Overview of Extended Items
The Extended Items tab displays objects related to the currently selected object. Each related item is assigned a group name that represents the type of the object—for example, graphics, trends, reports, or schedules. The Extended Items tab is available in Engineering mode and can contain contextual links useful for configuration tasks.
Navigation
You can navigate to a view of each related item by clicking on the item. For instance, if you click a management station object, such as a graphic, Graphics Viewer displays the referenced graphic object. If you click an external item, such as a PDF file, Adobe Reader opens with the referenced file displayed. Other items that you can access include point types, Word documents, Excel documents, and URLs.
Display of Items
The Extended Items tabs displays the items used for most daily operations, plus additional links for configuration tasks. Extended Items contains two sets of buttons. You can toggle the first set of buttons, Links and Icons, which allows you to switch between text views or small images of the items in the list. The Links view is more compact than the Icons view, so more related items can be displayed with this view than with the Icons view. The display mode that is currently selected in System Browser determines how text displays. For example, text might be displayed as description, name, description plus name, or name plus description.
The second set of buttons, Group and Ungroup, allows you to switch between categories or flat-list views of the items in the list. The Group view shows items arranged by object type (analog input, digital output, schedules, graphics, reports, PDFs, Word files, web links, etc.) and is expanded by default, but which you can collapse as well. When the Group view is collapsed, the Links and Icons views are disabled. The Ungroup view displays all related items without displaying their corresponding group names.
If you select one object from System Browser, Extended Items displays all links associated with that object. If you select two or more objects from System Browser, Extended Items displays only those links that all selected objects have in common.
For example, you select three objects in System Browser with the following links:
Object | Links |
EastWingLabTemp | Monthly Energy Consumption Report |
WestWingOfficeTemp | Monthly Energy Consumption Report |
NorthWingOfficeTemp | Monthly Energy Consumption Report |
The result of this selection is that Extended Items displays only the Monthly Energy Consumption Report and the Third Floor Heating/Cooling Schedule links because they are common to all three objects. The Third Floor Temperature Trend link does not display because it is not common to all three selected objects. To view the Third Floor Temperature Trend link in this example, you would need to select either the EastWingLabTemp object or the WestWingLabTemp object.
The Extended Items tab displays objects related to the currently selected object. Each related item is assigned a group name that represents the object's type—for example, graphics, reports, or schedules.
Navigation
You can navigate to a view of each related item by clicking on the item. For instance, if you click a management station object, such as a graphic, Graphics Viewer displays the referenced graphic object. If you click an external item, such as a PDF file, Adobe Reader opens with the referenced file displayed. Other items that you can access include point types, Word documents, Excel documents, and URLs.
Display of Items
The Extended Items tabs displays the items used for most daily operations, plus additional links for configuration tasks. Extended Items contains two sets of buttons. You can toggle the first set of buttons, Links and Icons, which allows you to switch between text views or small images of the items in the list. The Links view is more compact than the Icons view, so more related items can be displayed with this view than with the Icons view. The display mode that is currently selected in System Browser determines how text displays. For example, text might be displayed as description, name, description plus name, or name plus description.
The second set of buttons, Group and Ungroup, allows you to switch between categories or flat-list views of the items in the list. The Group view shows items arranged by object type (analog input, digital output, schedules, graphics, reports, PDFs, Word files, web links, etc.) and is expanded by default, but which you can collapse as well. When the Group view is collapsed, the Links and Icons views are disabled. The Ungroup view displays all related items without displaying their corresponding group names.
If you select one object from System Browser, Extended Items displays all links associated with that object. If you select two or more objects from System Browser, Extended Items displays only those links that all selected objects have in common.
For example, you select three objects in System Browser with the following links:
Object | Links |
EastWingLab | Monthly Energy Consumption Report |
WestWingOffice | Monthly Energy Consumption Report |
NorthWingOffice | Monthly Energy Consumption Report |
The result of this selection is that Extended Items displays only the Monthly Energy Consumption Report and the Third Floor Heating/Cooling Schedule links because they are common to all three objects.
Maintenance of User Preferences
Extended Items stores the settings of the Group and Ungroup views and the Links and Icons views for each object that you interact with so that you do not need to continually adjust your settings as you navigate from one object to the next.
Deleting and Re-adding Points
Be careful about deleting and then re-adding points in your system since this can break the links in Extended Items.
For example, you select a point on a graphic, and the graphic itself displays as one of the links for that point in Extended Items. If you delete the point from the field panel, and then re-add it (re-import it using the Auto Discovery feature), the graphic will display the point, but the related items for the point will be lost. If you select the re-added point in System Browser, the graphic will not display.
In the case of graphics, you can restore the broken links using the Graphics Consistency Checker diagnostic tool.
If you delete points relating to camera devices, External Documents, and Management Station Schedules, your links will be permanently lost.
