Harness and Section forms
About the Work Area control

About Harnesses

As of 7.1, the Work Area control is deprecated. As a best practice, upgrade Work Areas to Dynamic Containers. Dynamic Containers, introduced with PRPC 6.3, provide functionality similar to the Work Area control, but are easier to configure, have greater flexibility, and provide better performance. You can use the Work Area auto-upgrade tool to automatically convert Work Areas to Dynamic Containers. See Upgrading Work Area controls to Dynamic Containers on the PDN.

For new development, use the auto-generated Dynamic Container ( Dynamic Container ) located on the Layout control group.

A section containing a Work Area control supports the runtime presentation of user forms and worklists in composite portals. Two formats are available:

For an example, the User portal has a single space, defined by the harness Data-Portal.WorkUser. The section Data-Portal.UserCenterPanel defines the Work Area.

This facility depends on rules of various types:

Cell Properties panel — Top fields

Parameters to the standard control WorkArea control the display.

Field

Description

Property

Placeholder property pyTemplateDocumentView. (This property is not used.)

Control

Retain the default Control rule WorkArea. Click (Pencil) to enter parameters for the control:

z

Parameter

Description

ID

Not used. Leave blank.

Tabbed

Select Yes to divide the area into group of tabs.

Max Tabs

Appears if the Tabbed value is Yes. Select a maximum limit of Work Area tabs. The number can be no greater than 16.

Height

Select:

  • Fill — At runtime, the work area expands to fill the available space regardless of the content’s height.
  • Size to Content — At runtime, work area expands to the entire height offered by the enclosing section.
  • Fixed — Limit the runtime presentation to a fixed height in pixels; scroll bars appear at runtime as needed.
Open by Default

add rowIf the Tabbed parameter value is Yes, complete at least one row of the Open by Default array to label and identify the contents of each tab. Order is significant.

Label

Enter brief text to appear as the label of this tab.

Harness Class

Identify the Applies To key part of a harness

Harness Name

Identify the Purpose key part of a harness.

Icon

Identify an icon that you want to display in the tab. Click () to open the Image Catalog (a pop-up version of the Image Library landing page). Select the binary file you wish to use.

Tooltip

SmartPrompt Select a field value or enter a constant that contains a sentence or phrase identifying to users the content of the tab.

Localization

Use SmartPromptSmartPrompt to select a field value rule if you plan to localize the text. Enter no more than 64 characters. A field value rule with pyActionPrompt as the second key part and this text as the final key part is needed for each locale. When practical, choose a caption already included in a language pack, to simplify later localization. See About the Localization wizard.

Auto Refresh

Select to cause automatic refresh of the runtime harness display when the user clicks the tab to make it frontmost.

System

Not used. Leave blank.

Application

Not used. Leave blank.

Thread

Advanced featureOptional. If the Tabbed parameter value is No, you can force execution to occur in a specific requestor Thread. Enter the Thread name.

Leave blank in most cases to use the default Thread, Standard.

Default Action

SmartPrompt If the Tabbed parameter value is No, select to determine the automatic processing that is to occur when the section is initially presented:

  • None — No automatic processing; the form area is initially empty.
  • Display — Present a user form.
  • Create New Work — Start a flow execution that creates a new work item.
  • Get Next Work — Search for an appropriate assignment to present to this use next.

If you selected Display for the Default Action parameter, complete these additional parameters:

Parameter

Description

Class Name

SmartPromptIdentify the Applies To key part of a harness.

Harness Name

SmartPromptIdentify the Purpose key part of a harness.

Read Only

Select to present the runtime harness display in read-only mode, disallowing all input.

Page

Optional. Identify a clipboard page name to support the runtime harness display.

Data Transform

SmartPrompt Optional. Identify the second key part — Data Transform Name — of a data transform to provide initial values on the clipboard page. To find this rule at runtime, the system uses the Class Name value as the first key part.

Parameters

Optional. You can pass parameter values to sections within the harness using a special syntax:

paramname1=paramvalue1; paramname2=paramvalue2; ...

where paramname is the parameter name and paramvalue is a literal constant within double quote characters, or a property reference of the form pagename.propname. For example:

Length="20"; Width=pyWorkPage.Width;

If you selected Create New Work for the Document Action parameter, these additional parameters identify the starter flow:

Parameter

Description

Class Name

SmartPromptIdentify the Applies To key part of a flow rule that creates a new work item, as a literal value or a property reference.

Flow Name

SmartPromptIdentify the Flow Name key part of a flow rule that creates a new work item, as a literal value or a property reference.

Parameters

Optional. You can pass parameter values to the flow rule using a special syntax:

paramname1 = paramvalue1; paramname2=paramvalue2; ...

where paramname is the parameter name and paramvalue is a literal constant within double quote characters, or a property reference of the form pagename.propname. For example:

Length="20"; Width=pyWorkPage.Width;

If you selected Get Next Work for the Document Action parameter, add parameters:

Parameter

Description

Parameters

Optional. You can pass parameter values to the Work-getNextWorkObject activity (or your activity built to perform such processing) using a special syntax:

paramname1=paramvalue1; paramname2=paramvalue2; ....

where paramname is the parameter name and paramvalue is a literal constant within single quote characters, or a property reference of the form pagename.propname. For example:

Length="20"; Width="200";

Behavior

Leave blank. Not used.

Cell Properties panel — General tab

The General tab for a Work Area control is identical to the General tab for a Text Input control. See Adding — Complete the Cell Properties Panel — General tab.

Cell Properties panel — Advanced tab

The Advanced tab for a check box is identical to the Advanced tab for a Text Input control. See Adding a Text Input control — Complete the Cell Properties Panel — Advanced tab.

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