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Rename, Hide or Reorder a Command

Goal​

Make the command bar say what your organisation calls things, in the order your people work in — including the buttons the platform puts there itself.

Prerequisites​

  • A form or view you are editing in its designer.

The strip holds every command, not only yours​

Under the canvas is the Commands strip. It shows the whole bar: the commands the platform contributes — Pin, New, Edit, Delete, Refresh on a view; Pin, Save, Save & Close on a form — drawn with a dashed outline, and your own commands drawn with a solid one.

Select any of them to edit it. The dashed outline is the one difference that still means something: a built-in command is not yours to delete, and what it does is not yours to change. Its words, its glyph, where it sits and the state it opens in are.

Steps​

Rename one, or change its icon​

  1. Select the command in the Commands strip.
  2. Type into Label, or pick a new glyph under Icon.
  3. Save the form or view.

Leaving Label blank means "whatever the platform calls it" — which is the more useful answer than it sounds. The platform's own word is translated: a blank label reads Refresh in English, بازآوری in Persian and تحديث in Arabic, with nothing for you to maintain. Type a word and you own that word, in every language, for everyone.

Move one​

Drag any chip in the strip to where you want it. Your commands and the platform's are one list, so you can put your Approve button between New and Edit if that is the order the work happens in.

Using the keyboard: Tab to a chip, press Space to pick it up, the arrow keys to move it, Space again to drop it. Enter selects a chip for editing.

Start a command hidden or disabled​

Each command's properties carry two switches:

  • Starts hidden — the bar opens without it.
  • Starts disabled — the bar opens with it greyed out.

Both are shown on the chip: a hidden command fades and picks up an eye glyph, a disabled one picks up a circle-and-slash. It stays in the strip either way, which is the only place you could turn it back on.

"Initially" is the whole of the word​

These are the state the bar opens in. A business rule, or the command's own script, can show or enable it afterwards. They are the right tool for "this button is not relevant until the record is approved" and the wrong tool for "these people must never do this".

A command somebody must never see is a permission, granted or withheld on their role. The difference matters because a hidden button is still a button: the bar is drawn in the browser, and hiding it there is a courtesy to the person looking, not a lock. Permissions are decided on the server, where nothing can argue with them.

You can hide and disable. You cannot show or enable​

The bar already hides and disables commands for its own reasons — New is not there for somebody who may not create records, Delete is greyed out with nothing ticked, both Save commands are greyed out while a save is in flight.

Your settings add to that; they never undo it. Turning Starts disabled off does not switch Delete on for a caller with nothing selected.

If it did, you would be building a bar that offers what the server is about to refuse, and the person using it would meet the refusal instead of the absence — which is a worse experience than the button simply not being there.

What the strip does not store​

Nothing you did not change. A bar you never rearranged stores no order at all, and follows the platform's; a command you renamed and renamed back stores nothing either.

That is deliberate, and it is what keeps a form you saved this year working next year: when the platform adds a command to the bar, a form with no stored order picks it up in its natural place, rather than pinning itself to the bar the platform had on the day you saved.

The same rule applies to an order that is stored: anything it does not mention goes at the end rather than disappearing, and a command it names that no longer exists is skipped.

Troubleshooting​

  • I renamed Refresh and the Persian bar still says the Persian word. — you renamed it for everyone, in one language. Clearing Label puts it back to the platform's translated word.
  • I hid a command and now cannot find it. — it is still in the designer's strip, faded, with an eye glyph. The Player is where it is gone from.
  • I turned off Starts disabled and the button is still grey. — the bar is disabling it for a reason of its own. See above.
  • My arrangement did not survive adding a command. — it did. A new command is appended rather than inserted; drag it where you want it.