Grouping of “Menu buttons”

Applies to version: 2022.1.x and above, author: Krystyna Gawryał

Introduction

Menu button is a button available in the top bar of a form in WEBCON BPS Portal, used to trigger automations added by the user globally or in a particular workflow step. Choosing this form of triggering automations allows you to maintain a high level of readability of the form – an automation (including one or more actions) is available under a single button, which, when pressed, causes its actions to be executed in a "top to bottom" order.

The number of Menu buttons on the form corresponds to the number of defined automations. Defining more automations can reduce the readability and clarity of the form menu. The solution in this case is to group Menu buttons and the present article is devoted to this subject.

Adding multiple Menu buttons

Menu button is one of the options available in the Actions list section of the Actions or Global actions tab in WEBCON BPS Designer Studio. To add a new Menu button, select this option and right-click on it, then select Add button or, alternatively, click on the plus icon located at the top of the section.

According to the figure below, adding a button is analogous to adding a new automation:

After adding the button, configuring automation and visibility, the newly created button will appear in the menu when the workflow instance is in edit mode.

If you need to configure many automations, and thus add multiple Menu buttons, a drop-down list called User actions containing all user-defined buttons is automatically created in Portal.

Adding multiple Menu buttons

User actions button in the workflow instance menu

The order in which the buttons are displayed in Portal is the same as in WEBCON BPS Designer Studio.

Creating button groups

If you want to customize your form, e.g. organize the automations by topic, then you should use the option of grouping Menu buttons.

In the given example, the automations will be divided into the following groups:

1. Generating documents

• Generate Excel
• Generate Word
• Convert Word to PDF

2. Sending notifications via e-mail

• Send notification to superior
• Send notification to author
• Send notification to assigned person

To create a new group of buttons, select Menu button in the Actions list section, right-click on it, and choose Add group from the context menu.

Provide a preferred name for the new group and then drag the previously created buttons with automations to it. This order can be reversed: first create button groups, and then add new buttons with automations to them.

It is also possible to define custom icons for buttons / button groups to be displayed next to their names in Portal. To do this, in the button / button group configuration window in the Icon section, select Custom and choose your preferred icon from the list.

Once configured as above, the menu with button groups looks as follows:

In each of the defined groups, previously created individual buttons are available in the drop-down menu.

Grouping of Menu buttons increases the readability of the workflow instance, making it more personalized and user-friendly.