Share Page Content in Knack
Updated: Sep 24, 2022
Instead of building similar content on multiple pages for different user roles, you can build a single page, then share it among the different users. Saves a bunch of time when building your Knack app. Let's take a look at how to do this.
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Full Transcript
hey Dave Parish here with Knack Builders
got another video for you hey do me a
favor if you like these uh like the
video and better yet subscribe to my
channel that's helpful but today's topic
is
um
get it right here sharing page content
now typically when you're building on
your pages side it's best practice to
have um
the high level Pages be built around
different user roles but sometimes you
have content that you want all the users
to see
um one way you can do that is build that
content in each of the user roles or you
if it's the same content you can even
build it in one and then copy it over to
the other ones
um but that's not really that often is
tedious because you have to manage
multiple Pages if you have to uh change
content or you find a typo and you have
three user roles you got to go do it
three times there's another approach to
that where you can create a completely
separate page section
and share it with all
the uh different users it's a big Time
Saver
um and it works really well I'm going to
go through how to do that and I'll be
back in a minute thanks
[Music]
okay here I go
a topic today shared page content
let me call up an app
thank you
right here this is an app it's for a
university a big university that gives
out grants people
academics or other schools can apply for
these grants
and we have several user rules
this took some I I set this up on
purpose sometimes you find out later you
have a bunch of years or you add on user
rules and they want to see the same
content too but the content we're
talking about here is the details of the
application itself
so the admins who are processing the
applications want to see you know all
the details on the detail page uh and
there's a couple other user roles that
want to see pretty much the same stuff
so I might do another video on best
practice of this how you arrange pages
um and how they revolve around the user
world
but we don't want to build this stuff
out a bunch of times here's the content
by the way
it's got all the boilerplate stuff about
it who's applying
and then a bunch of all the stuff that
they uh filled out a lot of stuff here
so here's my point we're not going to
build this a bunch of times we're going
to build it once
so in this case I create a new page
section plus page here
um
and I just called applications it's not
a user real quick it's where all the
details of the applications are going to
reside
and where anyone can get to them they're
going to actually to the same page
now go here
's the key to this and follow this first
when you're setting up the login
you're going to put whatever user role
you want to access that into here
okay
and now
I'm gonna go to the first level page
here
we're going to put in a table
of applications
and by the way
this is key this is all applications
it's not uh based on the logged in user
or anything it's every every application
there is
and the point here is no one's going to
see this page you don't have to pretty
this up you don't have to do anything
what we're they're going to see is the
detail page
now how do you make no one being able to
see this page
as soon as you make this first page
go to settings
well I'm sorry you're going to go at the
top level applications login
and you're going to go to settings
and you're going to uncheck these two by
default they're both going to be checked
meaning if this was a page
it would appear as a tab up top we don't
want anyone to see this this is just
allows us access to all the applications
and
then we're going to put all the
applications on it
then we're going to
create our content however we want now
actually as an aside
the the applications there's several
types of applications so we have a whole
bunch of content on this page
and
representing all the different the guts
of all the different types of
application you can see this goes on and
on
but we use page rules
to hide and show certain things we're
going to hide and show
you know if it's this type of
application
we're going to hide all the other type
of applications and so on and so on so
uh but that's a little too much detail
for this now here's how you access it
let's just go to admin home
this is a table of all the applications
we're going to go
to the
here's what we do instead of saying Hey
I want to create
here action
I want to create a new detail page I
said what is what you'd use if you were
creating the actual content on that user
role and if you were going to build it
the same way
for another user role you'd also
recreate that detail or you could copy
it but it's a detail page we're not
going to do that
we're going to use Link to another page
and then we're going to go find you're
going to find it down here that's just
going to be application details right
here View application details
um and then
it's going to direct us
to
this application detail page right here
and this even works if there's let's say
it's sales people or something they want
to see the details of something but
sales people are only assigned to their
leads or something
um when you're at so the first table
that they see
uh let's just give an example here
let's say this is they only see in their
records so they're not seeing them all
but when you go to the detail page of
that big new table we wait with all of
them it's just they're gonna only have
access to the stuff they had assigned to
there's a detail page only taken to
their stuff
now another thing you can do with this
this is our application detail
notice here
there's some functions
about these are what the admin people do
when they're processing the application
but some of these other user rules we
don't want them doing this we just want
them to look at it so again page rules
which are exceptionally powerful we can
set a page rule that says hey
let's go find one
well there's a bunch of them here the
point is if
um page rule would be if
I'll do a broad one if account user role
is not admin
we're going to hide this content we're
going to hide that content we're going
to hide this content so even though
we're trying to create a page here that
everyone can access we can have some
different functionality uh that hides
and show based on the user role and
still keep that one page
uh that we can manage again and we need
to make changes there's a typo whatever
we can do it one time
uh that's the gist of this and I'm going
to put one caveat of this our special
page here
that has all
the applications now there's nothing
really sensitive in this
but if you had sensitive data
stuff when someone clicked a detail View
and it's bringing up Social Security
numbers or potato or whatever we're
going to consider sensitive
um let's go to
well the point is the URL up top
not this you are this is you on page but
in the live app
if someone was clever
they could figure out
the app or the whole URL structure and
fiddling around
they might be able to figure out how to
get to this actual page
um that's not good uh
so if you have real sensitive
information I'd do it the long hallway
and build it out separately within each
each user role that's that own content
and no one's gonna be able to get to
other stuff so that's what I got
uh I use this all the time
if it's best if you if you know all your
user rolls
and you can plan it out and make these
uh that's best but a lot on a lot of
builds
you just pop oh I need this user well I
didn't tell you about that or it's and
you start adding them
but if you think you're gonna need it
build it out like this up front and and
then it works well okay folks appreciate
it thanks