Customizing the Home View

GroupWise 7 supports a new Home view. You can customize it so that it contains just the information you need. Figure 11.19 shows an example of a customized Home view that displays unread items, a summary calendar, and items that need to be followed up. This view allows you to easily see email that you need to read, items you need to follow up for the day, as well as your appointments from today through the next few days. You define the number of days; the default is 15.

Figure 11.19. The Home tab allows you to see all your relevant GroupWise information from one location.

When you're working with the Home view, it is important to understand a new GroupWise 7 concept called panels. You can think of panels as areas that display any content that can be viewed through GroupWise. You could see all unread email in a panel, or all appointments, tasks, and notes for one day in a panel. Panels are extremely powerful and provide great flexibility. If you have ever wished that you could see data in a different view or have different types of data all displayed through one interface, panels are the answer. The great thing about panels is that you can place as many as practical in the Home view. This makes the Home view function the one place where you can pull all sorts of information together into one main window.

The first time you access the Home view, you see an introductory page that explains what the panel is and how you can customize it. From this page, you can go directly to the Home view or choose never to show this help screen again.

The Home view uses panels to display various content within GroupWise. This customizable feature allows you to place any content that the GroupWise client can display into it. You can drag and drop the various panels to different locations, allowing you to arrange the content in the order that best suits your needs. To drag a panel, simply click on the panel header and drag it to the desired location. You can also resize panels by holding the mouse over the border until your mouse cursor turns to a double line. Click and drag the panel size to the desired width or height; then release the mouse button.

The simplest way to add panels to the Home view is to click on the down arrow in the upper-right corner of any panel. Figure 11.19 highlights the arrows that you can use to customize the Home view. When you click one of these arrows, you have the following options:

• Maximize This option maximizes the current panel to full screen. When a panel is maximized and you are able to click on its down arrow again, you can access a restore option, which places the panel back to its normal size. This option allows you to quickly enlarge a selected panel and then restore it to the original size again.

• Edit This option takes you into an edit mode for the selected panel. From this interface, you can modify any of the aspects of a particular panel. For example, you can modify how content is displayed in a panel and how the information is presented inside the panel. The edit interface is very powerful, allowing you to place any GroupWise content inside a panel.

• Close This option removes a panel from the Home view. It does not delete the panel but simply removes it. You can add the panel back later if you want.

• Add Panel This option enables you to add an existing panel to the Home view. You can then drag the panel to the location you desire. From the Add panel interface, you can also create new panels that have descriptive names for what they will contain. This feature allows you to have a collection of panels that pull display information out of GroupWise in the Home view.

• One Column This option shows all panels stacked vertically. You can place as many panels into this One Column view as desired.

• Two Column This option shows two columns each, allowing you to place any number of panels in the column. This view is recommended because it allows you to divide the screen in more ways.

To manage all your various panels from one interface, you can use the Customize Panels interface. You access this utility by right-clicking the Home tab and selecting Properties. Next, select the Display tab. From here, you can click on the Customize Panels button. Figure 11.20 displays the Customize Panels interface.

Figure 11.20. The Customize Panels interface allows you to manage all your panels from one interface.

The Customize Panels interface provides a central interface into your Home panel. From here, you can delete, modify, or create panels; modify the layout of the Home view; and adjust the arrangement of the panels. The Available Panels column lists all the defined panels you can add to the Home view. GroupWise 7 includes several predefined panels that help pull common information together for you.

Creating custom panels is one of the most powerful features of the GroupWise 7 client. When you create a panel, you can pull information and filter it inside the panel so that you can see exactly what you need within a panel. Figure 11.21 displays the new Create Panel interface.

Figure 11.21. The new Create Panel interface.

The components of the new Create Panel interface are as follows:

• Name the New Panel Here, you provide a descriptive name of what content the panel will display.

• Choose Folder or Address Book In this section, you define what content will be presented in the new panel. You can select any existing GroupWise folder or address book.

• Choose Display Settings This drop-down list enables you to define how the contents inside the panel will be displayed. You can choose Details, Calendar, Checklist, or Discussion thread.

• More Display Settings This button displays additional display options that you can define for the panel. This interface provides all display options that are available and is a powerful feature, allowing you great flexibility as to how the content is displayed.

• Choose Filter This button displays the GroupWise Filter dialog box. They are the same filter options that you can define in other places for GroupWise. You could use the filter options to see only the desired content in a panel.