Overview

There are several stages to designing an application, as outlined in Building Applications. An application provides users with one or more screens, which they use to interact with data.

A screen is made up of:

• a dashboard: the empty screen and properties that you want to apply to the whole screen
• optionally, dashboard elements: these divide a dashboard and enable components in different parts of it to be bound to different data
• layouts: combinations of components, such as areas, fields, labels, cards, grids and charts, grouped together to create parts of the screen. Layouts start with container components:
  • areas: can contain any other component
  • forms: designed to contain fields and their labels
  • card-containers: designed to contain cards
• data-bound components: some components are designed to display data. These are:
  • graphs, charts and grids, which are based on views. These components display stream-items:
    • either individually, for example in a grid
    • or combined into a chart or graph
  •  form fields and cards: show several data points (attributes) for a selected stream-item: 
    • either in the fields on a form
    • or in a card.

You can build up your own layouts from individual components. However, we recommend that you simply use ready-made layouts that you can drag from the palette onto a screen. Some layouts, called tiles, are specifically designed to resize and move components in response to changes in screen size and device form; see /wiki/spaces/HELP100/pages/9106726483.

Some layouts or components are designed for user interaction, such as buttons. However, you can configure events, such as user-clicks on part of a screen, to trigger actions. For information about configuring user interaction for screens, see Actionflows and Action Configuration.

This topic explains how to:

• create screens; see Creating or Opening a Screen
• design screens using components provided in the palette; see Understanding Palettes and Themes
• use data to create components or bind data to existing components; see Showing Data on a Screen
• change the styling of components; see Styles and Formats
• provide menu options and navigation; see Adding a Menu Bar and Data Views - Toolbars and Menus.

Pages in this Topic