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Adding a search gadget for Theme Cosmos and UI Kit mobile apps

Updated on March 3, 2022

Improve the usability of your mobile app by configuring and enabling the search functionality. You can guarantee more meaningful search results and increase search speed by limiting the scope of searches to specific case types.

For example, in your Expenses app, apart from the expense reporting case type, you have a case type in which users submit requests for a per diem allowance. You can add both case types to the search configuration, and provide users with search results that the app displays in categories. After configuring the search categories, you can add the Search action to the menu bar of your app, to provide a convenient method of initiating the search.

Before you begin: Prepare the framework for the search gadget:
  • Create a mobile channel for your app. For more information, see Setting up mobile apps.
  • Ensure that you have case types and instances that the app can use as search categories. For example, create a case type that handles expense reporting and a case type that handles requests for per diem allowances. For more information, see Case types.
If you do not define any search categories, the app searches all content and displays it as uncategorized results on one tab.
  1. Open your mobile channel:
    1. In the navigation pane of App Studio, click Channels.
    2. In the Current channel interfaces section, click the tile that represents a mobile channel for your app.
  2. On the mobile channel page, on the Content tab, click the Search category.
  3. In the Search categories section, click Add category, and then select the case type that you want to use as a search category.
  4. In the search category configuration window, in the Name field, enter the label for the search category that the app uses to group search results at run time.
  5. In the Data view field, enter the data page that you want to use as the source for the search category.
    Note: Offline-enabled mobile apps download all data for search categories during the first startup after installation. Avoid adding data sources with a large amount of data, to decrease the startup time of an offline-enabled app.
  6. Optional: To change the default icon of a search category, next to the current icon, click the Change button, and then select the icon that you want to use:
    1. In the icon selection modal dialog box, click the Show image viewer icon.
    2. In the Image catalog window, enter an image name, and then click Find.
    3. Select the image that you want to use as the default icon for the search category, click OK, and then click Submit.
      Important: Search category icons only support .png image types.
  7. In the search case type configuration window, in the List item information section, configure how the app page displays the search results:
    1. In the Primary field, enter the property that you want to use to populate the label of the search result at run time.
    2. In the Secondary field, enter the property that you want to use to populate the secondary text of the search result at run time.
      You can add up to three secondary fields with information to display in search results.
    For example: Use the following field and property configuration to display the search results for expense reports:
    • For the Primary field, add the Label property that defines the expense report name.
    • For the Secondary field, add the Amount property that defines the total amount of the expense.
  8. Click Submit.
    Note: Changes to the search configuration apply to all mobile channels in your application.
  9. Optional: To add more categories, repeat steps 3 through 8.
    Note: When you add two or more categories, the app also displays the All category when users perform a search. This category displays all search results in a single tab.
  10. Click Save.
  11. Add the search action to the menu bar of your app:
    1. On the mobile channel page, on the Content tab, click the Navigation category.
    2. In the Navigation section, click Add itemsActionsSearch.
    3. Click Save.
Result: At run time, your app now has a search icon on the menu bar that users can tap to start looking for information. The app groups search results by the categories that you defined. Each result has a label and secondary text that help users choose the best search result. When a user taps a search result, the app opens the relevant work item.
For example: A mobile app developer for the uPlus company configures the search gadget for an expense reporting app.
Sample configuration of a mobile search gadget
The image shows Pega Platform's mobile channel and a flow for configuring a mobile search gadget.
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Tags

Pega Platform 8.6 Mobile

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