Introduction

The Tallis Web Enactment application dynamically generates standard web pages that take the end-user through a process-description’s component tasks.

In most cases this is adequate, but if required, the standard web pages can be replaced by web pages customised for an individual process-description. Often the ability to use a pre-compiled, customised page would greatly enhance the enactment and user experience. Customised pages enable more control over the layout of enactment web pages and over the way information is present to the user. They provide the ability to add additional functions and tools to complement the process-description, such as images, links to further information and supporting material, widgets and even applets to aid the user during the enactment process.

Customising the standard web enactment interface can involve as little as modifying some task attributes in a XML mapping file (tutorials 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5). Otherwise, customised pages can be created for specific tasks, supplementing the standard html page with customised content or with an applet (tutorial 6). Apart from modifying specific task pages, it is also possible to modify the web application's look & feel (tutorial 7).

We hope that when you finish these tutorials you will be able to:

• Display a drop-down list for a source with range values (tutorial 1)
• Modify the order in which sources are displayed (tutorial 2)
• Introduce dependencies between sources(tutorial 3)
• Display several actions in a single page (tutorial 4)
• Display several enquiries in a single page (tutorial 5)
• Replace the standard task html page with a customised task page (tutorial 6)
• Modify the look & feel of the web enactment using style sheets (tutorial 7)

Before You Start

1. Please note that these tutorials require basic understanding of PROforma, up to the level of creating and running simple process-descriptions. You might want to start with the Create a Computerised Guideline From Start To Finish tutorial before returning to these tutorials.
2. In order to do the customisation tutorials, you have to download and install the Customisable Tallis Web Enactment Suite.
3. Make sure Tomcat is running (click on the Start button and select Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services > Apache Tomcat > Start the service).
4. You will also need to edit XML, JSP and CSS files. You can edit these in a simple text editor (e.g., Microsoft Notepad), or you can download special tools for editing such files. XMLSpy is a recommended freeware for editing XML (which can also be used for editing the other file types). TopStyle Lite is a freeware for editing style sheets.
5. In each tutorial you will be using a different process-description. You can either create that process-description yourself according to the instructions, or you can find these process-descriptions in the World > Tutorials > Customisation_samples folder in the ACL Web Repository (for more information on accessing the web repository see Publishing & Web Repositories).
6. Although the web enactment customisation tutorials can be done in any order, it is recommended that you start with the first tutorial, as it details some basic processes that serve as the basis for the other tutorials.

Now all that's left to do is launch Tallis Composer, and click here to start tutorial 1.