It took a look at this and found that the preferences for new users are basically copies of the World preference. Because of this, the default values for the properties like core_toc_pinned are pulled from the World preference and not from the properties on the ItemType. I've filed an issue internally to look into changing how this works in the future. For now, I did find a workaround while looking into this.

    I was able to have the TOC open by default for all my new users by setting the core_toc_pinned flag on this World preference (found under TOC > Administration > Preferences). In order to actually set this value, I also needed to edit the Core_GlobalLayout Form to add a field for core_toc_pinned. Once I did that, the TOC opened when I signed in as a new user.

    Keep in mind that this default value will only be set if the User doesn't already have a Preference item in the database. In addition to this, you may need to do a one-time AML update to force this value for any existing Preferences.

    Chris


    Christopher Gillis

    Aras Labs Software Engineer

  • Hi Chris,

    I am happy that I haven´t tried to fix this one on codetree level yet. Would have been a complete waste of time.

    Thanks Chris for your nice and simple solution! From my POV it´s completely sufficient to set the value in the World preference instead of the default value in the ItemType. I don´t assume existing preferences should be a problem, cause people normally learn very quickly.

    It´s more a psychological issue that affects admins more than regular users (cause users will get some training anyway).
    It makes you feel like everything is OK if you don't face a white out the first time you try something new Smile

    I assume these settings were deliberately chosen by the Aras design team. Is far as I have heard we will some day get some more advanced welcome page options.

    But I am happy that this modification can be done so easy. This way we can also remove it quite simple once we use a start page.