Legacy version 6 documentation. View current documentation.Legacy version 6 documentation. View current documentation.
On the Manage apps screen you can see what apps you have available for your smart desktop. All the apps are listed in the lower part of the screen. You can also add, delete, or edit apps on this screen. Finally, you can launch an app from this screen by clicking it.
To add an app, click + Add. To add a web app, specify its URL. To add a native app, you need to locate it on your computer. Click Browse and navigate to the app. You can also drag a native app onto the Manage apps screen.
If you have an icon that you want to use for this app, add the icon location in the Icon URL field.
Note: At this time, Finsemble supports only icon URLs, and not icon files you might have on your computer.
Click Save when done.
Note: Finsemble supports native apps for Windows only.
To remove an app, click the waste basket icon associated with it. There is no way to undo this operation, so if you accidentally removed an app you didn't mean to, you need to add it again.
To edit an app, find it in the list and click the Edit icon. (Don't click the app itself, as this will launch it rather than allowing you to edit it.) The Edit app screen that appears has two parts. The top part describes the basics about the app, including its name, location, the location of the icon associated with the app, and the description. You can also see whether the app is web or native, but you can't change the app from one type to another by simply changing this field here.
In the lower part of the screen you have some optional config settings. Click the down arrow to see what settings are available. Some of these options might be more advanced than you're comfortable with. That's fine. You don't need to set them for your smart desktop to be useful. Other options help you finetune the appearance of your smart desktop. For example, you can specify exactly where the app initially appears.
Let's look at these configs in turn.
Set this property to specify trust relationships between components. If you don't specify any such relationship, your app or component trusts everyone. In many cases this is exactly what you need. If you want your app to trust only some specific apps, find those apps in the list and select them.
Learn more about trust relationships and selectConnect.
By default, Finsemble selects the location for your app window. If you want this window to appear in some other location, you can specify the details here.
You can specify the exact dimensions of the window on startup, in pixels. The user can change these dimensions unless you explicitly stop them from doing so. You can force the window to maintain the same height to width ratio by clicking Lock dimensions.
You have some control over where the window will appear. You can't specify this precisely, but you can select a position on the screen. Think of the screen as divided into 9 rectangles. You can specify the rectangle in which the window will appear. The user can move it around later. If you don't specify the position, Finsemble will decide where it goes. The most likely position is upper left. If you have multiple windows, Finsemble staggers them so it's clear there is more than one window.
The last option you have here is opacity, expressed as a percentage. And so, 100 means the window will completely obscure its background, while 0 makes the window invisible. Don't make windows invisible unless you're absolutely sure this is what you want.
If an app has multiple windows, or if a user opens multiple instances of the app, each window will initially look the same and appear in the same spot until the user moves or resizes it. Be aware that this can make it look like there is only one window.
In this section you define how the window behaves with respect to other elements on the smart desktop. Finsemble can manage many behaviors, such as auto arrange, docking, snapping, and so on. If you don't want Finsemble to manage the app window in this way, or if you want to disable some behaviors, clear the appropriate boxes.
For some apps it isn't necessary to display their title bar. You can remove the title bar by clearing the Show title bar checkbox.
Sometimes you might want to make sure the user does something first. To nudge the user toward this, you can make the window always on top. It will remain there until the user closes it. This is useful if you want a user to read about the changes to their desktop, for example.
Finally, you have full control over minimizing, maximizing, and closing the window.
Apps on your smart desktop communicate by using the FDC3 protocol. If you want your app to listen for and react to a specific intent, you can set it up here. All you need to do is specify the name of the intent to listen to, such as ViewChart, a display name for the app, such as Chart Viewer, and the FDC3 context to listen to, such as fdc3.instrument. The display name is mostly used in the Resolver, when there are several apps that could process the intent, and a user needs to pick the one they want.
Learn more about interop.
This section allows you to specify how the component behaves. The first thing you can decide is whether the component is trusted. Trusted components can do more. For example, they can run a preload. Untrusted components are more limited by design, so your smart desktop is more secure. For this reason, when you specify that a component is trusted, make sure that it deserves this designation.
In addition, you have other options to specify. You can limit the users to only one instance of the component. If you don't specify this option, a user can of course open as many instances as they want.
Some components are needed at the very beginning, when Finsemble starts. You can make sure they're available by specifying Launch at startup. It's a good practice to not use this option unless you really need it.
If you want your user to be able to launch a component, you can make it easier on them by adding it to the Apps menu on the Finsemble toolbar.
Finally, when a user switches from one workspace to another, the apps in the workspace the user left usually shut down. But some native apps are huge and take a long time to launch, and if a user switches back, they will have to wait. To speed things up, you can prevent the app from having to relaunch. Instead, you can persist the app across workspaces. The persisted app stays in the background, ready immediately the moment the user comes back to the workspace that contains it.
Your app is added to a workspace, unless you explicitly specify that you don't want it there. There are advantages to the app being in a workspace. For example, if a user moves away from the workspace and then comes back, Finsemble will open all the apps in the workspace. If your app isn't a part of the workspace and the user needs it each time, they will have to launch it themselves.
When an app first launches, it will start from the default URL if it's a web app, or from the default path if it's native. As a user works on such apps, their state can change. In other words, a user can navigate to another URL within the app. When the user exits the workspace and comes back later, the app goes back to its default starting point. If this is not the behavior you want, you can persist the location.
Introduction to Smart Desktop Designer