ApplinX Version 9.9
 —  Designing and Developing an Application  —

Application Map

The Application Map view displays thumbnails of the application screens which the user navigated through, while working with the application. ApplinX saves the navigation through these screens including the steps between each screen such as the action key pressed and the fields sent. The application map can be used in Path Procedures and from the Base Object/Web framework, to navigate to a specific screen, using the NavigateTo method.

This section details:


Creating Steps

Steps can be created automatically from within the Session View when working online or offline, and also via a wizard, using a number of trace files. Steps can also be added manually in the Steps tab of the Screen editor. To automatically add steps as you navigate, you must first enable recording the navigation steps. To perform the identification of steps based on a trace file, use the Automatically Identifying Application Map Steps wizard, and all the steps in the trace file will be identified. Each of these tasks are detailed below.

Note:
Steps can only be added to identified screens.

Note:
When working with an online session, the steps (i.e action keys pressed) between each screen, are the actual keys you press. When working with a trace file, the steps (i.e action keys pressed) between each screen, are the steps recorded within the trace file.

Recording Navigation Steps from within the Session View

Start of instruction setTo Record Navigation Steps

  1. Recording navigation steps is enabled by default. To change this setting, right-click on an application and select Properties.

    In the Navigation tab, select the check box which enables/disables recording the navigation steps.

  2. Connect to a session and start navigating. ApplinX will automatically add the new steps.

Note:
When running an offline session, you can just navigate by pressing the ENTER key. The actual steps which were recorded are added.

Automatically Identifying Application Map Steps using Trace Files (GCT)

Automatically identify steps by running the Automatically Identify Screens/Steps using Trace Files wizard.

Note:
This wizard, is also used to automatically identify screens. If your application includes unknown screens which you would like to be displayed in the map, you must identify these screens either manually, or automatically (using this wizard), after first creating a Screen Creation Definition within a Screen Group.

Start of instruction setTo automatically identify steps using trace files:

  1. Right-click on the relevant application, and select Automatically Identify Screens/Steps using Trace Files.... The wizard is displayed.

    graphics/autoidentifyscreens.png

  2. Select whether to analyze files or a folder. Locate the files/folder.

  3. Select the Capture screen navigation map steps check box.

    You can automatically identify screens using this wizard by selecting Automatically identify screens. Refer to Automatically Identify Screens using Trace Files (GCT) for further details.

  4. Click Finish.

The Console area in the Designer displays the outcome of the process.

Manually Identifying Application Map Steps

In the Steps tab of the Screen editor, it is possible to manually define additional steps between screens that already exist in the application map. The steps should be defined in the source screen and determine the destination screen of the step. It is possible to add a simple step between screens or to add an inner path step which executes a path. When you add a simple step, determine the target screen, the key to be sent, and the relevant inputs. When defining an inner path, select the path. Change the status of the step using the links (Approve, Set to Pending, Set to Not Approved). Once you save the new steps, you can check these navigation definitions in the Session View using the Application Map toolbar. Simply select the screen you want to navigate to and click on the Go icon to attempt to navigate to that screen.

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The Application Map View

Within the Application Map view, you can perform a number of actions:

View Step Information

Display a tooltip with the step information including the key pressed and the information sent. Just hover over the arrow and the tooltip is displayed.

Zoom-in

Change the zoom level of the view. Right click anywhere within the map and select the view zoom.

When moving the mouse over a specific screen image (and the current display is not 100%), the screen image will be enlarged.

Viewing Steps of a Specific Status

The Application Map view displays the steps in different colors to indicate the status of each step: green indicates approved, yellow - pending and red - not approved.

Clicking on the Approved, Pending and Not Approved icons in the toolbar, it is possible to display only the steps of the selected status.

Changing the Steps' Status

Right click on the desired step/arrow and select a status to make changes to the step's status. Using the Control key, select a number of steps/arrows and make status changes to all of these steps.

Link with Entity

The Application Map can either display the whole application map or focus on the entity selected in the Explorer tree and only display the screens related to the selected entity. The radius of related screens can be determined by scrolling to the relevant number in the toolbar. Enable this feature by clicking on the Link with Entity icon graphics/synced.gif, and then selecting the radius of screens to be displayed by clicking on the arrows, or entering a number graphics/linkradius.png.

Lock/Unlock view

The view displaying the map can be set to change dynamically, as events occur, (e.g., newly created screens are displayed in the map view) or it can be set to preserve the current view (Lock icon graphics/padlockClosed.gif on the session toolbar).

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Approving Steps

In the Session view, navigate through the screens. In the Application Map view, thumbnails are created for all the identified screens through which you have navigated. Arrows between the screens indicate the direction of the navigation. These arrows are, by default, in "Pending" status (colored in yellow). This is because, you do not always want users to enable users to navigate to all the screens (i.e. you do not want users to be able to navigate to the login page where usernames and passwords appear). In order to use the application map with a Path Procedure, the status of the navigation route must be set to "Approved" (green).You can choose to display or hide all screens that have steps of a certain status (pending, approved or not approved) by clicking on the appropriate icons in the map view.

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Testing the Application Map

The screen navigation defined in the Application Map can be tested to ensure that the navigation behavior is as expected. This is done in the Session View (online), using the Application Map toolbar. The toolbar enables selecting a screen to which you expect to be able to navigate to from the current screen and then attempting to navigate to this screen. If the Application Map is correctly defined, then ApplinX will successfully navigate to the selected screen. If the Application Map does not have the relevant steps defined to reach the screen you selected, a pop-up message will inform you of this.

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Troubleshooting

An individual screen thumbnail within the Application Map can indicate problems or incompatibility between the defined identifiers and the screen image attached to the screen. Such problems are indicated by a red frame around the specific screen.

Possible problems:

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