Configuring the Results List Sorting Behavior in a Custom Inbox

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About this task

Generally, to provide sorting for a table you must set the "Ordinal" sorting property of a column to non-zero value (default is zero, meaning it does not sort on this column). However, a different mechanism is used for the task Inbox Results portlet. The Edit view of the task InboxResults portlet contains controls that define, among other things, the sort order of the results, and whether they are sorted in ascending or descending order. By default, these are set to:
  • Sort by = Task ID
  • Sort order = ascending

A task user can change these settings in My webMethods using the controls described in About the Inbox Results Edit View. These values are persisted on a per-user basis by the default Scope setting for the preference, Value Stored Per User.

Note: Changing the sort properties for the Inbox Results portlet applies to the custom inbox and does not affect sorting in Task List Management and My Inbox (these settings can be modified by the user during runtime).

You can change the default settings for the SortBy and SortOrder properties as follows:

To change the default settings for sort by and sort order in the task Inbox Results list

Procedure

  1. In the Solutions view, locate and expand the task you want to work with.
  2. Double-click any portlet to open the portlet editor.
  3. Click the Configuration tab if it is not already selected.
  4. In the Portlet Application Configuration list, locate the [ taskName}InboxResults portlet and expand the Preferences node within it.
  5. To change the default Sort By column, select the initialSortBy preference; to change the default Sort Order, select the initialSortAscending preference.
  6. In the Value list of the Portlet Preference area, select the existing value or values you want to replace, and click Delete.
  7. Click Add.
  8. Click the Enter Value Here entry in the list and type one of the following:
    • To set the initialSortBy preference, type the name of the column you want to use to define the sort order. Obtain the name from the ID field on the General tab in the Properties view for the table column control. For example, taskPriorityColumn. Although it is possible to enter multiple values here, only the initial value is evaluated.
    • To set the initialSortAscending preference, type false to sort in descending order, or true to sort in ascending order.
  9. Save your changes.