In the RoleTailored client for Microsoft Dynamics NAV, actions are displayed at the top of each page in the ribbon or in the navigation pane. In this topic, you learn about different types of actions, and how you can enable users to quickly locate the actions they want to use.
Pages can have the following actions.
| Types of actions | Used on | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
Actions | Role Center, list, card, and task pages | User tasks | Post a sales order |
Navigate | List, card, and task pages | Links to other pages in Microsoft Dynamics NAV. | Prices |
Reports | Role Center, list, card, and task pages | A list of available reports. | Customer Top 10 List |
New | List, card, Role Center pages, and task pages | Actions that appear under the New group. Opens a new Microsoft Dynamics NAV document. | New sales invoice |
Promoted Actions | List, card, Role Center pages, and task pages | Provide quick access to common tasks that appear under the Home tab. | Post and print a sales order |
Home Items | Role Center pages | Menu items on the Role Center navigation pane. | Customers |
Activity Buttons | Role Center pages | Menu buttons for a secondary activity, such as posted documents. | Posted sales invoices |
 Caution |
|---|
| If you change an object, for example, an action to an action container, you must also change the ID of the action. The ID serves as a reference, and must reflect the object. |
Each page has a different set of actions depending on the page type, and the processes that the page supports. In order to create the appropriate set of actions for a particular page, you should have a good understanding of your customer's business processes.
Each process in an organization has several actions associated with it. You should try to create a full set of actions that mirror all tasks and processes that are performed.
Example: The Sales Orders list page at CRONUS International contains all actions related to processing sales orders. During user configuration and personalization, some of these actions may be hidden or promoted to the ribbon. Therefore, you must create a full set of actions for the customer.
Types of Actions
The following sections describe actions available in the RoleTailored client.
Actions
The Actions tab is displayed in the ribbon on all page types, and contains relevant tasks for the current page. Some examples from the Customer page are as follows:
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Sales Invoice
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Sales Quote
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Sales Credit Memo
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Ledger Entries
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Invoice Discounts
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Prices
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Line Discounts
They are regular daily tasks. Therefore, they must be on the Actions menu, and promoted to the ribbon.
You can add actions to the Actions menu, group actions together under action submenus, or promote them to the ribbon. You cannot create submenus or promote actions on a Role Center page.
Navigate
The Navigate tab is displayed after Actions in the ribbon. Rather than providing tasks for the user, this tab provides additional information by taking the user to a specific page in Microsoft Dynamics NAV.
 Note |
|---|
| You should not add a Navigate action to a Role Center page. |
Report
The Reports tab is displayed after the Navigate tab on the ribbon. The Reports tab lists the reports most relevant to a page. If a user does not require a Reports tab, then the tab is hidden. Sometimes it is relevant to promote the most important reports to the Home tab to save the user from too many clicks.
New Document
The New action is often displayed both in the Home tab and in the Actions tab. You can use this action to open new documents within Microsoft Dynamics NAV. When you create a New action in Action Designer, you must use the NewDocumentItems SubType.
Example: On the Customers page, if the order processor wants to create a new invoice, she can open the New page directly from the Actions tab. This is useful as she creates new sales invoices daily.
Home Items
Home Items are actions displayed on the Home tab, on the Role Center navigation pane. This navigation has a tree structure, and each node in the tree links to a list page.
The user Role Center is like a home page, and home items in the navigation pane are links to the user’s most useful list pages.
Activity Buttons
If there are too many Home items to fit on the Role Center without scrolling, then activity buttons can be used to group other important processes together.
Example: The Order Processor Role Center could have activity buttons called Approving Web Orders, or Sales Forecasting. These are secondary activities for the order processor, so they do not have to be included under the Home button.
Each activity button has its own navigation pane, with links to list pages and can be configured just like the user Role Center.
Promoted Actions
Promoted actions are existing actions in the Actions, Navigate, or Reports tabs that are also displayed in the Home tab in the ribbon. In RoleTailored client, the Home tab is always displayed first.
Promoted actions provide quick access to common tasks, because users do not have to browse through a menu to access them. You can promote any command from the existing actions menus to the ribbon. If there are no promoted actions, the ribbon remains hidden.
Promoted actions can be put into one of the following groups:
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New
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Process
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Reports
Each promoted action has an icon associated with it. You can accept a default icon for your promoted action or decide to use a larger icon that makes it more prominent to the user. Use the Properties window in the Action Designer to set the size and location of an icon.
Example: On the Sales Orders list page, Post is promoted to the ribbon, and included in the Process group. This helps the order processor in her work, because posting sales orders is one of her most important daily tasks.