Manage menu groups
Menu groups are a way of categorizing objects into your own desired menu navigation. If you only have a few objects, this doesn't really matter much and you can use the default groups. But when the number of your objects are growing, it is better to create additional groups (and assign your objects to those groups) to ensure that menus and selection lists are easy to navigate.
You can also watch the tutorial video.
Create groups
You can create a menu group in two ways (watch the tutorial video):
- Click on Define - New in the sidebar menu, or click the New button in the top of the screen.
- Click on the Actions - Create new button of an existing group. This also enables you to make a copy of an existing group.
Either way, the rest of the process is the same, and you can enter a name for your new group and define its settings:
This page also shows all objects that have been assigned to this group.
Settings
You can define the settings for the group via these fields:
- Name - enter a name. This must be unique within all your groups.
- Menu - enter an (optional) menu name where objects in this group will be shown in the menu navigation. Enter the menu name, or press arrow-down for a dropdown list of existing menu names.
- Active/locked - activate or lock a group. When locked, all objects belonging to this group are hidden in the menu navigation, and therefore disabled.
- Used by - define which type of objects can be assigned to this group.
- Description - enter an (optional) description. This is helpful to document your various groups.
- Color - assign a color to every group, which changes the page header color.
Menu
XLReporting enables you to create your own menu navigation to run reports and models, and import data. You can create menu names that mimic your own business processes, and create groups under each menu to show your reports, models, and imports in logical order. You can also define a sort order for all groups and objects.
This field defines where objects in this group will be shown in the menu navigation, optionally suffixed with :icon. Please note you can not use reserved names in the menu, such as "Dashboard", "Define", "Manage", "Support". You can optionally enter an icon to be shown in the menu navigation, by entering : icon behind the menu name. You can choose icons from Fontawesome icons. For example: "Reports: star".
The menu is optional. If you don't configure menus and groups, the items will be shown in the same menu navigation as under Define:
- Run reports
- Run models
- Import data
- Edit data
Used by
This field defines which type of objects can be assigned to a group. For example, you can create user groups, report groups, data set groups etc. This enables you to set up a structure for your objects that is easy to understand and navigate.
You can select which type of objects can be assigned to this group:
- Data set
- Import
- Report
- Model
- User
- User role
Sort
You can define an (optional) sort order (1-9999) that determines how this group is displayed in the menu. This also applies to the sorting of menu items in the Menu. If you leave this blank, the menus and groups are ordered alphabetically.
The easiest way to ensure that menu items, and the groups within each menu, are sorted properly is to reserve a range of numbers for each menu, and number the individual groups within that menu accordingly. For example, reserve 1-10 for groups in the 1st menu, 11-20 for groups in the 2nd menu. That way you can define the exact sort order.
Color
You can assign a color to every group, which changes the page header color on all items that belong to that group. This makes user navigation more intuitive.
Actions
When defining a group, you can use the Save and Actions buttons in the right-top of the screen:
These buttons enable you to do the following:
- Save - save your changes (or Ctrl+S)
- Actions - open a dropdown menu with further options:
- Create a new group (or copy one)
- Delete this group
- Export data or print