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  • Created by Former user, last modified by Former user on Mar 09, 2012
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A control template is a control that was published by the form designer so that it can be reused in other forms and by other designers within the same tenant. You typically want to publish control templates when you create complex control with sophisticated layouts, field patterns, business rules, etc., and want to reuse that work in another form or share it with another form designer. You also may consider using control templates when you need to split the work among a number of form designers, where each designer is responsible for creating a subsection of a complex form and another designer is responsible for assembling these control templates into a final form or flow.

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It is important for you to understand the two types of control templates that you can create in frevvo – modifiable templates and read-only templates. In some cases may you want to publish a control template and allow them to be completely modified when used in other forms. These modifiable control templates are basically a starting point to a sightly or entirely different control at the discretion of the designer using it. Note that by changing the name of a control, you may break rules published with the control. In other cases, you may want to publish read-only control templates. A designer using a read-only control will not be able to remove nested controls nor change any properties that affect the underlying data binding (e.g., the name property). The designer can still change other UI-related properties such as styles and labels, and rearrange any nested controls on read-only templates.

In general, if you have rules associated with the control or it is essential to guarantee a consistent XML binding, then you want to publish your controls as read-only.

 

Custom Tab Area

The Custom tab is like a favorite's area for the current designer. Adding control templates to or removing them from the Custom tab is not the same as adding or removing control templates. This removes the templates from the currently logged in designer's favorites. There could be 100's of control templates published by designers in a given tenant, but only 10 of them have been added to by the designer to his/her Custom tab favorites. Note: each individual designer will have their own Custom tab with their own set of avorite control templates.

Publishing a Control Template 

There are two ways you can publish a control in frevvo:

  • Clicking the Publish Control Template link, in the control properties pane, or 
  • Dragging and dropping the control onto the Custom tab header

There is small difference between these two ways of publishing controls, though. When clicking the Publish Control Template link, you are only publishing the control as a template, but when you drag & drop you are also adding the published control to the Custom tab, in one shot.

[[Image:PublishControlTemplate-2.png]]

Next, you will see the Publish Control Template dialog where you can enter a name and description for this template, a category, and any number of comma or space-separated tags.  See the [[V4_Admin_Home_Page#Manage_Control_Categories | Manage Control Categories]] topic for instructions for adding or removing control template categories.

[[Image:PublishControlTemplate2-2.png]]

Click Submit and you will see a confirmation page that once closed will refresh the page. If you used the drag & drop approach above, you should see the published control automatically added to your Custom pane.

[[Image:PublishControlTemplate3-2.png]]

Publishing Controls with Rules

You can also publish controls that are referenced by rules as long as: * the control is a '''Panel''' or a '''Section''' (support for simple controls will be added in the future) * the rule '''only references''' the control being published or any of it's nested controls

When the above conditions are met, the '''Publish Control Template''' dialog will list the candidate rules (see next screenshot) allowing you to select the ones you want to publish with the control. Note that as soon as at least one rule is selected the read-only checkbox will also be selected: '''you can only publish controls with rules in read-only mode'''. Since it is not possible to edit rules after the control is published, this restriction exists to make sure that no changes that could break the rules will be allowed when using the template.

[[Image:PublishControlTemplate4-2.png]]

=== Adding/Removing Templates to/from the Custom Pane ===

You can add control templates to the '''Custom''' pane by clicking the '''Search''' link found there. This will show the '''Search Control Templates''' dialog where you can search for the template you are looking for.

[[Image:SearchControlTemplate-2.png]]

This search dialog will show, by default, the first 10 templates ordered by the date when the control was published. You can then page through the templates by clicking '''Next''' or '''Previous'''.

The search result will show a table with 5 columns: * Column 1: Include/exclude from '''Custom''' pane (checked/unchecked) * Column 2: '''Control type''' icon (Section, text, dropdown, etc) * Column 3: Template '''name''' * Column 4: Template '''created date''' * Column 5: Template '''tags''' (space separated)

You also can get see who created the template and when by hovering over a given row in the results table.

You can add a control to the '''Custom''' pane by selecting (checked state) the check box in the first column in the table and remove a control from the '''Custom''' pane by deselecting (unchecked state) it. Click '''Finish''' when done and you will see an updated '''Custom''' pane after a page refresh.

Searching Control Templates

You can also perform simple case-insensitive searches through all the published control templates using the '''Search Control Templates''' dialog. Here are some sample searches: * '''perso''' -- searches for all templates that have the sub-string 'perso' in the name, description, tags or categories (case-insensitive, partial matches). * '''name:PersonalInfo''' -- all templates with name containing '''PersonalInfo''' (partial match) * '''descr:Somewhat''' -- all templates with description containing '''Somewhat'''(partial match) * '''author:john''' -- all templates created by '''john''' (exact match) * '''tag:personal''' -- all templates with a tag '''personal''' (exact match) * '''cat:hr''' -- all templates with a category named '''hr''' (exact match) * '''type:Checkbox''' -- all templates of type '''Checkbox''' (exact match, options are: Checkbox, Text, Repeat, Section, Dropdown, Panel, TextArea, Number, Phone, Radio, Tabs, Message, Link, Date, Email, Quantity, Image, Video)

The search will be updated by either clicking the '''Search Controls''' button or by tabbing off the search field. You can also perform automatic searches by clicking individual columns in the search results: e.g. clicking on a tag will automatically filter the search by that tag and the search field reflects the new search criteria.

Removing Control Templates

If you want to remove control templates (instead of removing from the '''Custom''' pane) from frevvo, you need to make sure you are logged in as the tenant admin and navigate to the '''Templates > Templates by Category''' or '''Templates > Templates by Tags''' page from the top menu. There you will see the list of published controls and can remove them one by one.

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