Pages

Pages allow you to give users access to view, edit and submit certain data without granting those users access to your entire application. Regular users can build pages from within Dabble DB and then publish them, either for the general public, or for specific Dabble DB users. Pages can contain views of data and/or forms for submitting/editing data.

To edit Pages you have created, or to create a new page with a form, go to the Sharing menu from within an application, and click Pages. From the Pages manager, you can view, edit and delete existing pages as well as create new pages.

Use the Sharing menu to access Pages

Pages are built from your existing database. Before you can create a page, you must create the structure of your database by creating one or more categories.

You can create a new Page quickly from a view by clicking the Share button (below the view name) and then selecting New page.

To create a Page from the Pages manager, use the right-hand menu to select a category in your application. Then click Build page.

The Pages builder consists of two tabs: one to edit the page content, and one to change the page settings and preview the page.

The preview and settings tabs allow you to see what the page looks like and control who can access it.

Preview and settings of the page

There are three options for granting access to the page:

• Anyone allows any person from anywhere to access the page if they have the correct address.
• All users allows any user who otherwise has access to this application to access the page.
• Only certain users allows you to select which users in your system should have access to the page. Put a check beside each user you want to have access.

You can choose whether to include a navigation sidebar on this page. If enabled, the sidebar will have links to other pages this user can access (public pages or pages to which you have specifically granted the user access).

The preview shows how your page looks embedded. (It doesn’t include the header or navigation that would appear if you view the page independently.) Click View page in new window to open the actual page.

The Edit Content tab allows you edit what is on your page as well as control how users may interact with the data.

The appearance of this tab will change depending on what content you put on the page. Each page can consist of a view, a form, or a view and form together.

You can edit the title of the page on the upper left.

Editing the content of a page

If your page does not already have a view, you can add one by clicking Select a view to display and allow editing entries. You can only add a view if there are saved views in the same category as the page. If you add a view, you can select whether to enable searching by checking the option Let user search.

You can also select the batch size to control how many entries are shown at once, between 5 and 100. (Navigation controls allow the user to page through the entire set.)

In order for users to be able to create and/or edit data, you must add at least one form section to your page, and drag at least one field into it.

If there is no view on the page, users can only create new entries — they will neither be able to see existing data nor edit it.

If you have a Table view or Calendar view on the page, you can let users create entries and/or edit entries. If editing is allowed, you can also allow users to delete entries. You can let users create without letting them edit, or let them edit without letting them create. To disable all entry creation/ editing, either remove all fields from the form or uncheck the options.

If your page has a form, you can decide what happens after the user submits new entries. The options do not apply when editing existing entries.

Use the Go to menu to choose where to take a user after they submit the form.

• The same page allows the user to continue entering more data right away by presenting the same page with a blank form.
• Thank you page presents a simple response page. You can customize the message that appears.
• Another web page allows you to redirect to any web page address.
• You can also choose to redirect to another Dabble DB Page in the same application to encourage a particular workflow.

When the Dabble DB page is embedded in another web page (e.g. using an <iframe>), you can choose whether links should open inside the frame, in the same window, or in a new window.

The email options tell Dabble DB to email one or more people after a user successfully creates a new entry.

• You can email a particular address.
• If your page contains an email field, you can tell Dabble to email the address that the user enters in the field.
• If one or both of these options is enabled, you can specify whether to include a link in the email to edit the data that was just submitted. This allows, for example, you to give a user access to edit their data after they’ve submitted it without giving him or her access to all of your data. (Each entry on the page has a unique URL which can be used for editing which can also be accessed via the Link to edit in page feature.)
• You can customize the text to include in the email.

To edit your form, drag fields and text from the right side of the page to the form section(s) on the left. To remove a field or text from the form, drag it from the section back to the right.

You can add instructional text to the page by dragging the box labeled TEXT from the upper right. Click inside the text box and type or paste in the text you want to appear on the page. When you drag the TEXT box over to the left it will copy rather than move, so you can create as many text snippets as you need by dragging the text box over multiple times.

You can use the Markdown syntax to add any formatting you need. (You can also type any HTML tags that can be produced through Markdown.) See Text formatting for more information.

To visually format your page, you can divide it into multiple sections. Each section consists of one, two or three columns. Use the buttons in the upper right corner of the section to change how many columns it has. To add a new section, click New Section at the bottom of the page builder.

To move a section up or down on the page, click the up or down arrow in that section.

By default, all fields on the page are optional; your users can submit the form without filling out the fields. To make a field required, check the box under “R*”. This will ensure that users cannot submit the page without completing that field.