About Adobe LiveCycle Workbench 10

Workbench is an integrated development environment (IDE) that developers use to create and manage LiveCycle applications and assets.

About the user interface

Workbench has several common features, such as the menu bar and toolbar. It also displays a collection of windows or panels, called views or editors. The collection of views and editors is called a perspective.

The menu bar provides access to a set of commands. The toolbar provides quick access to commands that you can frequently use to create processes and forms.

Views contain data entry fields, file hierarchy lists, buttons, and other such tools that you use to specify details about processes and forms. Many views offer additional commands in context menus, which you display by right-clicking in the view.

Perspectives

A perspective is a group of views and editors for accomplishing a specific type of task. Workbench includes several perspectives that are optimized for developing specific application assets:

  • Process Design (See Opening the Process Design perspective.)

  • Form Design (See Opening the Form Design perspective.)

  • Document Builder (See Getting Started with Document Builder)

  • Guide Design (See Guide Design perspective in Workbench)

  • Data Model (See Using data models with processes.)

    Workbench also provides the LiveCycle Runtime View perspective. This perspective is useful for seeing all of the assets that are active on the LiveCycle server. This perspective is useful when your environment includes assets created using LiveCycle and resources, processes, and event types that were created using previous versions. (See Leveraging legacy solutions in LiveCycle ES3.)

    You can switch to another perspective by selecting Window > Open Perspective or by clicking one of the perspective buttons in the toolbar. You can switch between perspectives freely, but only one is displayed at a time.

    The perspective that was last active is reactivated the next time you start Workbench.

    You can customize a perspective to suit your personal preferences by selecting, placing, and sizing the editors and views. Your personal preferences can change and are dependent on what you want to accomplish for your development tasks.

Views

A view, which is a tab within a window, contains a set of elements such as a navigation tree or fields for setting property values. Views include menus and toolbars. You can open and close views and dock them in other locations.

A perspective has a defined set of views. The views in a perspective support the tasks you perform in that perspective. For example, when you are creating processes, the views displayed in the Process Design perspective relate to drawing and configuring process diagrams.

Editors

An editor allows you to create and edit objects or files of various types, such as process diagrams and forms. The editor opens automatically when required. For example, if you open a form, the associated editor opens.

More than one editor can be open at once. Tabs in the editor area indicate the names of the objects or files that are currently open for editing. An asterisk (*) beside the name indicates that the file or object has unsaved changes.

As with views, you can open, close, and dock editors to suit your preferences.

Preferences

Preferences are available for personalizing the behavior of Workbench when you open assets. Select or deselect the following options and click Apply.

Automatically Open Associated Perspectives When Editing Assets:
Select to automatically switch to the perspective that is associated with the type of asset that you open. For example, when you open a process, the Process perspective is opened.

Perform Asset(s) Checkout Automatically:
Select to automatically check out assets when you open them.

Related software

As you learn about Workbench, be aware of the following related LiveCycle modules:

Related software

Description

LiveCycle server

The repository for process diagrams, forms, and other resources used in the business process. The server can be either a single server or a server cluster.

To work in Workbench, it is necessary to log in to a LiveCycle server.

User Management pages of the LiveCycle Administration Console

Use for creating user accounts and user groups, and configuring their security permissions. See Setting up and organizing users

Applications and Services pages of the Administration Console

Use for importing and configuring archive files that you create using Workbench. For more info see Applications and Services Administration Help.

Adobe® LiveCycle® Process Management 10 pages of Administration Console

Use for configuring server settings, and administering process instances at run time. For example, you can get information about stalled operations and task assignments. See Process Management Administration Help.

Adobe® LiveCycle® Workspace 10

A user-facing interactive portal from which users can initiate processes and work with forms in a process. As a developer, you can customize the appearance of Workspace, extend its components, and utilize its exposed components to customize it.

Adobe LiveCycle ES3 Samples

LiveCycle ES3 provides samples that demonstrate product features and common use cases. For complete information about the samples, including detailed descriptions and instructions about configuring and running them, see Samples.

Adobe Community Help Client (CHC)

The CHC is an AIR-based application that replaces the Eclipse help engine for Workbench and is the platform for the next generation of Adobe help delivery. CHC features include:

  • Always online

    If you have a network connection, the CHC accesses content from the web. This ensures that you access the most up-to-date-material. It can also work in local mode if there is no Internet connection.

  • Search-centric

    Use Community Help search, adobe.com search, or local search. Community Help search aggregates resources, including those from 3rd party sites. adobe.com search includes refinements to narrow your scope.

  • In-context navigation

    Provides a dynamically generated set of related links for key pages.

// Ethnio survey code removed