BlueFinity International - App Settings

When you open Evoke you will be asked to select either a new or existing app design and version.
When you select any existing App and version or start a new app design in Evoke the first thing you need to do is set up the look and feel of the app that you are designing and building.

The colour palettes that you will use within your design
The font styles and sizes
Screen background images and logos
Cultural styles of different devices
Menu style
and more that you save to be your App's Theme...

Happily, Evoke comes with more than a dozen pre-loaded different Themes that you can start with, change, update and save again so that you have a base set of Theme settings to change or can start building your app design immediately using a standard theme.

A summary of a few of the most important Theme and Global Settings of your app design follow:

The App Startup section allows the Evoke App designer to control and specify what happens after the App is loaded by a user.

After App Load
This is where the login page that will be used by the app is defined. If you have created a new app design then a default login page will have been created for you and the details of this filled in here. You can also specify if a login button, other than the default button, is to be used on the login page and if a specific authentication selection is to be run instead of the default Login Authentication.

After Login
You can select if you would like to take the user to a specific Page Series after they login or request that they make a selection from the menu.

The App Styling section allows the App Designer to set up a series of default colours, spacing, styles, menu images, background images/colours, etc. that can be saved to a "Theme" and then used within the current App Design or used for further App Designs.

App Colors

The App Colours styling section includes:
- A Standard Colour palette, allowing you to set the colours of a base colours palette for your app.
- A Custom Colour palette, allowing you to set additional colours for use in your app.
- The ability to redefine fonts, font sizes, bold, italic, etc., by device/operating system, from the default fonts and settings used in this Theme so that these can be used, where desired, within your app design.
- The ability to redefine some of the reserved regions in your App e.g. the menu area, data grid, headers, text, loading progress bar, etc to default to using colours in your colour paletes.

Background

Used to set a background image or colour for all Pages (screens) within your App and set that the background should be animated, stretched and any level of transparency to be applied to it.

General Styling
Set the general styling to be applied to the entire app:
- Cultural overrides - Different device operating systems (i.e. iOS, Android, etc) offer their own specific styles for items such as menus, headers, etc. these are know as device "Cultures". Where possible Evoke Apps will, as default, use these "Cultures" in Evoke apps. Some organizations wish to provide apps with a common "corporate" Culture so that the app will look exactly the same regardless of the device that it is viewed/used on. The check boxes within the "Cultural styling overrides" section will, when checked, force the Culture styles on these different devices to all adopt the Culture style that is set for Windows desktop apps.
- Default page margins - options to set the top, bottom, left and right margins of an app. These settings will set the distance, in pixels, from the edge of the screen, that the app will be displayed.
- Font Override settings - the default font style and font size can be reset for the app to be different for each device type that the app will run on.

Menu Styling

Used to make style changes to the App menu:

Menu Default Style - Pick the default style of menu that app users will see when starting up the app on a desktop computer screen or when clicking the "hamburger" style menu on a mobile device (can be changed by individual users when running the app to their personal preference). Options are a) Normal (the menu name, including icon image if present, in a list format) b) Tiled (the menu name, including icon image if present, in a traditional tile format) c) Minimal (just the menu icon image, without the menu name in words, in a narrow band until the user clicks the "peek" option in the running app which will then temporarily show the "normal" menu d) Unpinned (hidden) the menu is hidden and can be accessed via the "hamburger" icon in exactly the same way as it appears on a mobile device.
Add a help button in your App menu that will allow your App users to access App specific user help (that you are able to set up). Choose 'in app' help screens or access an external URL for context sensitive help web pages.

Display a Logo or corporate message that will appear, near to the bottom, on the menu bar of your App.
Main Menu Text - This text box allows the entry of a new legend to replace "Main Menu" at the top of the App menu.
Customise the other images and styles of you app menu.

Default Data Segment Settings

Set up your own default data segment colour settings redefining any of the default (base) segment settings, used when you work on your app design, i.e. the background/Border, Header background, Header Text, Body text (data and prompts), Buttons, Grid Header and Grid Header Background, etc to use any of the colours you have set up in your colour palettes. You can also set spacing around your app to new default levels.
Style Themes

Save your settings to an app theme that you can use for your current app, other app designs or to change in the future and save as a further theme. Multiple pre-set themes are included for use, if desired, within Evoke.

Global DataSources are data areas that you can setup and access from anywhere within your app design. DataSources are defined in more detail in the Data Sources description.

When a new app design is created the Global DataSource of "CurrentUser" is added to give the App developer access to the user record of the 'logged in user' throughout the App Design. This Global DataSource is populated with the AppUser record at the time of login in the deployed running app.

Evoke allows you to provide completely unique App experiences for each user, based on their user group/level or data (either entered or retrieved from the database). You can provide different security levels for different users, unique navigation routes through the app, show/hide different menu options for different groups, show/hide different data or information on Pages, follow different paths through the app, or enable/disable control of a function such as a menu item, so the user can see it but maybe not use it until they upgrade to a premium account or similar.

The user groups option allows you to set up different groups that each users can be members of (e.g. Customer, Manager, Salesteam, Accounts Department, etc). In addition, this allows users in specific user groups be taken directly to a specific section of the app (that they have access to) after they log in. You are then able to use the user access features within Evoke to provide completely unique App experiences for each of the user groups.

When designing or maintaining your Evoke App design, you may want multiple people to work on the design. In developer access control you can define the developers, users that are part of your Evoke account, that you want to:

Have access to your App design
Access specific versions of your App design

Adding members of your team (that are also part of your Evoke account) to the app design will restrict access and the ability to change the designs to just those people. This is the method of setting internal security/access levels for you and your team when using Evoke.
If you wish to use the Evoke Multi developer functions you must designate specific users to have access to the app design and all or a subset of these to have access to each specific version.

The Evoke Snapshot or Revert feature offers the opportunity to wind back the version of the App design that you are working on to a previous snapshot (copy of the App design) taken using the Manual "Take a Snapshot" Evoke feature.