Creating a Role Center Headline
You can set up a Role Center to display a series of headline texts that appear one by one for a predefined period of time.
The headlines can provide users with up-to-date information and insight into the business and daily work. Typical categories of headlines might include:
- My performance
- My workday
- Organizational health
- Productivity tips
- Cross-tenant insights (performance relative to peers)
- Getting started information
Important
Headlines will only appear in the Web client; they will not be shown on other client types.
Note
Headlines can display numbers and letters only. For example, headlines cannot display images.
Design concept
In development
In short, the Headline is basically a page that contains one or more fields. The page must be the HeadlinePart type page. Each field defines an individual headline to be displayed. The source for a field can be an expression or a field in an underlying table.
The HeadlinePart page is designed for Role Centers, that is, pages that have the type RoleCenter. If you use a HeadlinePart page on another page type, the part will not render in the client.
Using the OnDrillDown trigger, headlines can be made interactive, meaning that users can select the headline to dig deeper into numbers or values that are shown in the headline or link to another page or URL.
You can dynamically toggle visibility of a specific headline, for example based on its relevancy, by setting the Visible property on the field.
There are only a few field properties that apply to fields that are used on a HeadlinePart type page, including Expression, Visible, ApplicationArea, Drilldown, and DrillDownPageID. All other properties are ignored.
In the client
The Role Center will start by displaying the first visible headline that is defined on the HeadlinePart page. The headline will appear for 5 seconds, then the next headline will appear for 5 seconds, and so on. When all the headlines have been displayed, it will cycle back to the first headline, and continue from there.
If a headline is interactive, users can select the headline to open the target defined in the headline.
Users can pause on a headline by pointing to it.
Users can manually switch among headlines by selecting a corresponding dot that is displayed under the headlines.
Users can personalize their Role Center to show or hide the Headline part as they like.
Creating a HeadlinePart page
Implement the logic that resolves field expressions for the headlines that you will use on the page.
You can apply more flexible and complex patterns, such as having data tables drive the text, drill-down and relevance engine for headlines.
Create a page that has the PageType property set to
HeadlinePart
.For each headline, add a field, and set the Expression property. The order of the fields, determines the order in which they appear.
The following example shows the AL code for a simple HeadlinePart page that consists of four fields that display static text.
page 50100 RoleCenterHeadline { PageType = HeadLinePart; layout { area(content) { field(Headline1; hdl1Txt) { } field(Headline2; hdl2Txt) { } field(Headline3; hdl3Txt) { } field(Headline4; hdl4Txt) { } } } var hdl1Txt: Label 'This is headline 1'; hdl2Txt: Label 'This is headline 2'; hdl3Txt: Label 'This is headline 3'; hdl4Txt: Label 'This is headline 4'; }
You can now add the HeadlinePart page to the RoleCenter page.
Constructing Headlines with the Expression property
The Expression
property supports the following syntax that enables you to specify a title for the headline, the headline text itself, and emphasize a string of text in the headline:
'<qualifier>Title</qualifier><payload>This is the <emphasize>Headline</emphasize>.</payload>'
Tag | Description |
---|---|
<qualifier></qualifier> |
Specifies the title that appears above the headline. If you omit this tag, the text HEADLINE will be used by default. |
<payload></payload> |
Specifies the actual headline text. |
<emphasize></emphasize> |
Applies the style to the text. |
The Expression
property must evaluate to the correct syntax. For example, looking back at the previous example, the label hdl1Txt
could be:
hdl1Txt: Label '<qualifier>The first headline</qualifier><payload>This is the <emphasize>Headline 1</emphasize>.</payload>';
Making headlines interactive
You can use the OnDrillDown trigger of a headline field to link the headline to more details or relevant information about what is shown in the headlines. For example, if the headline announced the largest sales order for the month, you could set up the headline to open a page that shows a sorted list of sales order for the month.
The following code uses the OnDrillDown trigger to link Headline1
to the Dynamics 365 online help.
field(Headline1; hdl1Txt)
{
trigger OnDrillDown()
var
DrillDownURLTxt: Label 'https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=867580', Locked = True;
begin
Hyperlink(DrillDownURLTxt)
end;
}
Changing the visibility of headlines
You can use the Visible property to show or hide headlines that are defined on the HeadlinePart page. With the Visible
property, you can show or hide the control either statically by setting the property to true or false, or dynamically by using a Boolean
variable.
Static visibility
With static visibility, you can simply set the Visible
property on specific fields. For example, following code hides Headline3
:
{
field(Headline1; hdl1Txt)
{
}
field(Headline2; hdl2Txt)
{
}
field(Headline3; hdl3Txt)
{
Visible=false;
}
field(Headline4; hdl4Txt)
{
}
}
By adding fields under Group
controls, you can hide or show more than one headline by setting the Visible
property on the Group
control. For example, the following code hides headings Headline3
and Headline4
:
group(Group1)
{
field(Headline1; hdl1Txt)
{
}
field(Headline2; hdl2Txt)
{
}
}
group(Group2)
{
Visible=false;
field(Headline3; hdl3Txt)
{
}
field(Headline4; hdl4Txt)
{
}
}
Important
Unlike other page types, the group
control has no effect on the UI on pages of type HeadlinePart. Its primary purpose is to enable developers to group headlines for controlling visibility.
Dynamic visibility
With dynamic visibility, you can show or hide a headline based on a condition that evaluates to true
or false
.
To dynamically show or hide a headline when the HeadlinePart page opens, the headline field must be in
group
control, and you set theVisible
property on thegroup
control to theBoolean
variable that determines the visibility. For example, you could add code on the page'sOnAfterGetRecord
trigger that evaluates the relevance of displayingHeadline3
and results in aBoolean
variable being set totrue
orfalse
.To dynamically show or hide a headline while a page is open, you set the
Visible
property on thefield
control to theBoolean
variable that determines the visibility.
group(Group1)
{
field(Headline1; hdl1Txt)
{
}
field(Headline2; hdl2Txt)
{
}
}
group(Group2)
{
// Determines visibility when the page opens
Visible=ShowHeadline3;
field(Headline3; hdl3Txt)
{
// Determines visibility while the page is open
Visible=ShowHeadline3;
}
field(Headline4; hdl4Txt)
{
}
}