Creating file menus

A file menu displays a formatted character menu by referencing an external plain text file. The file can reside on the client or the server and can be updated at any time. After you update the file, the changes are automatically applied when the menu is refreshed.

Before you begin

Before you create a file menu, create a plain text (.txt) file that contains a formatted menu structure to use with the file menu. (You cannot use MS Word (.doc) or Rich Text Format (.rtf) files as menu files.)

Each line in the file contains a definition of a menu item in this format:

<label>\<value>

where:
label is the text that appears on the menu. A label can have a maximum of 80 characters.
value is the text that is entered into the character field when users select the menu item. A value can have a maximum of 255 bytes. 

To create subitems, use tabs (not spaces). Omit the value for any label that has subitems. The following example shows a formatted menu structure with three main items, two of which have subitems:

Consulting Services\Consulting Services
Training
   Administrator\Administrator Training
  User\User Training
Support
   Standard\Standard Support
   Priority\Priority Support

You can create as many as 15 levels of menus (including the top level). To enhance usability, use as few levels as possible.  A parent item can have as many as 99 sub-items. 

If you insert a pound sign (#) at the beginning of a line of text, the text that follows the pound sign is ignored.

A menu file for a Unicode system must use the encoding used by that system. A menu file stored on a Unicode AR System server must be a UTF-8-encoded text file without the byte-order mark. You can prepare a text file with a Unicode text editor and then remove the first three bytes (hexadecimal EF BB BF) using a byte editor.

To create a file menu

  1. In Remedy Developer Studio, select File > New > File Menu.
  2. Select the server on which to create the menu, and click Finish.
     A new file menu appears as shown in the following figure.
    new_file_menu.gif
  3. In the Refresh list, select the appropriate refresh mode.
     See Setting-a-refresh-mode-for-menus.
  4. In the Location list, select the location of the file that contains the menu definition:
    • Server — File is on the computer where the AR System server is running.
  5. In the File Name field, enter or browse for the path and name of the plain text file that contains the menu definition.
     To format this file, see Before you begin above.
  6. (Optional) Modify the menu's change history.
     See Updating-the-change-history-of-fields-forms-or-objects.
  7. (Optional) Add Help text to the menu.
     See Creating-help-for-applications.
  8. Select File > Save.
  9. In the Save Menu As dialog box, enter a name for the menu, and click OK.
     Menu names must be unique on each AR System server.
     Names can have as many as 80 characters, including spaces. Names can include double-byte characters, but avoid using numbers at the beginning of the name.
  10. Attach the menu to any character field in any form.
     See Creating-common-data-fields and Menu Name.

To create a dynamic file menu

Instead of hard-coding a file menu's data source, you can specify that the source be dynamically selected at run time according to values that a user or workflow enters in specified fields. Unlike a file menu that is created in a text file, a dynamic menu is created in a field.

  1. In Remedy Developer Studio, select File > New > File Menu.
  2. Select the server on which to create the menu, and click Finish.
  3. In the Refresh list, select the On Open refresh mode.
    See Setting-a-refresh-mode-for-menus.
  4. In the Location list, select Client.
  5. In the File Name field, enter the path and field ID of the field where you want to create the dynamic menu. For example: arfield://FieldID.
    FieldID is the field ID of the field.
  6. Go to step 6 in To create a file menu above and perform the remaining steps in that procedure.