Menu layouts

Menu layouts#

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Overview#

Menu layouts define the content and structure of menus in the Admin Portal, based on your user role at the hierarchy where you log in.

Automate allows an administrator (with appropriate permissions) to customize menu layouts for different user roles and hierarchy levels. For example, the menu layouts at Provider level of the hierarchy can be different to menu layouts at Customer or Site level. Customizing menu layouts for different user roles at each hierarchy allows you to hide or show resources appropriate for different roles.

Menu layouts, FDPs, and CFTs#

When creating or editing a menu layout, you can (optionally) apply a field display policy (FDP) and configuration template (CFT) to refine the view of model entities for the user role. In this way, the FDP and CFT for a specific model is applied as part of the menu layout (in the menu structure); the FDP and CFT are attributes of the specific model entry for that menu layout. This means:

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

Fixed and configurable filters#

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. For details, see Fixed and Configurable Filters in Menus

Default menu layouts#

Automate ships with a number of default menu layouts for the following, hierarchy-based administrator user roles:

System administrator
Provider administrator
Reseller administrator
Customer administrator
Site administrator

If you wish to create a new menu layout, you can create a copy (clone) of a default menu layout, edit the settings, and save it as a new, custom, menu layout.

You can also export a menu layout, edit it externally, and re-import it. For example, you can apply an alternative FDP or CFT, or change the order and grouping of items on the menu layout. Designers with access to tag or version tag can apply these to a menu layout so that it can be uniquely identified to track changes.

Note

The Automate documentation is based on the default, predefined menu layouts that ship with the system.

To work with menu layouts in the Admin Portal:

Go to Menu Layouts to view and edit menu layouts.
Go to Roles to view the menu layout assigned to a particular role, then click on a role and view the value in the Menu Layout field (which displays the menu layout for users with this role).

Best practice menus#

In addition to the default menu layouts, Automate provides best practice menus for Provider and Customer administrators, including the associated access profiles and dashboards.

The best practice menus are more business-oriented, and include additional options based on best practice adaptations that may also be included in Automate.

The table describes the key features of the best practice menus:

Feature

Description

Structure mapped to business use case

A menu order, nesting and naming convention based on common business use.

Menus are ordered ‘top-down, following the logical order of tasks and the system hierarchies that perform these tasks.

Example: For Provider admins, the Cisco UC App Management menu has menus only for these devices, while SMTP server and other settings that Provider admins use are arranged under a menu called Provider Configuration.

In a similar way, the Cisco User Services menu has sub-menus for all the functionality associated with Cisco users in Automate.

Naming convention

First word capitalized for menu names where the menu is for a form view (input or edit). For example ADD Internal Number Inventory

Where such menu names start with abbreviations or acronyms, for example, E164, HCS, or LDAP, the capitalization rule applies to the next word in the name.

Menus for URLs

Included in the structure are menus that provide links to other Automate portals, allowing you to launch a another portal directly from a menu.

For this to work, you must update these URLs to match your configuration.

Considerations when customizing and assigning a best practice menu

If you wish to modify a best practice menu and then assign the customized best practice menu to a user role, consider the following:

To add or update menu layouts, see Add or edit a menu layout

Note

A Menu Diff Tool allows you to easily modify menus. See the Advanced Configuration Guide for details.
To view or configure FDPs (field display policies) associated with menu items, see Add and edit field display policies.
To view or configure CFTs (configuration templates) associated with menu items, see Configuration templates.
For details around access profiles available for the best practices menus, see the list in the Access Profiles menu. To modify any access profiles to align with a modified menu, see Access Profile Permissions and Operations.
Note the dashboards available for the best practices menus. See the list under the Dashboards menu.

Menu layouts for a Business Admin role#

Automate provides two sample menu layouts for use or further customization as a Business Administration Portal menu layout. These sample menu layouts display in the Menu Layouts list view:

MenuCustomerAdmin
MenuSiteAdmin

Administrators can clone these samples to a hierarchy, customize them as needed, and assign them to a specific user role that requires a Business Administration Portal interface.

The sample menus also use sample dashboards to complete this Business Administration Portal interface. For details on the sample dashboards, see: Introduction to Automate Dashboards.

Note

The sample menus include conditions on the inclusion of dashboards in accordance with enabled features, services, and devices as in the Global Settings. The conditions are in the form of system macros, for example:

{{ macro.is_microsoft_enabled }}

or

{{ macro.is_cisco_cucm_enabled }}

The image shows an example of a sample menu displaying the sample Call Groups dashboard:

Enhanced menu layouts and dashboards for multi vendor environments#

Automate provides two sets of menus, dashboards, and access profiles for use or cloning and further customization for multi vendors scenarios. These sets offer best-practice reference role-sets that can be used by service providers.

The set of best practice menus and dashboards is comprehensive and includes some add-on options which are not currently included in the core solution. If you want to use a specific option and get a permission error when trying it using the MVS- set, please reach out to the Automate account team to discuss.

Note

Multi vendor user (mvs) dashboards and menu layouts that contain links referencing an adaptation (add-on), have an asterisk (*) postfix in the link text.

Microsoft-only deployment items contain MS-Only in the name, and menu names have the MVS prefix:

MVS-EnhancedProviderMenu
MVS-OperationsCustomerMenu

These menu layouts offer a number of benefits, for example:

A compact main menu list
Menu items directing users to dashboards consisting of items that can be selected to carry out a task - grouped into cards and all visible on one page

The comprehensive set of sample dashboards is provided and used in these menu layouts. They are identified by the dashboard name with prefix, MVS-, and suffix, -Dashboard. For example, the Role Management dashboard is MVS-RoleManagement-Dashboard.

../../_images/mvs-enh-role-mgt-dashboard.png

Note

In release 21.4-PB3, the landing page MVS-GroupingServices-LP has been updated with a filter to exclude the listing of “user” Call Handlers. If this landing page is in use or previously customized, an updated customization of MVS-GroupingServices-Dashboard is required to enable this change in release 24.1.

This also includes home dashboards:

MVS-EnhancedProviderAdmin-HomeDashboard
MVS-Operations-CustomerAdmin-Home-Dashboard

These dashboards can therefore also be cloned and customized as required.

Access profiles associated with these menu layouts and dashboards can also be cloned and configured according to the customized menu layouts and dashboards. They contain the prefix:

MVS-EnhancedProviderAdminAP
MVS-OperationsCustomerAdminAP

The Condition field in menu layouts and dashboard widgets can be configured for multi vendors by using the macros as conditional values - as per enabled features in Global Settings:

{{ macro.is_microsoft_enabled }}
{{ macro.is_cisco_cucm_enabled }}

Sample administrator roles are provided that combine all these elements:

MVS-EnhancedProviderAdministrator
MVS-EnhancedCustomerAdministrator

Add or edit a menu layout#

This procedure adds new menus and modifies existing menus. You can create a new layout for your system or update the default menu layout.

Log in to the Admin Portal as a Provider or Reseller administrator (or higher).
Choose the hierarchy for the new menu layout, for example, Customer.
Go to Menu Layouts.

Choose an option:

Create a new menu layout, based on settings in an existing menu layout

Recommended method.

Click on the menu layout you wish to copy. On the menu layout editing screen, click the toolbar Clone icon. A new record is created with pre-populated settings.

Go to the next step to edit settings for the clone to create a new, custom menu layout.

Create a new menu layout as a new record (without existing settings)

Click the toolbar Plus icon (+) to open the Menu Layouts/New Record page. Go to the next step to set up the new menu layout.

Edit an existing menu layout

Click on the menu layout you wish to edit, update its settings, then save your changes. Log out, then log in again to see your changes.

Note

You can click in a row to edit a value (either type in the field or select an option from a drop-down)
Rows with nested menu items or links contain a chevron (>) instead of a Plus icon (+) so that you can see which items have child lists.
An asterisk indicates required values.
For further details around menu configuration, see Menu layout settings.

At Menu Items, configure the main menus and sub-menus, as required
- To re-order menus, click on the hamburger icon and drag items to the required position.
- To add, clone, or delete rows for main menus and nested sub-menus, click the Plus icon, Clone icon, or Delete icon in the relevant row.
  
  Note
  
  Clicking the Delete icon in a row triggers a system message asking you to confirm that you want to remove the row. This allows you to review the change in case you clicked the Delete icon by mistake. Clicking the toolbar Save icon saves all changes to the menu layout you’re configuring.
- Add, clone, or delete sub-menus (click the Plus icon in the Menu Items column to display nested sub-menus).
- At Filters, configure fixed and configurable filters.
- At Icon, choose a menu icon (main menus only). See: Custom icon names reference.
- At Title, add or edit the menu title, and (optionally), provide a description.
- At Condition (optionally), fill out a condition to define when the menu will display.
- At Display As, choose an option to define how the menu or sub-menu will display. Options are: Form, List, External Link, or Dashboard.
  Note
  - The value for Display As must be Form when the value at Model Type is view.
  - The value for Display As must be Dashboard if you’re choosing a dashboard.
- At Type, choose the model type.
  
  Note
  
  When type is view (view/ModelType), the value in the Display As column must be Form.
- At Href, create internal or external links.
  Note
  - If Display As is set to External Link, the Href value should start with http.
  - If Display As is set to List, the internal Href value should start with /api/.
  - If you wish to provide a sorted list view of a model in a menu item, the Href internal href value can be entered with additional parameters to specify attribute and sort order. In this case, Display As should be selected as List, with the direction parameter to sort.
    
    For example, if Href is:
    /api/data/Countries/?order_by=iso_country_code;direction=desc
    the list view from the menu item of data/Countries will be sorted in descending order, by iso_country_code: ZIM, ZAF, VNM, USA, UKR,... and so on.
- At Field Display Policy, choose a field display policy, if required.
- At Configuration Template, choose a configuration template, if required.
- Select Set as default Model Type to define that when a user navigates to a form for that model from a location where any of the FDP, CFT, and title is not available, then the form will contain these elements configured as the default.
  Note
  
  If no default is set, or multiple defaults are set for FDP and CFT selection, the selection is random. Multiple defaults will also yield an error message in the browser console if the Browser Console Log Level is set to Debug (see: Guide to the Admin Portal user interface) The format of the message is:
  Multiple defaults configured for ... <model-type>
  It is therefore advisable to explicitly set the default and ensure that only one default is set.
- At Dashboard, you can instead choose an existing dashboard to associate with the menu item.
  Note
  - You can choose a dashboard for a main menu, sub-menu, or sub-sub-menu.
  - When setting a dashboard, the value in the Display As column must be Dashboard.
Click Save. Updated or new menu layouts are saved.
Assign the menu layout to the appropriate roles.

Menu layout settings#

This section describes menu layout configuration options:

Note

You can view, add, and edit menu layouts in the Admin Portal via the Menu Layouts page. See Add or edit a menu layout

Field	Description
Name	Mandatory. The menu layout name.
Description	A description of the menu layout.
Menu Items	This section displays the menus and sub-menus in an editable table layout.

Menu items#

The table describes configuration options the Menu Items rows on the Menu Layouts page:

Column	Description
Reorder	Click on the reorder icon (hamburger) in the relevant row to change the location of a menu.
Add, clone, or delete row	Click an icon to either add a row, clone (copy) a row, or to delete the row. Clicking the Delete icon in a row triggers a system message asking you to confirm that you want to remove the row. This allows you to review the change in case you clicked the Delete icon by mistake. Clicking the toolbar Save icon saves all changes to the menu layout you’re configuring.
Menu Items	Click the Plus icon to expand nested menus. Click the chevron to collapse expanded menus.
Filters	Click the filter icon in the relevant row to display a dialog where you can choose fixed and configurable filters for a menu item. Fixed filters cannot be removed. The following options are available for configurable filters: Filter By Filter Type Filter String
Icon	The icon to use for the menu item. Click in the cell to choose an icon. Icons display in the drop-down with a descriptive name.
Title	Click in the cell to add or edit the name (title) of a menu item.
Description	Click in the cell to add or edit the menu description.
Condition	Click in the cell to add or edit a macro that allows you to display/hide a menu and its sub-menus, based on a condition specified in the macro. If the macro evaluates to true, the menus and sub-menus display, else, when false, the menu and its sub-menus are hidden. The default is true (menus and sub-menus you add on this page display by default). See the Advanced Configuration Guide for more information about using macros.
Type	Click in the cell and choose a model type (for example, relation or view) to associate with the menu item. When type is `view` (`view/ModelType`), the value for Display As must be Form.

Column	Description
Href	Click in the cell to specify a path as a direct reference to a model type used for the menu item. Links can be external or internal. Hrefs are generally recommended for external links. For backwards compatibility, hrefs can be used for links within the application, to link directly to a form. For example, the Add Phone page would have the following href value: api/relation/SubscriberPhone/add In this case, you will need to use JSON format menu import, or bulk load, to add any associated FDPs (field display policies) and CFTs (configuration templates) for the menu item. It is recommended that you do not use hrefs to reference view/ type models.
Field Display Policy	Click in the cell to choose a FDP (field display policy) to associate with the menu.
Configuration Template	Click in the cell to choose a CFT (configuration template) to associate with the menu.
Set as default Model Type	If selected, the FDP, CFT and title is taken as default when navigating to this model from outside the menu.

Column

Description

Dashboard

Choose the dashbaord to display when clicking on a menu. Mandatory when the value for Display As is Dashboard.

Sub-menus and sub-sub-menus can be selected as dashboards. Individual dashboards do not have their own specific context-sensitive help.

Display As

Defines how the menu item displays.

Options are: List, Dashboard, Form, External Link, Tree

List (default)

For two or more instances. If you choose List, and you’ve selected a default FDP and CFT for the model type, users with a user role associated with the menu layout view the model type based on these options. It is also possible to filter the list view. If you choose List display referenced by type or href, note that a tool (tool/[toolname]) can also be presented as a list, for example: /api/tool/Transaction/?entity=data/Event&operation=execute
Dashboard

When Display As is dashboard, you must choose the dashboard to display when a user clicks on the menu item.
Form (for a single instance)

If you’re using href and you choose the Form display, the href value points to a model instance with the pkid, for example data/Countries/5331a739d0278d7893e26d2e, or ends with /add/. The value for Display As must be Form when the value for Type is view. The view/ model types always open the Add form; thus, if used, the value should not have the /add/ endpoint, for example, as in this JSON:

{
  "type": "view/QuickSubscriber",
  "display": "form",
  "title": "Quick Add Subscriber"
}

External Link

Href is required if the value for Display As is External Link. A URL specified as the href value opens as a new browser tab. You’ll need to disable pop-up blocking on the users browsers to allow the external link to resolve.
Tree (if available, for two or more instances)

Choosing a Tree display shows a tree view of the resource. When using href with Tree display, the href provides the tree path.

Custom icon names reference#

This reference refers to the icons associated with the Icon name drop-downs in the interface.

For details, see: https://fonts.google.com/icons

To associate the icon of the in the drop-down, inspect the icon titles on the website, remove the title hyphens and capitalize the first letter of each word.

Menu layouts

On this page

Menu layouts#

Overview#

Menu layouts, FDPs, and CFTs#

Fixed and configurable filters#

Default menu layouts#

Best practice menus#

Menu layouts for a Business Admin role#

Enhanced menu layouts and dashboards for multi vendor environments#

Add or edit a menu layout#

Menu layout settings#

Menu items#

Custom icon names reference#