Gateway UI Hierarchy Changes

The original specifications for the Integrator framework called for a maximum of 5 channels at each remote site. Since its release, we’ve seen a gradual ramp-up in channel count and feature requirements, with some on-premise Connexion installations now transitioning to cloud-based Integrator deployments. It’s now common to have integrators with more than 100 channels.

The 15.1 (and previous) versions of the gateway UI were structured in a way that made it quite slow and challenging to use with high remote-agent count coupled with a high channel count. The original hierarchy was Group > Tab > Remote Agent > Channel.

16.0 has changed the hierarchy to Group > Remote Agent > Tab > Channel. The primary advantage to this structure is the ability to better organize channels in a high-channel-count environment. The secondary advantage is the Gateway UI now has a very similar feel and usage as the Connexion UI (with more Connexion-only functionality making the jump to the Gateway).

The new Gateway UI does take some getting-used-to, as visually it is quite different. The UI space is now fully dedicated to a single remote agent, and switching between remote agents is done in a similar fashion to switching between Connexion instances.

Toolbar / Header area

Open

1. The Gateway drop-down (no change to 15.1) - select the desired gateway instance.

2. The Group drop-down (no change to 15.1) - select the desired group. Remote agents are now direct children of groups.

3. The Remote Agent drop-down - select the desired remote agent. The rest of UI is scoped to the selected remote agent. Note the remote agent drop-down displays all remote agents within the currently selected group. Additionally, icons are displayed which signify the authorization state of the remote agent.

Open	Grey shield: Remote agent which has never connected (and isn’t authorized). Green Shield: Remote agent which has connected but hasn’t been authorized. Empty Triangle: Disconnected remote agent. Solid Triangle: Connected remote agent.

4. The empty grey space of the top bar can be used to pop the full remote agent context menu. The remote agent context menu is also available by clicking the context menu icon (8).

5. The connected state of each remote agent component.

6. The gateway the selected remote agent is connected to.

7. The lock state of the selected remote agent. Orange is read-only, green is locked for editing. The same keystrokes as Connexion apply (ctrl + enter).

8. Pop the remote agent context menu.

9, The remote agent dashboard (new). Each remote agent now has a channel-level dashboard (similar to Connexion) where you can see the performance of each channel within the remote agent.

10. Remote agent tabs. These work in the exact same fashion as Connexion.

Main Window

By moving the remote agent selection to the header area, almost the entire UI can be dedicated to the currently selected remote agent. This makes the UI effectively the same as Connexion, with the channels pane at the top and device configuration pane below. This structure is much faster to layout and paint than the 15.1 structure, with much faster navigation.

Like 15.1, the bottom pane context can be switch to the files browser, remote agent information, and plugin browser by using the icons in the middle bar.