Getting your way around a Planning Application using Navigation Flow

I'm back!  In this blog I we will not discuss about SmartLists but another cool feature within PBCS.  Gone are the days when Tasklists are the only way to go to define the planning flow in the Planning application.  Don't get me wrong, Tasklists get the work done pretty well but lacks the visual appeal that one is used to now with the icon-based navigation in all our mobile gadgets.

Make way for "Navigation Flow" (affectionately known as Nav Flow, well... at least to me).

So, what's this Nav Flow and does it stack up to our dear old friend the Tasklists?  For one, it is visually more appealing and intuitive to end-users.

Instead of defining them as a list of tasks, the planning models can be grouped and represented by icons.  The screenshot above shows that the application has models for Revenue, Expenses, Workforce, Capital, and Income Statement, all with their distinct icons.  Going from left to right, one will be able to complete their planning activities in the sequence that is intended by the designer of this application.

Drilling into the Revenue model reveals individual revenue sub-models.

The vertical tabs on the left represent the different revenue sub-models such as Property Management Income, Property Sales Income, etc.  The tabs across the top of the form list forms/reports/dashboards within each sub-model.  What's cool about this set up is that a user can have direct access to all the models and sub-models easily instead of the sequential access via a task list.

Now you must be wondering how do I control access to the models as not all users should have access to all the models in the application.  This is pretty awesome, the access rights set in the individual artifact (i.e. forms, reports, dashboards, rules) are honoured by the Nav Flow.  What this means that a user having access to the Revenue and Workforce models will only see these 2 icons in addition to the system icons (i.e. User Variables, Reports, Rules, and Jobs).  Cool, huh?  To take it one step further, assuming that this user has access to only the Property Management Numbers form within the Property Management Income model, he will only get this form shown and the other 4 forms are hidden from him.  All the other revenue sub-models are also hidden from this user.

To make the application more self-service oriented, you can also embed instructions to each of the form attached to this Nav Flow.  Just click in the "Information" icon beside the form name to reveal the instructions.

Now, let's get on to the nitty-gritty details of how we set this up but before that, I'd like to give you some context about the navigation flow discussed in this blog.

The Application
Our discussion is based on an application that contains the following models:

1. Revenue
• Property Management
• Property Sales
• Ancillary Income
• Agent Plus Income
• Maintenance Income
2. Expenses
• Office Rentals
• Management Fees
3. Workforce
4. Capital
5. Income Statement

User Groups and Security Access
As mentioned earlier, the Nav Flow uses the access rights for each user to render the relevant icons that he or she has access to.  Here's what I've done:

• Create groups for Admins and All Users and the relevant built-in user roles to groups

• Create groups for each model and assign individual users to the relevant Functional User groups.  

• Go ahead to then assign the Functional Groups to the relevant Forms, Reports, Dashboards, and Rules.

Navigation Flow
Now it's time to define the Nav Flow and I've chosen to build one for Administrators and the other for the rest of the user community.  Since the Nav Flow honours the security access rights that we've established in all the artifacts, we should only need a single Nav Flow that contains all the models and relevant system icons.  However, I've decided against that simply because I'd like to hide the Rules icon from the end users and rely on the rules to run automatically each time a form is saved.

So, in this example I have 2 Nav Flows defined while the "Default" came with PBCS:

• 10_All_Admins
• 20_All_Users

You'd ask why I have named the Nav Flow with a numerical prefix?  Well, that to help me control which Nav Flow gets resolved first.  You see, the system will evaluate the Nav Flow in the order in which they appear in the Navigation Flow page to resolve to the correct Nav Flow that a user has access to.  So, by having them named with a numerical prefix, I am ensured that they get evaluated first before landing on the Default Nav Flow.

With the above set up, PBCS will first check if the user has access to the first Nav Flow and if he is an Administrator of this application, he will be shown the 10_All_Admins Nav Flow and will use the second Nav Flow (20_All_Users) if he is a planner.  In the rare event if a user wasn't assigned to either the ALL_Admins or the ALL_Users group, he will gain access to the Default Nav Flow.

Now, let's see what under the hood of 10_All_Admins Nav Flow.  I have the User Variables as the first icon so that I can guide the users to first ensure that they have the necessary Users Variables set up prior to accessing any of the models.  Subsequent 5 icons are all the models that exist in this application while the remaining icons are 3 other system icons that I wish to expose to the users (i.e. Reports, Rules (only for Admins), and Jobs.

I will now show you how the sub models are defined in the Nav Flow and we'll use the Revenue as the example.

The Revenue model has 5 sub models and they appear in the vertical tabs on the left of the form:

1. Property Management
2. Property Sales
3. Ancillary Income
4. Agent Plus
5. Maintenance

Clicking on "Property Management" will reveal the horizontal tab settings as shown below.  They will appear as tabs across the top of the form:

Each of the items in the horizontal tab is linked to either a Form, Report, or a Dashboard.  Clicking on the "Property Management Assumptions" item will reveal the definition for this item and in this case is a reference to the "Property Management Assumptions" form.  Don't be fooled by the grey-coloured field in Artifact.  It does not mean that the content cannot be edited.  Click on the search icon beside the Artifact field to associate an artifact to the item.

When you are done defining all models and sub-models, click "Save and Close" and then activate the Nav Flow.  Just so you know, the Nav Flow needs to be in an "Inactive" state for you to be able to modify it and it has to be in an "Active" state for users to be able to access it.  Click on the status to toggle between Active and Inactive state.

Another cool feature that I'd like to tell you about the Nav Flow is that the models you've defined in the Nav Flow can be re-used in another Nav Flow thus, eliminating the need to repeat you definitions and makes updating them much easier where you need to only make the updates in the main Nav Flow and they will be applied to all other flows that refer to the main one.  In my case, 10_All_Admins is the main Nav Flow while 20_All_Users is the secondary one that reuses the definitions that were done in 10_All_Admins.

Notice that the models are referring to 10_All_Admins.  To reuse a definition from another Nav Flow you would click on "Add Existing Card/Cluster" instead of "Add Card" and then choose a card or cluster from an existing Nav Flow.

That's it!  We're done.

What's missing from the Nav Flow?
Now that I have sang praises about this neat feature, I'd certainly like to see additional features added to the Nav Flow.  One main one that is missing from here is the ability to link a specific rule to a card within the Nav Flow.  That was the reason why I had to expose the Rules system icon but limit it to the Administrators only.

Hope you have enjoyed reading my blog post and hope to post the next one real soon.  Until then, sayonara till we meet again.