21.6 Customizing Individual Windows

Most of the main windows in Tradepoint such as the Leads and Customer windows can be extended to add additional functionality. To do so you will need to implement the I(XXX)WindowConfig where (XXX) is the name of the window. For instance:

ICustomerWindowConfig - In this example, the Customer Window can be overridden with its Interface.

RemoveTabs: This method will allow you to return the tabs that you wish to remove. You can XOR the items to remove multiple tabs within the window.

QuoteEdit/OrderEdit/InvoiceEdit/IncidentEdit: These 3 methods allow you to override the edit window for each of these and provide your own as may be necessary. Return null if you do not wish to override the default. Note: Incident refers to a call log.

QuoteNew/OrderNew/InvoiceNew/IncidentNew: These 3 methods allow you to override the creation process of each and provide your own screen as necessary. Return null if you do not wish to override the default.

AddButton: This method allows you to intercept all of the various containers within the tab strip for the current window and choose which container you wish to add your button to.  The preferred method of finding the right one is to set a break point and review the various different names of the containers until you find the one you want. You can then use an if statement to add your button if applicable.  Return null if you do not wish to add a button to the current container. 

The easiest way to add a button is to pass the information as applicable for all of the items, but also to create a new form, and add a Darwin.Wizard control to that form. You can add this to your toolbar in Visual Studio by right clicking and choosing "Add Items" and browsing for the Darwin.Controls.dll file and selecting that custom control for use. You can then put your controls directly on one or more of the panels and pass the panel back to the AddButton method.

Important Note: Tradepoint makes heavy use of overriden controls from the base Dev Express toolkit. To add these overriden controls, please "Add Items" for your toolbar and browse for the Tradepoint.Windows.Dll and add the various controls as applicable. More detail can be found below.

LoadPage: The load page method is called when your custom page is selected. This allows you to do data binding and more.

ValidatePage: This is called immediately before any save operations on your custom page, and allows you to validate, return any errors, and cancel the update process until such time as all of the errors are resolved. The e.Cancel property is how you would cancel the event.

UpdatePage: This is called by Tradepoint to allow you to save your custom page data to the data source. You can return if the item was successful or not using the e.Sucessful property. It is up to you to persist and save your data back to the data source.

Note:  Do not implement IContactWindowConfig directly, it is an inherited class used for the specific windows.

Each screen has its own interface that can be used in this manner to customize the screen.  The contents of an existing screen are customized at this time so, you will need to remove that tab, and then add your own with the customized layout. Version 3 of Tradepoint for Windows will include complete customization functionality so that you can provide default layouts for every screen with the information placed wherever you wish within the window.