You are here: Designer Studio > Basic concepts > Designer Studio - Using the header

Designer Studio — Header and developer toolbar

At the top of the Designer Studio, the header provides access to the search facility and menus. The tools and selection boxes on the header vary depending on your role, the type of workspace, and the contents of the form and list area. When a button does not appear or is unavailable (gray), the corresponding function is not available to you in the current context.

At the bottom of the Designer Studio, the developer toolbar provides access to tools and menus intended for advanced users, and provides information about your Pega 7 Platform system.

 

Header options

The header contains the following options as shown in this example.

 

These options, from left to right, are described in the table below.

Option

 

Description

 

Click to open the Home display.

(landing page menu)

 

Click to access the landing pages. See About landing pages.


[application short description]
 

The Application menu (named Purchase Order in the above example) identifies the current application by its short description. Click to access a multi-level menu of application-specific tools and information. See Designer Studio — Using the Application menu for details.

(launch a portal)

 

Switch from the Designer Studio (Developer portal) to another portal listed in your access group. When you select a portal, the system opens the current application and portal in a separate browser window.

(create a case)

 

Select a starter flow to create a case. The menu list displays the short descriptions of starting flows that belong to selected case types listed in the application record's Cases and Data tab. To select a case type and its starting flows, use the Case Type Explorer Show in New Work option, or select the Use the check box to include case types in the create menu check box on the record's tab.

Note: If a case type has more than one starting process, give each a unique short description.

(search)

 

Provides access full-text search for rules, data objects and the help system . See Designer Studio — Using Search .

(Recent)

 

Click the Recent icon to display the contents of the Recent Explorer in a pop-up dialog. See Using the Recent Explorer.

(Resources)

 

Click to access this help system and other information resources. See Designer Studio — Using the Help menu.

[operator name]  

The Operator menu (named James Allen above) displays the operator's full name. Click to access a menu of tools and information about this operator See Designer Studio — Using the Operator menu.

(My Check Outs)

 

Click to displays the My Checkouts report that contains a list of rule or data instance records in your personal RuleSet that you have checked out from RuleSets in any application to which you have access.

The check out feature lets a team of application developers work on an application (associated with a RuleSet Name) without interfering with or overwriting each other's work. A rule can be checked out to only one developer at a time. See Understanding checkout and your personal RuleSet.

You can do the following

  • Click a record name to open the checked out rule in your personal RuleSet.
  • Expand a row to display the RuleSet and version the record was checked out from, and your checked out record. Each record displays its availability setting, the operator who last updated it, and the date. Click a record link to open it.
  • Click the Class filter specify the classes and their rules displayed in the list.

Click Bulk Actions to start bulk check-in. See Working with the My Check Outs report and Bulk Check-in.

You can also access your list of checked out rules from the Private Explorer.

To look for rules checked out by others, or search for checked out rules using other criteria in the current application, select Designer Studio>Application > Development > Checked Out Rules.

 

Developer toolbar options

The developer toolbar contains the following options.

DS_toolbar

These options, from left to right, are described in the table below.

Menu Option

 

Description

Tracer

 

Starts the Tracer tool to debug flows, activities, services, parse rules, other rule types. The Tracer tool provides full debugging facilities, including step-by-step execution, breakpoints, and watch variables. See Debugging with the Tracer tool.

Clipboard

 

Opens the Clipboard tool. The Clipboard tool lets you review the contents of your clipboard. When appropriate to support debugging, you can use the tool to directly update parts of your clipboard. See About the Clipboard tool.

Live UI

 

Available in Designer Studio and at runtime. Opens a column on the right-hand side of the screen that displays a list of all elements in an application. Hover over an item on this list or an element on the page to show its hierarchy in this list.

Click the element to see a description of its UI structure. Hover over an element to view element types such as containers, layouts, panels, harnesses, layouts, sections, flow actions, and cells.

Open rules directly from Live UI. Click the gear icon to edit directly from the properties panel at design time or at runtime. See About the Live UI tool.

Performance

 

Opens the Performance tool for the current Thread. The initial Performance tool display provides access to the DB Trace tool the Profiler tool. See About the Performance tool.

Alerts

 

View alerts from your own requestor session. See Working with the Alerts window.

 

Offers these tools that identify specific elements on user forms and portal forms. To interpret the results of these settings, see About the Inspection Preferences option.

  • Declaratives — To mark properties computed by Declare Expression rules. A small red D identifies such properties.
  • Field Values — To mark text labels for which field value rules are defined.
 

Open the log-in page or home page of the PDN, a subscription news and knowledge extranet for Pega 7 Platform developers hosted on the World Wide Web. Requires WWW access.

[Pega 7 Platformversion]  

Identify the version and internal build number of the Pega 7 Platform software installed on this node. Click SysInfo to learn details of the JVM and server platform that supports the server on this node.