This page is for PhixFlow application designers who need to create a new application, or change the defaults for an existing application.

Overview

When you create an application in PhixFlow, you are configuring default properties for your application project. For how to create a new application, see Creating an Application.

Within the project, working in Design Mode. you can:

define data relationships: see Entity Relationship Diagrams and Views Setup
design screens that form the graphical user interface (GUI) of an application: see Screen Design
connect parts of the screen to actions or actionflows that create functionality: Actionflows and Action Configuration.

Application users can load an application into Application Mode to interact with data, for example to view and update it.

This page lists the application properties. To access the application properties

Go to the Repositorytab.
If the tab is not present, in the PhixFlow toolbar, click the Repository icon.
In the Applications section, double-click your application's name.
PhixFlow opens the properties tab for the application on the right.

Use the options to set:

whether you want a menu bar, and which menu options appear there. We are promoting the user creating bespoke menus.
access privileges to specify which users can use the application.
the template that your application uses.
data formats, if you do not want to use the PhixFlow defaults.
any packages containing shared resources that your application can use; see Package.

Sections on this page

Application Properties

Basic Settings

Field		Description
Name	Enter the name of the application.
Version	Enter a version number for your application. Use this to track the stages of development or maintenance for your application.
Do not show in the Application Menu	Select whether or not this application appears in the Application menu. For example, you may have a test application that should not be visible to other PhixFlow users. Use the repository to open an application that is not present in the Welcome window's application list. Untick to include this application. Tick to exclude this application. This is useful for test applications that you do not want anyone else to see.
Default Date Format	Select the default format for Date attributes and components.	Select a format from the drop-down list or click the icons to: Error rendering macro 'excerpt-include' : No link could be created for '_date_style'. : shows the date or date/time formats available for this application in the repository. Create New: create a new format.
Default Date/Time Format	Select the default format for DateTime attributes and components.
Default Number Format	Select the default format for numbers.	Select a format from the drop-down list or click the icons to: List Formats: shows the number formats available for this application in the repository. Create New: create a new format.
Default Component Palette	Select the palette that you want to use when you drag a stream, view or attribute onto a dashboard canvas. # PhixFlow uses this palette when its container application is running. If the container application for is not running, PhixFlow uses: either the default palette set for the area. or the default palette for the destination application when you are dragging stream attributes into a layout for a different (destination) application that is running. If you do not set a default palette, PhixFlow uses the system default palette. Basic palettes are installed with PhixFlow. Additional palettes are available, see About Themes and Installing Themes and Packages.
Application Icon	Select an uploaded image to use in the application menu card for this application. We recommend an image size of approximately: height: up to 100 pixels width: 100 to 150 pixels.	See Image for how to upload an image to PhixFlow. PhixFlow uploads application icons and logos to the images folder in its database. You can see a list of uploaded images in the repository > Images section.
Application Logo	Select an uploaded image to provide customised branding for the application. When a user clicks this image, it will open the application menu. We recommend an image size of approximately: height: up to 40 pixels width: up to 300 pixels.

Style Settings

When you drag a stream or view onto a dashboard canvas, and select a grid component to display the stream data, PhixFlow adds a grid. In this section, set the default appearance of grid views for the application. You can set the following:

Grid Header Style
Grid Header Button Style
Grid Header Icon Style
Grid Header Drop-down Button Style
Grid header Drop-down Pane Style
Grid Paging Style
Grid Row Style
Grid Column Header Style
Row Selection Style

To specify a style, select it from the drop-down list or click the icons to:

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to show available styles
Add New to create a new style; see Style.

The styles you select override any styles set in System Configuration. You can override these defaults for individual grids using the style settings in the View properties.

Default Components

In this section, select an appropriate component for PhixFlow to add when you drag attributes onto a form or card container. For information about data types see Understanding Data Types.

String
Bigstring
Long Todo-Fiona - what is this?
Float
Decimal
True/False
Date
DateTime

Also set the styling for the containers:

form
card

And select a default:

action
This action runs when the user initially opens an application. For example, you could set the the default action to display a welcome screen.

Menus

This section has a toolbar with standard buttons. The grid lists the menus that have actionflows or stream-item-actions that can be applied for this application.

PhixFlow automatically creates a default menu when you create the application project. PhixFlow will display in the default menu in the menu bar:

once you have added options to the menu
and when Show Default Menu Bar is selected (see below).

If there are several menus, listed PhixFlow uses the selected (ticked) menu as the menu bar for the application.

You can specify that PhixFlow uses a different menu for desktop and mobile devices. Todo-Fiona - check with UX team - should their also be a tick box in the menu properties for the default menu? Right-click on a line in the list to show the pop-up menu options:

Desktop Menu: use this menu on desktop devices. The grid shows the desktop icon next to the menu name.
Mobile Menu: use this menu on mobile devices. The grid shows the mobile icon next to the menu name.
Create New create another menu to the list; see Menu properties.
Delete delete the menu from this application.

Security Tab

Access Permissions

See the Common Properties page, Access Permissions section.

Packages

This section has a toolbar with standard buttons. The grid contains a list of packages that contain this application. To add an application to the list:

Click Create New to list all the packages in the repository.
Drag packages into this list.

To remove a package from the list, use the toolbar button Delete.

Todo-Fiona - link to info about template packages that act as themes - ask Anthony.

Audit Tab

Audit Summary

See the Common Properties page, Audit Summary section.

Description

We recommend that you always enter a description to explain the purpose of this item.

Todo-Fiona - check that the following are UX options not yet implemented

Additional options related to user navigation are:

Show Default Menu Bar

If you want menu options for the user to navigate your application, select this potion. PhixFlow displays the menu bar at the top of the application screen. Use the Navigation settings to add menu options. See PhixFlow's Interface for screenshots showing the default menu bar.

Field

Description

Theme

The name of the theme that defines the defaults and styles for this application. The theme provides a set of palettes and sets the style defaults, such as the styles for grids that you add to screens.

Select the palette that you want to use when you drag stream attributes onto the screen. This should explain that they come from the selected template when creating an application, a template that has been associated with the application or any local palettes. PhixFlow uses this palette when its container application is running. What does this mean?

If the container application for is not running, PhixFlow uses:

either the default palette set for the area.
or the default palette for the destination application when you are dragging stream attributes into a screen for a different (destination) application that is running.

If you do not set a palette, PhixFlow uses the system default palette.

You can change style settings:

in the template components in the palette
create shared styles
set styles on individual components

See Shared Styles and Style Order

Application Menu and Context Menus

Todo-Fiona - confirm that this is covered elsewhere and link to it from the overview.

The Application Menu

When you run PhixFlow in Design Mode without loading an application, you will see the PhixFlow logo and text in the top left of the window. You can click this area to open the Application menu. The menu lists the applications available in the current PhixFlow instance.

When you run PhixFlow in either Application Mode or Design Mode, if your PhixFlow URL does not specify an application, the Application menu opens automatically when you log into PhixFlow.

To open the Application menu at any time:

either click on the logo/name in the top left of the PhixFlow screen. By default this is the PhixFlow logo and name .
or, if your application has been configured to have no menu bar, click the logo in the bottom right of the PhixFlow screen. By default this is the PhixFlow logo .

Your administrator can configure the graphic that appears in the menu bar in the application properties → Basic Settings → Application Logo option, below.

The Application menu lists the available applications as cards, for example:

Issue?

The Application menu displays the applications:

that have been configured to appear on menu
and that you have permission to use.

The repository → Applications branch displays the applications that you have permission to use.

Application Card Context Menu

Each application card also has a context menu. To open the application card context menu:

either right-click anywhere in the card
or hover your mouse pointer over the card, then click the More Options icon, which is displayed in the top right.

Repository Application Context Menu

Applications also have different context menu available from the repository. To display the repository application context menu, right-click the name of an application.

old image

Pop-up Menu Options

Available in a pop-up accessed from	Option	Description
application card and repository application name	Load Application	Load the selected application so that it is running in Application Mode.
application card	Load application in a New Tab	Open a new browser tab with the selected application loaded.
application card	Load Application in a New Window	Open a new browser window with the selected application loaded.
repository application name	Filter by Name	In the repository browser, use the application name to display only the repository tree for the selected application. The application is not loaded.
repository application name	Edit	In Design Mode, open the properties for the selected application.
repository application name	Delete	Delete the selected application from the repository. This cannot be undone.