WklNavPane

The navigation pane designer of the WKL Forms Object Library: Access's own navigation pane, arranged as one custom category with groups, display names and a start group - from a model that can be kept as text, built again and varied per environment.

• Give an application its own navigation pane

• How to: Show only your own category in the navigation pane
• How to: Vary the navigation pane per environment
• How to: Take over a category arranged in Access

┌ Data Source ───────────────── ① ┐
│ ▾ Master Data               ②   │
│     Customers               ③   │
│     Products                    │
│ ▾ Reports                       │
│     Stock                       │
│ ▾ Development *             ④   │
│     tblCustomers                │
└─────────────────────────────────┘

• Access's own pane. No pane of its own: the category is one more custom category of the built-in navigation pane, as Navigation Options would make it. Built-in categories stay.
• Display names. Entries show the names users know (“Customers”) instead of object names (frmCustomers).
• Only your category. The group of unassigned objects is hidden, the pane opens with your category or one of its groups, and it can be locked against deleting and renaming.
• Conditions. Groups and entries show only in a profile (DEV, TEST, PROD), only in an ACCDB, ACCDE or the runtime, or only when a function of the application returns True - the same form as the ribbon commands. Conditions decide what is shown, not what is allowed: a hidden object can still be reached through VBA, DAO or another front end. Protect data with the rights of the server.
• From text sources. The model is a JSON text the build tool builds from and exports again, byte for byte (navPaneModel in access-app.json).
• Take over. A category someone arranged by hand in Access becomes a model with one click.

The model is a model of the framework's core: one category with groups and entries, each entry an object kind, an object name and a display name, with rules that hold before anything is written. Applying turns the model into the rows Access keeps for its pane - only those of the own category, deleted and written again, because Access overwrites changed rows with its own state when the database closes - and shows the category. Conditions are evaluated when the model is applied, so an application whose pane differs per environment applies the model when it starts (WklNavPane.Apply); without conditions, the pane written once stays as Access saved it. The model lives in the table USysWklNavPane. Access's internal pane tables are never part of the contract.

• How to: Install the released package
• How to: Deploy an application with WKL controls to user PCs
• What the per-user registration writes

• The navigation pane shows more than the model

• API reference: WklNavPane
• navpane.json: every key of the model
• access-app.json reference (navPaneModel)

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