Harnesses

Harnesses organize the content and structure of a portal. You can populate harnesses with sections to build a modular interface that promotes reuse and maintainability.

Harnesses are instances of the Rule-HTML-Harness class and define the run-time form of your UI. You can use harnesses to organize a portal or a work form.

In a user portal, harnesses define the layout of the screen that the users see in a browser. For example, a harness can divide the portal into three separate areas: a header, a navigation pane, and a large content pane for displaying documents. Each of these areas points to a section that has a specific function, and that contains components that follow that function, such as links and menus in a header.

Because each area of a harness references a section, even if you update the sections, you do not have to update any of the harnesses in which you use the sections. This modular approach reduces development time and improves design consistency.

When you use harnesses as a basis for work forms, you can choose from several out-of-the-box harnesses to define an optimal interface for processing work items. For example, you can use a Review harness to present an assignment in read-only mode, and prevent users from changing information at later stages of case work. In addition, you can override the standard rules to adapt default harnesses to your specific business needs.