Workspace

The workspace is designed to provide instant access to the artifacts and real-time status data most important to you. For example, it could provide at-a-glance access to server status, recently-used environments, commonly-used test and service virtualization artifacts, errors and risks that should be reviewed, or other widgets that help you prioritize your work. Each team member (with a unique login) can create their own workspace tailored to their particular needs and preferences. 

The workspace is shown by default when you open CTP. You can access it any time by going to the main page for the Environment Manager module.  

For more details, see Customizing Your Workspace.

Module Selector

Use the module selector to determine which module (e.g., Environment Manager, Service Virtualization, etc.) is currently active. 

The page content below the top navigation will change depending on what module is selected.

Top Navigation

Use the navigation items in the top right corner of the page to access administrative functions, help, and user account information.

Tab Bars

The tab bar in the left side of the page provides access to the available tabs applicable to each module. For example, the Service Virtualization module's tab bar provides access to the Navigation, Events, and Reports tabs. 

Tab Icons

Icons within each tab let you perform operations on the associated artifacts or content. These icons will vary based on what you have selected in the active tab.

Show/Hide Active Tab (Hamburger) Icon

Click the hamburger menu to hide or show the active tab and associated UI elements. 

If you hide a tab, you can still access core commands using the shortcut icons added to the top left of the UI. 

Page-Level Action Menus

Many pages have a "page-level action menu" that allows you to perform relevant actions. For example, this is the page-level action menu for a Component page.

Links to Alternative Page Views

If an alternative view of data for a given page is available, it can be accessed by clicking the links at the top of the page.

As a rule of thumb, actions that open a dialog or change the existing page are available via page-level action menus. Those that open a separate page are available from top-of-page links. For example, page-level action menus cover actions like Modify, Delete, Refresh, Disable, Subscribe, etc.. Top-of-page links provide access to pages such as Change Impact Report, Messages, Modification History, Configure Permissions, etc..

Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are available to help you find your way back to the related environment and system from lower level pages.

Breadcrumbs are also available to help you quickly navigate across related items in the test scenario or virtual asset management pages.

Asset Health Alerts

Context-sensitive alerts notify you about "health issues" related to the resource or asset you’re working with (recent changes and/or potential problems). For instance, if a health issue has been detected for a component in one of your system's environments, you will see warnings within that environment, as well as for the system from which that environment is derived.

For more details on asset health, see Monitoring Environment Health.

Locks

Artifacts used in CTP (virtual assets, message proxies, JDBC controllers, and other files hosted on a Virtualize Server) can be locked through the Virtualize desktop or REST API. Repositories can also be locked through TDA. 

CTP alerts you to locked artifacts by displaying a lock icon in the following areas:

• At the top of the page where the locked artifact can be configured
• In the Virtual Assets page—next to the locked artifact in the tree
• In the Test Scenarios page—next to the locked artifact in the tree
• In the Manage Instances page—next to any component that uses a locked artifact
• In the Environment diagram—above any component that is completely locked 
• In the Environment diagram—in the label of any component instance the current user cannot provision as a result of a lock
• In any table listing specific types of artifacts (e.g., proxies, virtual assets, etc.)

A locked artifact cannot be modified in CTP—unless you are the one who locked it. See the tooltip for the lock icon to determine which user added the lock and view additional lock details (for example, is the entire component locked, or just one associated artifact?). 

Note that after a user locks or unlocks Virtualize server artifacts using Virtualize desktop, that Virtualize server needs to be refreshed in CTP in order for CTP to show those lock changes.

For details on how to use locking/unlocking functionality, see Artifact Locking.