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Collections – saving records and queries for later

Users save records and queries they come back to in collections – their own ones and the ones of the groups they belong to. This chapter describes what users see, which permissions and settings switch the feature on, and where the data is kept.

It is intended for administrators who roll out collections to their users.

1. Collections at a glance

A collection is a named list of saved records and saved queries, like the saved folders users know from social media and video platforms.

Collection Who sees it Who can change it
Own collection – created by the user with "New collection" Only the user The user: rename, delete, save and remove entries
Team collection – one for every group the user is a member of All members of the group All members: save and remove entries. The collection itself exists with the group and cannot be renamed or deleted here

What a collection holds:

Entry Saved from Opens as
A record The bookmark button in the header of a record The record with the default form of its entity
A query "Save query" on a query result page, in the query editor of a grid or list block on a dashboard, or in the custom search of the global search A query result page with the saved conditions, shown with the grid or list it was saved from

Everything is reached through the collections button (the bookmark icon) in the top app bar, next to the search.

2. Switching collections on

Collections are off until a role allows them. Three things are needed:

  1. Permissions in the tab "Permissions" of a role (see Roles and permissions):

    Permission Allows
    "Use collections" Seeing the collections button and the saved entries, opening them. Required for everything else
    "Save records to collections" The bookmark button in the record header; saving and removing records
    "Save queries to collections" The "Save query" button; saving, updating and removing queries
    "Create and manage own collections" Creating, renaming and deleting own collections. Without it, users can only use their team collections

    All four are part of "System Administrator" and denied by default.

  2. Entities whose records may be saved: in the entity editor, tab "Searching", switch on "Allow Saving To Collections" (see Entities and fields). Without it, the record header of that entity shows no bookmark button. Saving queries does not depend on this setting.

  3. Groups, if team collections are wanted: a user is a member of the groups listed for them in the group member entity (section 6). A user without groups has only their own collections.

3. Saving a record

The header of a record – the band with the title and the previous/next arrows – shows a bookmark button when the entity allows saving and the user may save records. The icon shows whether the record is already saved in one of the user's collections.

A click opens the list of collections, each with a check box:

  • Checking a box saves the record to that collection at once; unchecking removes it. A record can be in several collections.
  • "New collection" at the bottom creates a collection and saves the record to it in one step (needs "Create and manage own collections").

The button is only shown on a record page. Records opened in a dialog, on a dashboard or inside a related items block have no bookmark button.

The title shown in the collections menu is the title of the record at the time it was saved. It is refreshed whenever the record is opened again by a user who has it saved.

4. Saving a query

"Save query" sits next to "Edit Query" on a query result page, and next to "Search" in the custom search of the global search. It saves the conditions as they are at that moment – including what the user changed with "Edit Query" – under a name of the user's choice, into the chosen collection.

  • A saved query opens as a query result page. From a query result page it keeps the grid of that page, from a grid or list block on a dashboard the grid or list of that block; from the global search it opens with the "Default Grid" of the entity.
  • A query that is saved already – the page was opened from the collection, or the stored query was saved before – shows a marked save button, and its dialog offers "Update", so a refined search replaces the saved one instead of adding a second entry. The collection selected in the dialog is where the entry ends up, which is how a saved query is moved to another collection. "Save as new" adds a second entry.
  • The saved query is a copy. Changing the stored query definition in the Admin Studio later does not change what users saved.

A saved query page has its own address, /collections/query/<entry id>, so it can be reloaded and opened in a new tab. Only users who can use the collection it belongs to can open the address.

5. The collections menu

The bookmark button in the top app bar opens the collections menu:

  • Left: the user's own collections, then the team collections, each with the number of entries. Own collections can be renamed and deleted here; deleting a collection deletes its entries.
  • Right: the entries of the selected collection, newest first. A click opens the entry, the icon next to it opens it in a new tab, "Remove" takes it out of the collection. Entries of a team collection show who added them.
  • Search saved items at the top searches across all collections; "Records" and "Queries" narrow the list to one kind.

The menu remembers the collection the user looked at last.

The collections and their entries are read when the user first needs them and kept for the session; opening the menu reads them again. What a colleague adds to a team collection therefore shows up when the menu is opened, not necessarily on a record page that was already open.

Entries that lead nowhere: a record that was deleted, or that the user may not read any more, is shown as "No longer available" in the user's own collections so it can be removed. In a team collection such entries are hidden – a member who may not read a record does not learn that it exists. When a record is deleted, nexxcite removes it from every collection.

6. Where the data is kept

Collections are stored in two entities that nexxcite creates on the first start, like the user profile entity:

Entity Flag Holds
"Collection" SpecialPurpose.Collection One record per own collection: "Name", "OwnerRecId" (the user profile record of the owner), "Description"
"CollectionItem" SpecialPurpose.CollectionItem (and SpecialPurpose.JoinTable) One record per entry: the collection or group it belongs to ("ParentTypeId", "ParentRecId"), the saved record ("ChildTypeId", "ChildRecId"), "ItemType" (Record or Query), "Title", and for a query its conditions in "Payload" and the grid or list in "GridDefId" / "ListDefId"

Team collections have no record in the "Collection" entity: an entry of a team collection points at the group record itself.

The two group entities nexxcite creates alongside, "Group" and "GroupMember" (flags SpecialPurpose.Group and SpecialPurpose.GroupMembers), hold the groups and their members. An installation that already has entities with these flags keeps them; nexxcite only creates what is missing.

Because they are ordinary entities, you can work with them like with any other: add fields, build relationships from a collection to the entities it holds (the item entity is a join table), show them in grids and run business rules on them. Do not remove the flags or the flagged fields – without them collections stop working. Users with "Read records of entities without read limit" denied need a read limit for both entities in their roles.

7. Behaviour at a glance

Situation Effect
The user has none of the four permissions No collections button, no bookmark button, no "Save query"
The entity does not allow saving No bookmark button on its records; its records can still appear in saved queries
The user is removed from a group The team collection and its entries disappear from the menu; the entries stay for the other members
A record in a collection is deleted The entry is removed from every collection
A record in a team collection is hidden from a member by a read limit The member does not see the entry
A collection is deleted Its entries are deleted with it
A team collection's group record is deleted The entries remain in the item entity but are not shown anywhere; remove them like other records

8. Limitations

  • Own collections cannot be shared with other users; sharing works through groups only.
  • Entries cannot be sorted by hand; they are listed newest first.
  • Saving is offered on record pages, query result pages and the custom search only – not from grid rows, global search results or related items blocks.
  • A saved query stores conditions and sorting, not the column filters or the layout of the grid.
  • AI assistants do not read or fill collections.