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Explorer

The Explorer is a hierarchical tree browser for navigating and managing entities in a structured, folder-based layout. It complements the Library, which is a flat search-based surface — the Explorer is for structure-first navigation: assemblies, BOMs, projects, stock locations, and any other hierarchy your workspace uses.

Layout

The Explorer page (/w/{workspaceSlug}/explorer) is a three-pane splitter:

Pane Component Purpose
Left (20%) FolderBrowser Folder tree — navigate workspace folders
Centre (60%) ExplorerTreeGridBrowser Entity tree grid — shows entities in the selected folder
Right (remaining) PropertyBrowser Property detail — shows properties of the selected entity

All three panes are resizable by dragging their splitter borders. Pane sizes are not currently persisted across sessions.

Folder Browser (left pane)

The folder browser shows the workspace folder tree. Folders are entities of the Folder family type — they are stored in tbl_Entity / tbl_EntityVer like any other entity.

Behaviour

  • Folders load lazily on expand — root children load on first open.
  • The last selected folder is persisted per workspace user (WorkspaceUserSettingKeys.LastFolderId) and restored on next open via RestoreLastFolderAsync.
  • Selecting a folder updates the centre pane immediately.
  • FullRefreshAsync reloads all currently visible (expanded) branches without collapsing the tree, then calls RestoreLastFolderAsync to reselect the last folder.

Context menu

Right-clicking a folder node opens a context menu with:

Command Action
New Folder... Prompts for a name and creates a child folder
Add Files... Opens a file upload dialog to attach files to the folder
Rename Inline rename prompt
Move To... Opens MoveToFolderDialog
Delete Deletes the folder (with confirmation)
Change Category... Reassigns the folder entity to a different category
Details... Opens the entity edit dialog for full property editing

Move To folder dialog

MoveToFolderDialog opens when the user selects Move To... from the folder context menu.

Behaviour: - Displays the full folder tree in a 420px modal dialog. - The folder being moved is shown greyed-out with an "(current)" label — it cannot be selected as its own target. - Descendants of the folder being moved are also blocked as targets (preventing circular nesting). - Moving a folder to its existing parent is blocked. - The Move Here button is enabled only when a valid target is selected. - On success, the OnMoved callback fires with the updated FolderNodeDto and the tree refreshes.

API call: POST /api/wid/{workspaceSlug}/folders/move with { Id, NewParentId }.

Explorer Tree Grid (centre pane)

ExplorerTreeGridBrowser displays the entities within the selected folder as a lazy-loading tree grid, rendered by EntityTreeGridWebApi.

Ribbon

The Explorer ribbon (simplified layout) contains:

Group Actions
New Split button: pick a template category (Occurrence or File family), then opens EntityDefinitionEditDialog to fill in details
Refresh Reloads the current folder contents
Tools Unit Converter

Columns

Columns are chosen from the column chooser and include built-in fields (Icon, Name, Version, Revision, Category, Lifecycle, Occ. State, Created/Modified), stock figures where relevant, and any property definition in the workspace.

Column layouts are saved per folder category

This is the important part, and it is easy to miss: your column layout is remembered separately for each folder category, not for the Explorer as a whole.

So if your workspace has a Project folder category and a BOM Folder category, standing in a project shows one set of columns and stepping into its BOM folder shows another — each remembers its own widths, order and visibility. Change columns while in a BOM folder and you have changed them for every BOM folder, not for projects.

Folders with no category fall back to a single shared Explorer layout.

This is deliberate: a project folder wants Client, Milestones and dates, while a BOM folder wants Part Number, Material and Manufacturer. Giving a folder type its own category is the supported way to give it its own view.

An administrator can seed sensible starting columns for a folder category, which apply until a user customises their own. Once a user changes anything, their layout wins from then on.

Object visibility

The Object Visibility dropdown in the ribbon controls which categories appear in the grid — untick a category and its entities are hidden from the tree. The choice is remembered per user for the workspace.

Child expansion suppression

For entity types that represent order lines (e.g. Sales Order Lines, Purchase Order Lines), child expansion is suppressed in the Explorer grid — the tree does not attempt to expand these nodes into sub-items. This is controlled by the SuppressChildExpansion parameter passed to the SQL query, resolved dynamically by checking whether the parent entity's category matches known order-line category names rather than hardcoding IDs.

Bills of materials appear when you expand

When an entity in the Explorer is linked to a Library definition that has a BOM, expanding it materialises that BOM into the tree. Each BOM line becomes a real entity in the project — with its own lifecycle, properties and history — rather than a read-only preview of the library structure.

This happens on first expand and needs no action from you. Rows created this way are marked as inherited, showing they came from the definition's BOM rather than being placed by hand.

It matters because those rows are what procurement acts on: an engineer expands an assembly, selects a part, and moves it to Ready for Procurement. Until the assembly has been expanded at least once, its parts do not exist as individual entities and cannot be actioned separately.

If a line is later removed from the Library BOM but the project entity has already been ordered against, the row is kept and flagged as orphaned rather than deleted, so procurement history is not lost.

Linking entities

Entities can be linked to definitions (Library entities) via drag-and-drop or the Link Definition context action, which opens EntityDefinitionSearchDialog. If a version conflict is detected on link, DefinitionLinkOverrideDialog offers resolution options.

Selection

When a row is selected, SelectedEntityChanged fires and the right-hand PropertyBrowser updates to show that entity's properties. Selection is fire-and-forget (lazy) to avoid blocking UI responsiveness.

Double-clicking a row opens the entity edit dialog. Double-click works even if the row was not previously selected — the event reads from args.RowData directly, not from the cached _selected field.

Property Browser (right pane)

PropertyBrowser shows structured property data for the currently selected entity. It has two tabs: Occurrence (occurrence-level properties) and Definition (definition-level properties).

Layout

  • A mini-ribbon below the tab header contains an Edit (pencil) button. The ribbon height matches the Explorer header for visual alignment across all three panes.
  • Properties are displayed in a resizable two-column grid (Name / Value). Column widths can be adjusted by dragging the column separator.
  • Properties are grouped into accordion sections, one per property group as configured in the workspace.

Behaviour

  • Changing the selected entity in the centre pane triggers @key="property-browser" keyed re-render if needed, ensuring stale data is not displayed.
  • The expanded/collapsed state of accordion sections is persisted per user via WorkspaceUserSettingKeys.ExplorerPropertyBrowserAccordion.
  • The Edit button opens the full entity edit dialog for the currently displayed entity.

Entity placeholder support

Entities of the File family type support an IsPlaceholder flag (EV_IsPlaceholder in tbl_EntityVer). A placeholder entity has no attached file — it acts as a structural reservation in the Explorer tree.

Visual indicators in the Explorer grid: - Placeholder entity (intentional): placeholder icon - File entity with no file attached (unintentional): warning icon

The placeholder checkbox is only visible in the edit dialog for File family entities.

Keyboard and UX notes

  • The folder tree restores the last selected folder automatically on page load.
  • Renaming a folder preserves its position in the tree without full reload.
  • Moving a folder via MoveToFolderDialog triggers a FullRefreshAsync on the folder tree after success to reflect the new position.
  • The search overlay in the Explorer ribbon applies quick text filtering to the entity grid.
  • Library — flat search surface for entities
  • Folders — folder tree and folder operations
  • Categories — configure entity types shown in the Explorer
  • Files & documents — file entities and placeholders
  • Lifecycle — moving entities between states from the Explorer
  • Stock management — how requirements and orders reach the ledger