This article demonstrates how to hide default menus in App Studio.

Pega Infinity version used: 24.2

Client use case

App Studio is a low-code authoring platform used by citizen developers.  By default, App Studio comes with a default set of menus (Overview, Case Types, Data, Channels, Library, Users, Settings, and Search). 

However, our client was concerned that giving too much access to their citizen developers may cause unwanted changes to their mission-critical application. 

Our requirement was to hide some of the default menus and give only what their citizen developers need in App Studio.  In our case, they only needed the Case Types page to author Pega questionnaires and ability to preview and test their questionnaire configurations.

Configurations

Step 1 - Override pyShouldExtensionBeLoaded When rule.

Pega platform provides an extension point (pyShouldExtensionBeLoaded When rule) to safely override and hide the App Studio menus.

For example, in order to hide the Overview menu, save the When rule to the Pega-Ext-ExpExplorer-Overview class and in your application ruleset and set the return value to False.

Likewise, save the When rule to each of the following respective classes to hide the rest of the App Studio menus.

Step 2 - Hide the Overview page.

In addition, client may want to remove the Overview page which loads as a default home page when users first log in to App Studio because the page might have some links that citizen developers should not access. 

In order to accomplish this, override the pyDefaultToOverviewPage When rule and set the return value to False.

Validations

Step 1 - Login to App Studio.

Step 2 - Verify that the user has access to the Case Types menu only and has an ability to test his/her configurations. 

In our example, since the Case Worker portal is displayed as a default home screen (instead of the Overview page), users can launch a new case type to test their configurations.

Additional note

• The ability to hide unwanted menus/links in App Studio (as described in this article) from citizen developers may further enable client organization to adopt the low-code authoring platform.
• The configurations shown in this article require a developer support.  In a future enhancement, it will be nice to see an App Studio Admin (who is also a citizen developer) configuring a security access of citizen developers in App Studio without having to go through the developer support.