Many years ago, when the Windows Client was till called the Role Tailored Client and was freshly released I blogged about how cues are handled in the menu.

Before NAV2016 each cues was automatically embedded in the menu, and grouped together if the system could find the same page in the Role Center.

I don’t think there is a better example of “metadata” defined programming where you as a designer need to know how this worked. Back then it was a blog post where a lot of “thank you” replies where because it was poorly documented by Microsoft.

If there is not a similar page in the role center, each cue is repeated in the menu.

NAV2016

Apparently Microsoft received a lot of feedback about this feature in a sence that not all software architects liked this behavior. Which apparently makes me the exception. I was fine with this.

What has changed?

In NAV2016, if there is no “master page” in the Role Center menu the cues are hidden from the menu, and on top of that, the pages are not opened embedded in the menu, but in their own window.

WTF?

Ok, let me show you some examples

This screenshot shows the most famous role center in NAV, Susan the order processor. Who does not know Susan and her Side Panels.

Each filtered cue on the Sales Quote and Sales Order is shown as a member of the Sales Orders.

If we click on a cue the page opens embedded on the role center. This is standard behavior of the RTC for the last 6 years.

Let’s see what happens if we remove Sales Orders from the Role Center (9006)

The result is that the cues are no longer in the menu

On top of this, the cues are opened in a new window

So What?

Is this bad you say. We’ll, not for the Sales Order Processor Role center. But let’s have a look at my favorite rolce center, the Small Business Role Center, AKA MiniApp.

An an addicted reader of my blog, you know that I upgraded to NAV2016 last Saturday. Hence I noticed this behavior as soon as I wanted to create the first invoice. Why? Let me explain.

Small Business Role Center

The SMB RC is designed differenty than the others. In most role centers cues show filtered lists. In the SMB RC it shows all sales invoices since a small multi-tenant cloud business like me only has a handful of invoices per week that often get posted immediately.

In this case there is no “master” page in the role center and the page opens in its own window.

Is it me, or is this SUPER ANOYING!!!

If you add the page to the Role Center, it starts working again.

My question is: Why not make this behaviour based on a property. In the current situation the usability of the Small Business Role Center has degraded.

What do you think?