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Disabling the Command Bar

Occasionally, it is necessary to remove some features and functionality from a Table. For instance, you may wish to prevent someone from deleting an employee from the database. Even if an employee leaves the company, deleting them from your Rapid site can cause further problems.

For instance:

  • Any Lookups, Multi-Lookups or Linked Items components will now point to nothing. This will make it difficult to keep track of what projects or responsibilities were assigned to the employee.
  • If payroll wishes to contact a previous employee, this will no longer be possible if their item containing their contact details has been deleted.

To mitigate these problems, it is useful to prevent item deletion on important tables, and instead include a Status choice column, where a user can switch an item from Active to Inactive. You can then ensure that a table's main view only shows Active items. This "hides" items from view, rather than "deleting" them.

Below is an outline of the different functionality that can be disabled from a Data Table, and why each of these choices might be useful.

  1. Open your desired Table in Designer. This can be achieved by:
    • Opening the Table in Explorer, and then pressing the Designer button in the Jumbotron
    • Opening Designer via the Sidebar button, opening the table via the Tables List, and then clicking the Design tab. Ensure that the drop-down choice field beside the Save button is a plural (i.e. it should say "Employees" not "Employee").

A screenshot that shows what the Data Table looks like in Designer. The screenshot is annotated in red to help indicate key information to the user. For example, the table dropdown should state "Employees" instead of "Employee" (i.e. it must be plural to show the table view and not the item view. The Data Table component is also highlighted by a red box at the bottom of the screenshot.)

  1. You should now be able to see the Data Table as a page component.
  2. Hover your cursor over the Data Table page component, so the Data Table overlay appears.

A screenshot indicating what the overlay looks like. The screenshot is annotated with a red box to draw the user's attention to the overlay.

  1. Click on the Edit button (it has an icon of a pencil).

A zoomed in screenshot showing the overlay from the previous image more closely. In this image, the pencil icon for "Editing" a data table has been highlighted in red to assist the user.

  1. This will open a side panel, where the Data Table's Command Bar can have certain features disabled.

A screenshot demonstrating what the side panel looks like. For example, this sidepanel has the title "Edit", and several fields including "Part of Module", "Table", "Default View", and several checkboxes which will be discussed in more detail in the next section.

Here, you can see the following fields:

FieldDescription
Part of ModuleThis field allows the you to disable the data table for users who do not have access to certain modules.
TableThis is the Rapid database table that the component will display.
Default ViewHere you can set a view that the table will use as its default.
Disable Creating Items ButtonThis will hide Create button on the table, so that no new items can be created.
Disable Edit ViewThis disables users from being able to make edits to the current view.
Disable Action ButtonsThis hides and disables any menu items that might trigger workflows, trigger webhooks, etc.
Disable View SelectThis prevents users from changing the view to an alternative view.

Note that any changes to the functionality of a Data Table's Command Bar will only affect that particular instance of the Command Bar. For example, if there was another Data Table that pointed to the Employees Table, it would also need to have its Command Bar adjusted in the same way.

By default, all of the above functionality is enabled.

Data Table Appearance​

When all of the features present are disabled, the user will only see the following:

  • The Export to CSV Button
  • The Inline Refresh Button
  • The Quick Search Filter
  • The List of Items

A screenshot that depicts the list above. All of the Command Bar has been disabled. New items cannot be created, nor can the view be changed or edited.

Disabling Delete​

  1. Open the Table in Designer.
  2. Open the Options tab for the Table.
  3. Click the checkbox that reads "Disable Delete Buttons"

A screenshot demonstrating the location of the "Disable Delete Buttons". The screenshot shows Designer > Tables > Employees, and the standard Options tab. The screenshot is annotated with a red box to highlight the location of the button.

Unlike the options mentioned above, disabling the Delete button in the Command Bar will disable it across all instances of the Data Table. It will also disable the delete button so that it cannot be access from the page of any item that belongs to the table.

A screenshot that demonstrates how this checkbox option will cause the delete button to be disabled. The delete button on the Employee page is no longer red, but is instead greyed out. The screenshot is annotated with a red box to highlight the location of the disabled delete button.

The Delete button is now greyed out, and cannot be used.