.. _p_menu_layouts:

Menu Layouts
------------

Menu layouts define the view a user has of the menu content and structure on
the GUI. This is fully customizable up to three levels deep and can be created
or edited to represent the content any user needs to have access to. The
association of the defined view of the menu is made with the user's role and
menu layouts can be created directly on the GUI.

To refine a view of model entities for a user, a Field Display Policy (FDP)
and Configuration Template (CFT) for a model can be applied. The FDP and CFT for
a specific model is applied as part of the menu layout - in other words in the
menu structure, the FDP and CFT are attributes of the specific model entry for
that menu layout. This means that:

* Different FDPs and CFTs for a specific model can define menu layout variations for
that model.
* The required FDP and CFT should be available and defined before creating new menus.

If a menu layout applies to the list view of a model, this list can be filtered
by means of a number of filter options that apply to the displayed list.
Only instances where the values of a model attribute that match the filter,
are then shown.

Default menu layouts are provided with |VOSS-4-UC|. These include defaults
for pre-defined hierarchy based user roles, namely System Administrator
(hcsadmin), Provider Administrator, Reseller Administrator, Customer Administrator
and Site Administrator. The details of these default menu layouts can be viewed
and easily edited to either remove or add entries, update entries (for example
with an alternative FDP), change default values (for example with an alternative CFT),
or change the order and groupings of the items.

The menu layout is an attribute of the user role. Each user must be assigned a User
Role, thus the user will see the menu layout based on this user role. See :ref:`user_roles`.

Menu layouts can also be copied via the Clone option so they can be edited or
exported and re-imported.

Designers who have access to tag or version tag can apply these to a menu layout
so that it can be uniquely identified to track and control changes.

Refer to the Best Practices Guide for additional details.