Creating a Tab

As described earlier in this chapter, Force Platform apps use tabs as the primary way for users to access the main objects in the application. Since you asked for the Custom Tab Wizard to be spawned once the object is created, you are presented with a page that looks like the figure below.

Figure 18. Creating a tab

[View full size image]

Creating a tab adds a user interface for an object which can be added to your application, but this action also adds two more important pieces of functionality to your Force Platform application. When you add a tab for an object, you give the user the ability to add a new record to the object through the Create New list in the left hand panel, as well as adding records for this object to the list of the most recently accessed records in the same panel.

On the Tab definition page, you link an object with a Tab Style. A Tab Style is an icon and color scheme that appear on the tab for the object, as well as in the Recent Items list in the left-hand panel of the default Force Platform interface, to identify the type of a listed object.

1.	Click the search icon to the right of the Tab Style field and select the Building style. You should also give a description of the tab, such as Interfaces with the Location object.
2.	Click Next to bring up the page shown in below. This page requests you to specify which profiles will be allowed to access this tab Figure 19. Assigning security to a tab [View full size image]
3.	Leave the default choice of Default On and click Next. Remember, users will be able to change their individual display, if they wish to eliminate the display of this tab.
4.	Click Next to bring up the page shown in the figure below. This page lets you specify the applications that will include the new tab by default. Figure 20. Including a tab in existing applications [View full size image]
5.	Click the Include Tab checkbox to deselect all the applications, and then click the Recruiting checkbox to include the new tab for only this application. Once again, witness the power of on-demand development. Your new tab is instantly available within the application.
6.	Click Save.
7.	Click the tab to show the page below. Figure 21. Your new tab [View full size image]

You can see that not only is your tab present, but also all the contents of the Sidebar on the left. Although you chose to create a tab for an object immediately after creating the object, you do not have to create a tab at the same time. You can create tabs by selecting the Tab menu choice. The Tab menu choice can take you through the same set of pages you just used for a tab associated with an object, or you can create a Web tab to display a standard Web page for a tab. You don’t even have to create a tab for an object if you do not want to allow direct access to the data in the object by end users through the tabbed interface. For instance, you might decide that you only wanted Interviews to be assigned for a Job Application through an automatic procedure, so you would not create a tab for that object. Users could still get access to the data for the objects through reports or lookup links, for instance, but not through a tab.

Voice of the Developer

Tabs in Force Platform come in three types, including the Custom Object tab used in this chapter, which relates to a single custom object. You can create a Web tab, which can be used to link to anything that can be referenced by a URL or an s-Control. You can also create a tab that is related to a number of objects or even starts a wizard by creating a tab that links to a Visualforce page. You will learn about Visualforce later in Chapter 9: Visualforce Pages, and Chapter 12: Extended Visualforce Components and Controllers.