Settings tab of the Section form

Use the Settings tab to configure a section as a work area, design template, dashboard layout or widget, or email template.

Standard section

This section type uses the standard settings for a section when you do not need to implement personalized dashboards.

  • Allow Section to be edited at run time – When you create a section from a template, select this option to allow run-time editing of the section.

  • Specify usage in page template regions – For a section that is in a @baseclass, data- class, or data-portal class, you also can specify the section's usage, such as Work area, Header, or Footer.

Workarea widget

Use this option to specify that a list of work area gadgets are available for the section during run-time editing.

Workarea layout

Select this option to mark the section as a work area. Sections marked as work areas can be edited at run time by Pega Express users who do not require the full section editing capabilities of Designer Studio.

For more information, see the article Run-time editing of sections in Pega Express.

Design template

Design templates provide predefined layouts that can be applied to any form to maintain consistency across an application. Dynamic layouts in design templates can be marked as regions and users can customize the regions for each form. Any updates to a design template automatically appear in all the sections or views using that template.

  • Template icon – Click the Gear icon to open the Image Catalog (a pop-up version of the Image Library landing page ) and select the image file. The recommended icon size is 200 x 200 px.

Dashboard layout

This type uses layout templates for personalization of dashboards. A template is a section that has been marked as a dashboard template; it can have any name and be defined in any class.

You can configure any section to be used as a template or widget inside a personalized dashboard.

  • A portal can have multiple dashboards
  • Each dashboard in the portal can be personalized by the user
  • The contents of each slot in the dashboard can be personalized

The Personalize dashboard button is visible to users who pass the conditions available in the when rule pxIsUserDashboardPersonalizeAllowed.

To include slots in a template, include the section pxUserDashboardSlot using the embedded page .pxUserDashboard.pySlots(x), where x represents the slot number.

When a user switches from a template with more slots to a template with fewer slots at run time, the additional slots will be moved to the last slot possible in the new template. When switching back to the original template, the additional slots will not have any gadgets contained within them.

Template data is stored as a record of System-User-Dashboard, which can be recalled later when you wish to view the dashboard again.

Users can select one of several pre-configured templates from within the portal and then populate the template's slots using a collection of default widgets.

  • Template title – Enter a title for your dashboard template.

  • Template icon – Click the Show Image Viewer icon to open the Image Catalog (a pop-up version of the Image Library landing page ). Select the image file you want to use. The recommended icon size is 100 x 100 px.

Dashboard widget

This type uses widgets for personalization and to define the run time widget configuration options of a widget.

You can classify any section, so you are not restricted to maintaining all widgets in one class. A set of configurable options can be associated to a widget using a flow action and you can define default templates with pre-configured widgets.

  • Widget title – Enter a title for your dashboard widget.

  • Widget description – Enter a description of your widget to display.

  • Category – Select a category for your widget.

  • Widget icon – Click the Show Image Viewer icon to open the Image Catalog (a pop-up version of the Image Library landing page ) and select the image file. The recommended icon size is 50 x 50 px.

  • Flow action class – To define the flow action to be used as the Property panel UI for the widget, select a class value for the widget or click the Open icon to create a new flow action class.

  • Flow action name – Select a name or click the Open icon to create a new flow action name.

Email template

You can select an icon for the email template.

  • Template icon – Click the Show Image Viewer icon to open the Image Catalog (a pop-up version of the Image Library landing page ) and select the image file.

For more information, see the article Designing a section by using design templates.