Screen Creation Assistant
The Screen Creation Assistant is a guided wizard that builds a complete screen from database tables in a single pass. You pick a base table (and any joined tables), arrange the columns into dialog tabs, review the dictionary entries, optionally place a menu item — and the assistant writes the connector query, the screen, its dialog and the menu entry together.
It is the fast path to a working screen: what you would otherwise assemble by hand across the Connectors, Dictionary, Screens and Menus pages, the assistant produces in one reviewed step.
The assistant is a superuser tool. It appears in the sidebar, just above Monitoring, only for superusers. It opens as a modal over your current page — there is no separate route.
This wizard is deterministic — it reads your schema and generates standard SQL and config; it does not call a model. It is a different feature from the AI Assistant chat drawer, which proposes the same kinds of artifacts conversationally. Use the wizard when you already know the tables; use the AI chat when you want to explore.
The five-stop pass
Before the five stops above, a short Target step asks for the Source connector (a SQL connector) and the App the new screen and menu belong to. From there the assistant walks you through:
1 · Tables & joins
Pick a Base table from the connector. Optionally add a joined table — choose the join type and the ON conditions — or start from a catalog preset that pre-wires the joins for you. The assistant introspects each table's live columns so the next step has real fields to work with.
2 · Columns → tabs
A two-pane layout: Available columns on one side, your dialog tabs on the other. Assign columns into tabs, add / rename / remove tabs, and mark the key columns (the ones that identify a row). The grid columns and the dialog form are both derived from these choices.
3 · Dictionary
The assistant scans the base table and proposes the dictionary entries the screen needs. Entries that already exist are shown but greyed out and left untouched — only the missing ones are pre-ticked to be created. For each proposed entry you can set the Label, Format, Rule, Rule value, Lookup params (for a UDC / lookup rule) and Default. This is the same scan table used by the Dictionary editor.
4 · Menu
Tick Add a menu item under this app to place the screen in the navigation, then set the Menu label, an optional Parent menu and an Icon. Leave it unticked to create the screen without a menu entry — useful for a screen reached only as a nested tab.
5 · Review & create
Name the Table / query and the Screen label, check the Will create summary and the generated read-SQL preview, then Create screen. On success the assistant reports the screen is created and live, and offers to open it.
What it creates
In one validated pass — nothing is written unless every piece validates — the assistant adds:
| Artifact | What lands |
|---|---|
| Connector query | A new table on the source connector with a get query, plus post / put / delete write queries so the screen is editable. |
| Dictionary entries | The proposed entries you kept (existing ones are never overwritten). |
| Screen + dialog | The screen under the chosen app, with its grid columns and an embedded dialog whose tabs hold the form fields. |
| Menu item | Optional — a leaf under the app's menu pointing at the new screen. |
A table or screen whose name already exists is refused rather than overwritten. Because the assistant snapshots the configuration before it writes, the change is captured in config history exactly like a manual edit, so you can review or roll it back.
Catalog presets
A catalog preset is a ready-made starting point: a base table plus pre-wired joins, so an operator skips browsing the schema. When the connector has presets, the Tables & joins step shows Start from a catalog preset and a Browse catalog button that opens a searchable list grouped by family. Selecting one introspects each table's columns and wires the joins — including resolving each join condition from its data item to the real physical column.
Presets are operator-managed files under the deployment's presets/ directory; each file holds one or more [[presets]] entries with a base table and its joined tables. They are configuration, not code — add your own to seed the screens your team builds most often.
Liberty Apps ships a JD Edwards Address Book catalog (config/presets/jdedwards/address_book.toml): the F0101 master left-joined to who's-who, phones, email, addresses, customer and supplier, plus each related table as its own base preset. The join conditions are written by data item (e.g. F0101.AN8); the assistant resolves the JDE prefix to the real column (ABAN8, AIAN8, …) so the joins auto-fill. A preset table can name a query (a SELECT * FROM <table> already defined on the connector) so the assistant reads its columns by describing that query — much faster on a large JDE catalog.
Tips & best practices
- Start from a preset when one fits. It is the difference between picking one entry and hand-wiring five joins.
- Mark your keys in step 2. The key columns drive the update / delete queries; a screen without keys is read-only by construction.
- Review the dictionary, don't rubber-stamp it. The scan infers the format from the column type (or, on JDE, from the data dictionary); a quick pass over the Format and Rule columns saves a round-trip later.
- Open the screen and refine it in the Designer. The assistant gets you a working screen fast; nested tabs, conditional fields and actions are then yours to add in the Screen Designer.