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Procedure documentationAdding Controls in a Melting Group Locate this document in the navigation structure

 

You can use a Melting Group control to group other controls in a form view, enabling more layout flexibility. For example, you can use a Melting Group to group controls with related functionality, such as Start Date and End Date Date Picker controls, or a Search Input Field control with a Search Button control.

You drag other controls into a Melting Group control, and then define the width of each control within the Melting Group control.

Prerequisites

You have added a form view to a model and displayed it on the Layout board.

Procedure

  1. Drag a Melting Group control from the Compose task panel to the form view.

  2. Drag additional controls into the Melting Group control. The Melting Group control is outlined as you drag the controls over it, so you can see where to place the controls. In addition, arrows are displayed on the Melting Group control, indicating the possible locations in which you can place the new control.

    You can drag controls from the Compose task panel, or from the form view in which the Melting Group control is located. You can also drag controls out of a Melting Group control and place them back onto the from view that contains the Melting Group control.

    Note Note

    You can use a Plain Text control in a Melting Group control as follows:

    • Add a Plain Text control between two other controls and specify spaces in its Text field value. This enables you to use it to add this amount of space between the other two controls in the Melting Group control.

    • Add a Plain Text control to the left of a control without a label (for example, an Input Field or Dropdown List control), and use its Text field value to display a name at runtime for the label-less control.

    End of the note.

  3. Drag the handles of each individual control to define its width within the Melting Group control. Any other controls in the melting group resize automatically to fit the new control width you define.

  4. Select the Melting Group control, and in the Configure task panel, configure its properties.

    Note Note

    The easiest way to select the Melting Group control is to click its label on the Layout board. If the label is not displayed, move the cursor over the Melting Group control until the cursor changes to a four-way arrow, then click to select the Melting Group control.

    End of the note.

  5. Select each control within the Melting Group control, and in the Configure task panel, configure their properties.

Example

The following runtime example shows a combination of an Input Field together with a Button control, both contained within a Melting Group control.

Example (Example)

If the Input Field and Button controls were not within a Melting Group control, they would appear as follows at runtime:

Example (Example)

The Melting Group control enables you to group the Item input field and the Search button together, to indicate that the Search button is related to this specific input field.