How to use the "Screen Tour" feature

The “Screen Tour” feature allows configurators to add explanation to the elements of a form, query or visual perspective, so that the user can understand the screen better. The explanation of the element is displayed to the user at the bottom of the screen with the marker pointing to the element of the screen being displayed. The user can jump between the elements of the screen and Aware IM automatically scrolls to the element being explained and displays the marker for the element. This section explains how a configurator can add tours to forms, queries and visual perspectives.

Adding tours to forms and queries is reasonably straightforward. Before you add a tour you need to assign unique “id’s” to the elements that you want to mark on a form or a query. You will then refer to these id’s when you define a tour. You can assign id’s to the form cells, query columns, operations on a form or query, form sections. Just make sure that these id’s are unique within a form or a query.

Once id’s are assigned you can click on the Tour button on the form or query and define “tour sections”. When you define a tour section you need to provide the id of the element that the section applies to and the explanation of the section. At runtime Aware IM will mark the element identified with the provided id and display an explanation of the element at the bottom of the screen. If an element is a form cell Aware IM will show a marker next to the cell, if it’s a form section Aware IM will show the marker next to the tab of the section, if it’s an operation it will put the marker next to the button of the operation and so on.

Note that tour sections are ordered – Aware IM will show the tour by marking the first section and then the user can jump to the next section in the order.

Adding tours to visual perspectives can be slightly more complicated. Just like with forms and queries you can assign unique id’s to the elements of a visual perspectives – tabs and content panels (the latter is done in the Other dialog of the content panel). Aware IM will then mark the corresponding tabs and panels on the screen. However, visual perspectives can also include forms and queries for which you have already defined their own tours. When defining a tour for a visual perspective you have an option of including these tours in the tour of the visual perspective. In this case refer to the id of the enclosing content panel, tick the “Include tour of the element shown in the content panel”

Note also that visual perspectives, forms and even queries can include HTML sections. If you want to mark an element inside such an HTML section you can add id to the corresponding HTML element, for example:

<div id='some unique id'> 

You can then refer to this id just like you refer to the id of other elements of the visual perspective. The only difference is that you need to specify this id explicitly rather than choose it in the drop down of the defined id’s.

For an example of using the Tour feature see the Photo Album sample application (visual perspectives for Author and Guest access levels)