UI Designer overview

It is a web-based tool that is launched from Bonita Studio.
A page is defined in HTML extended by the AngularJS JavaScript framework. Use the UI Designer to create and update pages for business applications, forms to start process instances or execute human tasks, and application layouts that apply to all pages of an application.

You can import an existing page, form, or layout to edit, or duplicate existing ones.

A page (but also a form or a layout) is built as a vertical arrangement of rows.
A row is a mechanism for aligning widgets, from top left to bottom right. When you create a new, empty, page, it contains a row. A row occupies the whole width of the page, which is considered to be 12 units. The actual width is calculated when the page is displayed. The rows are indicated by a thin pale grey rectangle on the left side of the whiteboard.

To move or delete a row, position your mouse in the row, and the row toolbar is displayed.

Use the controls in the toolbar to move the row up or down, or to delete it.

In a row, you can add containers and widgets.
Each widget accounts for an item of information to be entered or displayed in a page. To add a widget to a page, drag it from the palette on the left of the screen and drop it into the whiteboard. It must be adjacent to another widget (or to the top of the page for the first widget).
You cannot leave empty space between widgets. If you try to drop a widget that is not adjacent to another, the drop will fail.
When the widget is dropped, you need to specify the widget width, up to a maximum of 12 units (default value).

There is a set of standard widgets. If these do not meet your needs, you can define a custom widget.

There are also some structure widgets called containers, which you can use to structure a page.

There are different types of containers:

Once a container is added to the page, it contains a row. Therefore, widgets can be dropped in a container row or directly on a whiteboard row. In this example, you can see a container with four rows.

The behavior of a page is determined by the widget properties. Any property you configure for a container is applied to all widgets in the container unless you override it with a widget-specific value.

You can also use fragments, which are groups of widgets. They allow to reuse the same group of widgets with the same behavior in several pages or forms.

The UI Designer generates standard HTML application code, based on AngularJS. Export pages if you want to further customize them in your favorite web development environment. Note that once customized, you can not reimport them in the UI Designer.

The UI Designer is part of the development tools integrated in Bonita Studio. It runs in a tomcat instance managed by Bonita Studio. This tomcat instance is separated from the Bonita Runtime tomcat instance.

To use a page in a business application, export it from the Bonita UI designer, import it as a Bonita Runtime resource, and from the relevant application, add it to the list of pages and then insert it in a navigation menu.

To use a form in a process, map it in the Bonita Studio to the relevant process or human task. It will be automatically packaged in the .bar archive ready to deploy in the Bonita Administrator Application.

You can update a form in production, by exporting a new version of the form from the Bonita UI designer, importing it into the relevant process in the Bonita Adminsitrator Application, and then mapping it to the relevant task or process start event.

To use a layout in a business application, export it from the Bonita UI designer, import it in the Bonita Administrator Application, "Resources" tab, and map it as the layout of the relevant application.

The UI Designer is intended for web developers creating pages and forms that will be part of a BPM application. It requires a good understanding of JavaScript and CSS.
If you are a business analyst, you can use the UI Designer to create the page structure and define basic behaviors. However, most properties of a page are defined using JavaScript.

Pages which have been created with a version of bonita older than 7.7.0 have a UUID-like identifer.

With version 7.7 and the improvements made for the collaboration features, the Id of created artifacts is now more human readable and understandable. This Id is now equal of the name. For pages only, if the id is already taken by another page, it is suffixed with a number (same behavior as in operating system file browsers).

For example:

Following the second creation, when you are redirected to the editor, you can see in the URL that the id is in fact myPageExample1. However, it is a good practice to use a unique name for your page.