Control Panel Hierarchy Item Object

Overview

Categories and types are fundamental to the Control Panel and your case or contract lifecycle management applications. Effectively managing categories and types requires that you can manage aspects of them separately from your control panel object.

Each category and type is represented by its own individual design object to hold its specific configurations and properties, called a control panel hierarchy item.

Each control panel hierarchy item is created, configured, and edited through the Control Panel workspace and object as a category or type. Once the control panel hierarchy item has been created, there are multiple aspects of the objects that can then be managed separate from the control panel object, such as:

• Configuring security
• Doing deployments
• Managing versioning
• Deleting

This page for low-code developers explains what control panel hierarchy items are and how to use them.

Creating and editing

You can still create, configure, and view categories and types in the Control Panel workspace and object. Once a business user creates a new category or type in the Control Panel workspace, the new control panel hierarchy item created for the category or type appears in the Objects and Build views in Designer. This means that you can access each category and type from both the Control Panel workspace and object, and from the Objects and Build views in Designer.

Like other design objects, there are a few common actions for control panel hierarchy items that you can do from the Objects and Build views, such as:

• Add to package.
• Add to, move to, or remove from an app.
• Edit security.
• View dependents.
• View precedents.
• View and edit properties.
• View, edit, and create new versions.
• Delete.

You can also do these actions from the Hierarchy page in the control panel object. You can easily get to the control panel object and the page for the relevant category or type by opening a control panel hierarchy item directly from the Objects or Build views. To learn more about the configurations low-code developers can make to control panel hierarchy items in the control panel object, see How to Configure a Control Panel Object.

New categories or types can only be created in the Control Panel workspace. To learn more about how business users can configure categories and types in the Control Panel workspace, see Creating Case Types and Categories.

Display names and descriptions

Control panel hierarchy items have object names and object descriptions, as well as display names and display descriptions. Display names and descriptions can either be plain text or translation strings. This allows the names and descriptions of categories and types to be shown to users in their preferred language.

Below is a table to describe what each property is, where it can be seen and by who, where it can be edited, and if it can be translated.

Property	Description	Where to edit	Translatable
Object name	The name of the control panel hierarchy item which can be viewed and edited by low-code developers in the control panel hierarchy item object in Designer.	Object view Designer	No
Object description	The description of the control panel hierarchy item which can be viewed and edited by low-code developers in the control panel hierarchy item object in Designer.	Object view in Designer	No
Display name	The name of the control panel hierarchy item shown to business users in the Control Panel workspace and low-code developers in the control panel object.	The Control Panel workspace and object	Yes
Display description	The description of the control panel hierarchy item shown to business users in the Control Panel workspace and low-code developers in the control panel object.	The Control Panel workspace and object	Yes

The display names and descriptions for control panel hierarchy items can be edited in both the Control Panel workspace and object, but the values can only be replaced with translation strings from the relevant category or type page in the control panel object. Once the values have been converted to or replaced by translation strings, business users can no longer edit the display names and descriptions in the Control Panel workspace.

Deleting

Control panel hierarchy items can be deleted from the Objects view, Build view, or from within the control panel object. Only users with Administrator access to the control panel hierarchy item can delete it. Deleting a control panel hierarchy item will delete any control panel hierarchy items that belong to it. For example, if you delete a category with types in it, all of those types will also be deleted.

Deleting a control panel hierarchy item does not delete the cases associated with it.

Delete versus inactive

You can make control panel hierarchy items unavailable in the Control Panel workspace in two ways: delete and mark as inactive. Follow these best practices to decide which action to take.

Delete a control panel hierarchy item if:

• It was made by mistake.
• It was used for testing and is no longer needed.
• It has no data associated with it.

Mark a control panel hierarchy item as inactive if:

• It has been used and has associated data.
• You want to hide it from end-users but preserve the data.
• You might need and reactivate it in the future.

Low-code developers with Administrator access can delete control panel hierarchy items from the Objects view, Build view, or the Hierarchy page of the control panel object. Low-code developers can also mark control panel hierarchy items as inactive from the Hierarchy page of the control panel object. Business users can mark control panel hierarchy items as inactive in the control panel hierarchy item properties in the Control Panel workspace.

Security

You can set security for individual control panel hierarchy items to set which users and groups can view or edit the corresponding category or type in the Control Panel workspace.

Keep in mind that users will also need access to the control panel object in order to make configurations to control panel hierarchy items. To learn more about how these security settings interact, see Control Panel Object Security.

The following table outlines the actions that can be completed for each permission level in a control panel hierarchy item's security role map.

Actions	Administrator	Editor	Viewer
View the control panel hierarchy item	Yes	Yes	Yes
Edit the control panel hierarchy item properties in the Control Panel workspace and object, such as display name, icon, color, and description	Yes	Yes	No
Edit which record type is used for the control panel hierarchy item	Yes	Yes	No
Edit which interfaces are used with the record type associated with the control panel hierarchy item	Yes	Yes	No
Delete the control panel hierarchy item	Yes	No	No

To learn about the permissions needed to create new control panel hierarchy items, see Control Panel Object Security.

Default security for categories and types

The default security for any control panel hierarchy item is copied from its direct parent, which is either the control panel object or the category that a type belongs to.

If your control panel object uses categories, the default security for the category is copied from the security of the control panel object.

If you only use types in your control panel object, then the default security for the types is copied from the security for the control panel object. If your control panel object uses both categories and types, the default security for each type is copied from the security of the category it belongs to.

Configure these default permissions as needed.

Deployment

You can add control panel hierarchy items to a deployment package and deploy it to a target environment. If your target environment already has the control panel object, you can deploy a control panel hierarchy item without deploying the entire control panel object. This allows for incremental updates during application development.

Versioning

Each control panel hierarchy item is a design object with its own version history distinct from the version history of the control panel object.

Versioning for control panel hierarchy items allows low-code developers to:

• See previous versions of control panel hierarchy items.
• Create new versions from the previous versions.
• See diffs of what has changed between previous and existing versions.

Reverting to a previous version of the control panel object does not revert the control panel hierarchy items to previous versions.

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