Tell us what you think

We want to create the best possible experience for our learners. Your feedback helps us to improve the experience for everyone.

Exploring UI Configuration Options

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to explore UI configuration options

UI Configuration

The guided buying user interface is highly customizable and easy to configure. The main configurable UI elements are:

A home page that contains tiles associated with users' most frequent purchases
Landing pages that contain selectable tiles
Tiles that guide users in their procurement process
Branding images for a logo and site banner

There are three methods available for configuring these elements:

The administration user interface
JSON files
A Microsoft Excel spreadsheet

Note

No more than 9 to 12 tiles per page are recommended for ease of use. Site administrators can use their organization’s branding and images to customize tiles and the home page.

The home page search menu is the main entry point for users into the system.

Based on the user-selected criteria, search results may include:

Catalog items
Forms
Non-catalog items
Spot Buy items
PunchOut items
Landing pages
Specific tiles
A mix of the above

The search engine uses the same technology as SAP Ariba Procurement. It displays results dynamically, unlike the navigation through the home and landing pages, which is static and must be configured.

Configuration via the Administration User Interface

Play the video to learn how to customize the guided buying user interface using the Admin menu.

Configuration via JSON

To create and configure landing pages, you can load a file in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format. Create and edit JSON files in a text editor, such as Notepad++. Alternatively, you can use websites to convert XML files to JSON format if you prefer working in XML format.

Note

Before making any changes to the guided buying page, download the landing page as a JSON code file and save it. This allows you to reload an older version of the landing page if required.

The following tips will help you work with the JSON file format:

Double quotes ("") are required around the name-value pairs.
To include quotation marks in a text value, such as a description, use a backslash (\) as an escape character.
You can use online tools to escape a JSON string automatically.
Colons (:) separate the name and the value.
Commas (,) separate each name-value pair.
Curly brackets ({}) begin and end object information.
Square brackets ([]) begin and end arrays.

We recommend defining each landing page in its own file that you load individually.

Note

You must declare parent objects before child objects. Specify objects in the following order:

Home pages
Landing pages
Carousels
Tiles

Tile Types in JSON Files

Tile types determine what happens after a user selects a tile. Valid types are:

Action: Use this for tiles that redirect users to an external web address.
Category: Use this for tiles that bring users to another landing page.
Form: Use this for tiles that take users to a custom form.
Page: Use this for tiles that guide users to a read-only page with instructions. Several tiles can be linked to a page.
CatalogItem: Use this for tiles that bring users to specific catalog items.
AdHocItem: Use this for tiles that bring users to the default Non-catalog request form.
GBSearch: Use this for tiles that bring users to predefined searches.
SupplierCarousel: Use this for an image carousel within a landing page.

Configuration via Microsoft Excel

Landing pages and tiles can also be managed using Microsoft Excel uploads. Since Excel may be easier to read than the JSON code, it can be used for troubleshooting or reviewing.

The Microsoft Excel workbook has three worksheets:

Manage Your Pages defines your organization’s landing pages and home pages.
Content adds new tiles to landing pages, such as pages, catalog items, and forms.
Instructions provides information on how to complete the cells on each worksheet.

Note

Excel is not the preferred method of configuration. Most of the information needed to understand the Excel spreadsheet is included on the Instructions worksheet of the downloaded workbook.

Continue to quiz