About the Clipboard tool

Click the icon in the Designer Studio Quick Launch bar, or type the keyboard shortcut CTRL + B to open the Clipboard tool.

The clipboard has a hierarchical structure based on XML. It resides in memory on the server. As you interact with the Clipboard tool at your workstation, you see a static snapshot copy. Choose Refresh from the Action menu at any time to update the snapshot.

The Clipboard tool displays two panels:

• The left panel displays the page structures, in a hierarchical tree format.
• The right panel displays the value of Single Value, Value List, and Value Group properties and messages, for one page selected in the left panel.

Each Thread in your requestor session has a clipboard context. If you have multiple work items open, each has a dedicated thread named PegaThread1, PegaThread2, and so on. Threads for open work items identify the work type and work item ID of the work object.

To interact with your clipboard:

1. Select a Thread from the right panel Thread menu. For Threads that correspond to a work item, the menu identifies the work type and work item ID as well as the Thread name.
2. Interact with the tree structure in the left panel to select a page, list, or group.
3. Review or interact with the right panel.

Click the Help button () at the top right for more details on the display.

You can control whether the Clipboard tool opens in a new window or in the lower half of the Designer Studio workspace.

1. Select Preferences from the Application menu.
2. Select or clear the Clipboard box in the Tools group.
3. Click  Save  .

The left panel presents the entire clipboard as a tree, growing from the left.

Three types of pages are grouped for quick access: User Pages, Linked Property Pages, and Declared Pages.

Click a name or plus sign () to expand any node in the left panel to view the page structure it contains. Click again or click a minus sign () to collapse (hide) the pages within a page.

If one of the User Pages holds a work item, that page is initially selected in this panel, and details for that page appear in the right panel.

For additional information, see Help — Using the Clipboard tool.

When you select a page in the left panel, all Single Value properties on that page appear in the right panel, sorted by property name. Property messages appear in red text.

Use the left panel to click the page (either top-level or embedded) that contains the property.

Refresh to present current information

As you work, the system creates and updates clipboard pages related to your work. However, these changes are not automatically reflected in the Clipboard tool display. Click Refresh from the Action menu to send the latest clipboard contents to your workstation.

Measuring the size of the clipboard

The Clipboard display shows the contents of the clipboard, but not its size in bytes. Large clipboards can affect performance because memory in the Java Virtual Machine supporting PRPC holds the clipboards of all requestors.

• You can use the Performance tool to see the size of your clipboard in bytes, or to track the growth and contraction of your clipboard over time. Select > Performance, then click the Add Reading with Clipboard Size link.
• Using the System Management Application (SMA), you can learn the size of each requestor's clipboards, and the size of each page. Start the SMA using > System > Tools > System Management App . Select a node, then click the Requestor Management menu item.

What properties don't appear?

The Clipboard display includes only a few of the many properties with names that start with pz. Such standard properties support internal PRPC operations.

To see pz properties and other clipboard entries that aren't truly properties, right-click in the left panel and select Show XML. To see the contents of unnamed pages, use the Tracer.

The primary pages of some activities are not named and don't appear on the Clipboard display. The parameter page of an activity is not part of the clipboard. Use the Tracer to view such pages.

Properties of mode Java Object, Java Object Group, and Java Object List do not appear on the Clipboard tool display.

The Application page contains much, but not all, of the properties that make up the requestor's application rule.

Privileges required

The Clipboard tool is available only to users who have access to the @baseclass.clipboardViewer privilege. Action menu items that update the clipboard contents are available only to users who hold the @baseclass.clipboardViewerUpdate privilege.

The standard access role PegaRULES:SysAdm4 provides these privileges.

Several methods manipulate the clipboard. As you execute activities that affect your clipboard, you can examine the results with the Clipboard tool.

For example, when you execute an activity that contains a Page-New method, you can see the resulting named top-level page in the User Pages section. If you execute an activity that uses the Property-Set method (on a named clipboard page), you can see the new values.

The Named Pages landing page tab summarizes the named pages referenced by the rules in the current application. Select > Data Model > Clipboard Pages > Named Pages to access this tab.