Views browser and display modes

The Topology Studio landing page is the views browser: it lists every topology view your roles are allowed to read, and it is where you open, create, duplicate, export, import and delete views. Starting with TrackMe 2.4.15, the browser offers three display modes — Cards, Compact cards and List — a category filter next to the text search, and a deployment-wide default display mode that administrators choose in the System settings.

The three display modes

The View selector, next to the Category filter, switches between the three layouts. All three show the same views — the server filters the list against your roles before it reaches the browser — and all three honour the same permissions for every action; they differ in density and in how you scan the list.

Mode	What each view shows	Best for
Cards (shipped default)	Rich tiles grouped under category headings: display name and view_id, the description (two lines), node and edge counts, when and by whom the view was last updated, a collapsible Roles summary (view roles and edit roles), a read-only badge when you cannot edit the view, the integrity badge when findings exist, and the action buttons — Edit, Duplicate, Export, Delete.	A handful of views per team, where the description and the last-update attribution matter at a glance.
Compact cards	Narrower tiles, still grouped by category: name, view_id, node and edge counts, a read-only mention when applicable and the integrity badge. Descriptions, update attribution and role details are omitted; the actions fold into a single Actions menu.	Many views on one screen while keeping the visual, category-grouped layout — a wall of small tiles you recognise by name.
List	One flat, striped table — no category grouping — ordered by view name by default, with sortable View, Category, Nodes, Edges, Updated, Access and Integrity columns and a Shortcuts column with direct Open / Edit buttons plus an overflow menu for Duplicate, Export and Delete.	Large estates: scan dozens of views, sort by what was updated last, by integrity status or by access level, and open the right one in one click.

Cards

Cards is the layout Topology Studio has always used, refined in 2.4.15. Views are grouped under their category heading (the uncategorised bucket first, then categories alphabetically — the grouping is case-insensitive, so Demo and demo share one heading). Click anywhere on the card body to open the view; click Roles to expand the two role lists (View and Edit); the read-only badge tells you that you can consume the view but not modify it.

Compact cards

Compact cards keep the category grouping and shrink each tile to what identifies the view: its name, identifier, node and edge counts, and its integrity and read-only state. Everything you could do from a full card is still available from the Actions menu on the tile, filtered by your permissions on that view.

List

List renders the views as a single table you can sort by any column — click a column header to sort ascending, click again to reverse; ties are broken by view name. Category grouping is intentionally dropped in this mode: the Category column is sortable instead, and the Category filter above the table narrows the rows.

Column	Content
View	The display name (click it to open the view) with the view_id beneath.
Category	The view’s category, or Uncategorised.
Nodes / Edges	The saved graph’s node and edge counts.
Updated	How long ago the view was last saved, and by whom.
Access	Read & write or Read only — your effective access to that view. Hover the badge to see the view roles and, when you can write, the edit roles.
Integrity	The persisted integrity verdict: a badge with the number of critical or warning findings (click it to open the integrity panel), No issues, or Not reported when the view has not been checked yet.
Shortcuts	Open (the eye icon), Edit (the pencil — only when you can author and have write access to the view) and an overflow menu with Duplicate, Export and Delete, each shown only when permitted.

Hint

The List table has a minimum width and scrolls horizontally on narrow screens rather than collapsing its columns — the View column stays readable first.

Searching and filtering

Two filters sit above the views in every mode, and combine:

• Search — a free-text match against every human-meaningful field of the view metadata: display name, identifier, description, category, and the view/edit role lists. Typing prod finds the views categorised Production as well as the ones whose name or description mentions it.

• Category — a dropdown listing All categories, then Uncategorised and every category present in the views you can see, alphabetically. The choices come from the full list you have access to, so an active search never hides the other categories from the dropdown.

The counter next to the filters reports N of M views whenever a filter is active. When nothing matches, the browser says so and offers Clear filters to reset both the search and the category in one click. If a refresh or a deletion removes the category you had selected, the selection is kept — visibly — until you clear it, rather than silently showing unrelated views.

Note

Search and category selection are session-local: they reset when you leave the page. The display mode, on the other hand, is remembered — see below.

What is remembered, and where

Your display mode choice is a personal preference: the selector writes it into TrackMe’s shared browser preferences cookie (trackme_user_preferences, the same cookie that carries your other UI preferences). It therefore:

• survives page reloads and reopening Topology Studio;

• is per browser — a different browser or workstation starts from the deployment default until you pick a layout there too;

• wins over the deployment default once set, even if an administrator changes the default later.

A missing, corrupt or unsupported cookie value is ignored and the browser falls back to the deployment default, then to Cards. Browsers that block cookies can still switch layout for the current visit — the choice simply is not persisted.

Deployment default — the administrator’s choice

From TrackMe 2.4.15, administrators choose the initial layout for the whole deployment under Configuration → System settings → Topology Studio → Default views display mode (topology_views_default_display_mode in the [topology_studio] stanza of trackme_settings.conf): Cards, Compact cards or List.

The resolution order is simple:

1. the user’s own saved choice, when the preferences cookie holds a valid one;

2. otherwise the deployment default from the System settings;

3. otherwise Cards (when the setting is unavailable or invalid).

Changing the deployment default affects new users and users who never picked a layout; it does not reset the personal choices already stored in other users’ browsers. Pick Compact cards for deployments that expose many views but still benefit from a visual, category-grouped layout, and List when operators mostly scan, sort and open views from a dense table. See System-wide settings for the complete list of deployment-wide Topology Studio controls.

Permissions, in every mode

The display mode never changes what you can do — only how the controls are presented (buttons on a card, an Actions menu on a compact card, the Shortcuts column in the list). Every action is gated the same way in the three layouts, and re-enforced server-side:

Action	Requires
Open	Read access to the view — every view listed qualifies.
Export	Read access to the view — every view listed qualifies.
Duplicate	TrackMe power permissions (the copy belongs to you); read access to the source is enough.
Edit	Power permissions and write access to that view.
Delete	Power permissions and write access to that view.
Create, Build with AI, Import	Power permissions; the buttons are hidden from user-tier roles.

When the deployment is in license read-only mode, the authoring actions disappear in every layout while opening, exporting and reading stay available — see Licensing.

See also

• Authoring topologies — creating a view, choosing its category and its view/edit roles.

• View integrity and consistency checks — what the integrity badge and column report, and how to repair a view.

• Administration — the role model behind the Access column and the deployment-wide settings.