This section describes the design and building of menu structures for traditional application systems. If you are designing an action bar driven system you should still read this section (from a different perspective), because action bars are often initially invoked from menus.
Once the entire application system has been broken down into a series of processes and functions it is possible to consider how its online components will be fitted together into a menu structure (assuming that you intend to use LANSA to build your menus).
Using the example application system described in the previous section, we can visualize it as a series of independently accessible menus as follows:
CUSWRK CUSREP ORDWRK
| | |
------------ ---------- --------|----------
| | | | | | |
CUS001 CUS002 CUS003 CUS004 ORD001 ORD002 ORD003
¨ PROWRK PROREP TABWRK
| | |
| ---------- ----------
| | | | |
PRO0001 PRO002 PRO003 TBL001 TBL002
However, taking it one step further, by using the "process attachment" capability of LANSA (described in Other Processes on the Process Menu in the LANSA for i User Guide), we can quickly create a generalized "menu" (actually a new process called SYSMNU) for end users of this system. This could be visualized like this:
SYSMNU
|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| | | | |
CUSWRK | CUSREP | ORDWRK
| | | | |
----------- | ------------ | ------------|-----------
| | | | | | | | |
CUS001 CUS002 | CUS003 CUS004 | ORD001 ORD002 ORD003
| |
| |
PROWRK PROREP
| |
| ----------
| | |
PRO0001 PRO002 PRO003
One step further still, and a "tailored menu" can be created, say, for the accounting department. This "tailored menu" is actually another process called ACCMNU, and it can be visualized as follows:
ACCMNU
|
-------------------------------------------------------------------
| | | | |
CUSWRK CUS0003 PRO001 | ORDWRK
| | |
----------- PROREP -----------
| | | | |
CUS001 CUS002 ----------- ORD001 ORD002
| |
PRO002 PRO003
The MAIN POINT of the above exercise is that the grouping of functions into processes at design time need not have anything at all to do with their final organization within the complete application system.