Customizations, Personalizations and Layouts

I’ve been doing customizations for over 10 years and still don’t fully understand how to make the layouts of a customization be the default for that customization.

First off, is the layout a subset of a personalization?

I can change the size of a window, and then do a “Save layouts”. The next time the form loads, the window is sized to what it was when “Save layouts” was done. Save layouts also seems to remember the widths and orders of grid columns, as well as grid sorts.

But you need to enter personalization mode to show or hide columns in a grid.

When creating a new customization, you need to choose starting point. Your choices are:

  1. The base form, w/o any personalizations applied
  2. A customization, w/o any personalizations applied
  3. A customization, with a specific personalization applied
  4. The base form, with a specific personalization applied

image But you could also choose a specific Personalization for the form (base or customization), as your starting point.

Do the personalizations (#'s 3 or 4 in that pict), include both personalizations AND layouts?

When making a customization, I always start from the Base, or a Customization w/o any applied personalizations.

Say I want to make the first customization of the Order Entry form. This will add some UD fields and what not. The details of the customization aren’t important. In addition to the customization, want to reorder the columns in the Detail -> List grid, as well as changing which columns are hidden or shown.

Would the order be to:

  1. Personalize the Base form with the grid column reordering, and editing the grid’s collection.
  2. Do a “Save Layouts” then close the form.
  3. Enter developer mode, and launch Order Entry
  4. Select the Personalization of the base Form (#4 in my picture above)
  5. Enter customization mode, and save as a new customization.

Or should I:

  1. Enter developer mode, and launch Order Entry
  2. Select the base form (no personalization, #1 in pict above)
  3. Enter do any personalizations (reorder grid columns, and edit visibility in the grid collection )
  4. Save Layouts
  5. Enter customization mode, and save as a new customization.

Or something completely different?

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I had to adjust the “default” column layouts last year and IIRC Option B was the way to do it.

That said, I’m fighting today trying to do a customization of Supplier Entry (Vendor). I create it but when I go into menu maintenance it doesn’t show up. I’m still fighting customizations after 10 years myself. :wink:

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Two things to check.

  1. Make sure the “All companies” setting matches on the customization and the menu item.

  2. Newer versions of E10 don’t allow you to select a customization for the built-in menus. In 10.1.400 We could. And wehen we upgraded to 10.2.300, any of those built-in menus with a customization selected, were carried over. But in 10.2.300 I can’t select a customization (or change the Description) of built-in menu items.

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Calvin,
We are on 10.2.500 (Public Cloud) and we can apply customizations to built-in menus. The trick I learned, was that in Menu Maintenance you need to go to the menu item you want to apply the customization to then Actions, Copy To Current Company, then check All Companies (do the same to Copy Security to Current Company; and select All Companies on the Security tab) . It temporarily makes a copy, but when you are done, it replaces the built-in menu item with your customization.

I just tested deleting a UD menu item (that replaced a built-in menu item). When you do that (then log off and log back on) the built-in menu item shows back up.

Thank you all for this thread. I just started with a public cloud company implementing 10.2.600 and this was driving me nuts. I wasn’t sure if it was the version change or the cloud change, just knew I couldn’t do something I had done lots of times previously on premise in other versions.

I am visiting here because I am struggling with this, also. I believe your second choice is what I’ve found to be successful for applying “personalizations” to customizations.

That said, is there a good way to roll out a customization and not wipe everyone’s individual personalizations? We were creating a new name for each customization and it was like starting from scratch each time we made a new one. However, more recently we started saving the new customization as the same name as the previous, and just archived each version in a directory. But that seems to make bugs. Is there a best practice for this? Are the users just screwed and will have to update personalizations anytime a new customization is incorporated?

Based on my experiences…

When layouts are saved in developer mode, these will apply the changes to the layer you are on and not as a personalization. So if you want to modify how the form looks with your customization, make those layout changes and save. If there is not a customization layer, I believe you would have to create one otherwise it is likely just a personalization.

For the most part, personalizations are considered disposable. If you want everyone to use your new layouts with existing ones, you can make it as a new customization layer or wipe out the existing personalizations.