How To Cloud Studio: Create navigation link to another thing type using name/description field

[Former Member]

My first blog post - Please let me know if I can improve this somehow!

You may have noticed that in standard OWL list panes they include the name fields which link to the other Thing Types/BO Data for easy navigation as below. We had a requirement to link to standard SAP contact screen for a custom BO OWL that we defined.

I couldn't find any documentation on how to do this so I had to reverse engineer the standard screen.

I will use the example of Contact Name linking to Contact Thing Type!

These are the steps to follow:

1. Open up UI designer and navigate to your data model tab. Create two fields. ContactName and ContactNameIdentifier
   
2. ContactName will become our link field. Make sure this field is bound to the UUID of the contact so that the navigation works correctly. I now bind it to my association to the business partner.
   
3. We now need to bind the ContactNameIdentifier field. This field is just a placeholder for the Contact Name/description. In my example I will bind to the 'BusinessPartnerFormattedName'
   
   
4. Open up the designer and add a column to your list pane (if applicable). Bind your new column to your ContactName (UUID field).
   
5. You must now change two more important settings.
   First change the DisplayType under Appearance to 'Link'.
   
6. Secondly you must change the 'PresentationMode' under CCTS Information to DescriptionOnly.
   
7. Go back to your DataModel Tab. Select your 'ContactName' field.
   Select the 'Identifier Description Datafield' and bind this to your 'ContactNameIdentifier' field that you set up in step 3. This will bring through the contact name as per the requirement.
   
8. Now we need to associate to the contact thing type so our link takes us to the right place. While you still have 'ContactName' selected, look at the bottom of the screen and you will see Thing Type Information. Change the Mode to static and select COD_CONTACT_TT (Standard SAP).
   
   You have the option here to use SAP standard or you could even link to your own custom thing types inside your solution:
   
9. Save and activate the screen. Time to test our work!
   
   
10. If you see contact name similar to the above screenshot, click the link and make sure you can navigate correctly to your associated thing type!