Legacy platform

Overview of the extensibility workbench

By using the Extensibility Workbench, you can customize the behavior of existing applications and tailor them to your organization's needs.

You can customize an application by using the widgets provided by the Extensibility Workbench. Widgets are of two types: field widgets and container widgets. Further, field and container widgets can be classified into newly added widgets and widgets provided out of the box.

When you launch the Extensibility Workbench for a particular screen, you will see the following panels:
  • Widget Palette: This panel displays a list of widgets available to extend any screen in the application.
  • Widget Repository Outline: This panel is displayed only if the selected screen is an identifier screen. It displays a list of widgets provided out of the box for identifier screens. These widgets can be reused or referred while customizing new or existing identifier screens.
  • Identifier Outline: This panel is displayed only if the selected screen is an identifier screen. It displays a hierarchical list of widgets in the current identifier screen. These widgets could be newly added and provided out of the box. The newly added widgets in the Identifier Outline panel can be further classified into widgets referred from the widget repository or widgets added from the widget palette.
    Note: To know whether a screen is an identifier screen or not, launch the Extensibility Workbench using the Customize from Outline option. For more information, see Starting the IBM Extensibility Workbench.
  • Properties panel: The widget repository properties and identifier properties are displayed in separate tabs.
    • Based on the panel in which you select a widget, the properties in the corresponding tab are displayed by default.
    • You can toggle between the two tabs to view the corresponding properties for a widget.
    • If a widget is not present in one of the panels, the corresponding tab does not display any properties.
    • In the Identifier Outline panel, the widgets that are referred from the widget repository have simple properties unlike some of the other widgets that may have binding, layout, events, and others properties.