Administration Console: Understanding Task Items

Understanding Task Items

PeopleUpdate uses task items to allow you to gain the ultimately flexibility from the information in your Active Directory. Task items display on the left Task Nav bar in the PeopleUpdate Search Console and they empower you to create much more than just a single search interface for finding users. You can use task items to provide alternate search pages with different attributes, to link directly to a summary results page displaying a set of pre-configured results or to display a detailed results page for an object in your Active Directory.

Understanding Task Item Page Flows

Task items allow you to subdivide a tab’s pages into different page flows and each page flow can include a custom set of search, summary results, detailed results, edit and account management pages. Page flows may begin with any page and proceed in the following order. Page flows embody a concept that allows you to create powerful user interfaces tailored to your organization's needs. A page flow encapsulates the unique set of page types in PeopleUpdate and how these page types navigate, or flow, from one page type to another. This concept of pages flowing in an orderly manner is a key concept to understanding how PeopleUpdate works and learning how to configure it to most effectively search and manage your Active Directory data.

Page flows proceed from one page type to another and have one branch. Page flows may begin at any page and you can enable or disable navigation to previous and/or subsequent pages in the page flow. Examine the page flow order by page type below to better understand how PeopleUpdate uses the page flow concept and note the branch from the Detailed Results page type to the Edit and Account Management page types.

Search --> Summary Results --> Detailed Results --> Edit/Account Management

You can configure a task item to start at a certain page by hiding the pages before it and setting the start page load parameters that define the data the page displays when the task item loads. Use this capability to set a task item to load a summary results page that shows a list of all users in a certain department or to display a detailed results page that shows detailed information for the logged-in user’s manager.

You can hide pages in a page flow at the beginning or end of the page flow or you can use a combination of both. For example, you might hide the search page and load the summary results page for a task item. You could then hide the edit and account management pages, which would only allow the user to navigate to the detailed results page.

You can set up interesting task item behavior using a combination of showing certain pages in a page flow and setting up task item load arguments. See the individual task item topics for more information about customizing your configuration using task items.

Understanding Task Item Load Arguments

Through the use of page flows and task item load arguments, task items provide you a powerful mechanism to allow your users to interact with your Active Directory. You can adjust the pages of a page flow for a task item to determine which pages an end user can view, including the start and end page of a page flow. You can also set which data displays when a task item loads for all page types except the search page, allowing you to pre load data into a page when a user views a task item. This capability enables you to create summary reports, detailed object views, and even editable views of object data or account management functionality.

Task item load arguments encapsulate the data that instructs the initial page displaying in a page flow about which data to display. You may have noticed that almost all data that tells a PeopleUpdate what to display is stored in the URL of the page. The data stored in the URL is the key to determining how and what a page in the Search Console displays. When you set up task item load arguments, you are supplying the data the initial page of a page flow needs to display itself. You can use this capability to load a summary results page with a set of search results to load or to display data about a particular object in the directory. The arguments available to load data into allow you to store the initial state of a page you are loading into a task item.

Understanding Page Configuration

PeopleUpdate gives you granular controls over the page display for pages in a task item’s page flow. You can employ page flows in myriad ways to present information or allow customized editing capabilities to different user groups within your organization. Page configuration options allow you to show and hide pages within a page flow, assign an alias to a page that dictates what a user sees in the Search Console and set up advanced page configuration values for specialized pages.

Understanding Page Types and Layouts

PeopleUpdate uses page types to differentiate the different classes of pages available to you to build user interfaces that display in the Search Console. Each page type serves a specialized purpose and allows your users to interact with it in a specific manner. You can set the layout for each page type except the account management page to customize the Search Console for your environment.