The application catalogue
Several UI routes behind one gateway are several applications: a visitor lands on one and has no way to reach the next. The catalogue is the list of the ones you offer, in the order you choose.
It is set under Application > Portal, it is global like the theme, and it ships empty.
One catalogue, three renderings
A three-state control decides what is drawn. The list itself does not move: going from a menu to a bar is a rendering decision, not a reason to retype your applications.
| Mode | What the visitor gets |
|---|---|
| None | No list. The user button and the pages Meerkat serves itself carry your brand's name and nothing to click. That is the right answer when there is one application |
| Links | The list, in the order you chose, in the user button's Applications submenu and on the data-plane pages |
| Portal | A navigation bar on every page of every application. The built-in pages then offer one link, the first entry the caller may open: the bar is the navigation, and a page outside the applications only needs a door |
Modules and containers
An entry is one of two things:
- a module - an application: it opens a UI route, and inherits that route's address and its access;
- a container - no route: a label, an icon and a description of its own, and modules inside it, its sub-modules. Clicking it opens the first sub-module the visitor may open, and a container none of whose sub-modules the visitor may open is not offered at all. A container holds modules, never another container.
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Route | a module's UI route. A container has none |
| Label | the name the entry is offered under. Required on a container; on a module, empty falls back to the route's name |
| Description | the entry's tooltip |
| Disabled | off for everyone, without removing it from the list |
In Portal mode an entry also carries an icon:
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Icon | a glyph picked from the console's bank, stored as SVG and drawn as a CSS mask - no icon font is ever loaded. Empty falls back to the label's initial |
In Links mode, a container's modules are listed in its place, in order.
The catalogue says what exists, the route says who sees it
An entry inherits the access of the route it binds to, so a visitor is offered only what their rights allow. No access rule is decided here: that would put a security decision in a display setting.
The payload served to the browser carries no rule either: the filtering happens before it is written, which is why there is nothing in the page to read or tamper with.
It is also why the catalogue is global rather than per organisation: it is already personalised, by the routes.
Link field. Three places could therefore name the same application, and since the list was derived from the routes, something had to guess which ones were the same thing - an installation commonly fronts one product with several routes, one per organisation or per version, which differ in what they proxy and never in where you go. So a new UI route no longer shows up on its own: you add it here. It is the same number of decisions as before, taken in one place.Header or rail
Portal mode only. One axis, and it swaps:
| Layout | Entries | Their children |
|---|---|---|
header |
a top strip of tabs | a rail |
rail |
a rail | a top strip of tabs |
The rail takes the side you choose, and that side always means something since one of the two surfaces is always a rail.
Entries render as the icon alone, the label alone, or both - one setting for the whole bar. The brand's application name can sit beside the logo; it is off by default, because the logo alone is the mark.
What the bar replaces
In Portal mode it takes the place of the per-route user button on every UI route. The button does not disappear: it moves into the bar, and loses its Applications submenu there, since that is now the bar itself. Navigation and the account menu are one surface, not two corners.
The bar is never drawn in an iframe: a page embedded elsewhere is not the place for navigation.
Technically it is a plain custom element with a shadow DOM, served like the user button, wearing the data plane's theme and the visitor's light or dark.
Editing it
In Links mode the console shows the list as what it is: numbered entries, two arrows for the order. In Portal mode it shows a live mock of the bar while you build it, so the layout is judged where it will be read rather than in a list of fields.
What is not built
- The badge channel. An entry carries a badge key and the slot is reserved, but nothing pushes a count onto it yet - that is planned on the live channel.
- Landing on the first reachable application. A visitor who cannot open the application they arrive on is not redirected to one they can.
- Drag and drop: reordering by hand, or dragging an entry to change level. The arrows do the job.
- A per-organisation arrangement. It would be the product's first per-tenant visual override, and the theme and branding are global today.