Mobile: Manage navigator should respect sigoption, hidden, and disabled attributes for role-based applications

Hi Jordan,
Thanks for the update.

Thank you for reporting this behavior and for the detailed configuration examples.

We investigated this in both MAS Mobile 9.1 (latest 9.1.x patch) and MAS Mobile 9.2, and we were not able to reproduce a defect where the Manage left navigation ignores valid security configuration. Based on testing and design review, the observed behavior is by design rather than a product defect.

How menu visibility is evaluated

• Menu items in the Manage left navigation are built at application publish time, not evaluated dynamically at runtime.

• During the build/publish process, menu entries are written to the MAXAPPSPAGE table based on the application configuration.

As a result:

• sigoption

  • This is the supported and recommended mechanism for controlling menu visibility.

  • sigoption values are evaluated at runtime and are respected by the Manage left navigation in both 9.1 and 9.2.

• hidden="true"

  • If set explicitly to true, the menu item is removed from the side navigation at build time.

  • Expressions inside hidden (for example hidden="{app.state.xxx}") are not evaluated and are not supported.

• disabled

  • This attribute was never intended to hide menu items.

  • It is designed to make an item read-only, not remove it from navigation.

Why this differs from the RBA navigator

The RBA navigator and application pages are rendered when the application is already running, which allows them to evaluate certain runtime conditions. In contrast, the Manage side navigation is rendered before the application loads, so it cannot evaluate expressions or page state at runtime. Because of this architectural difference, expression-based hiding cannot be supported for the Manage navigator.

Recommended approach

To achieve consistent, role-based menu control for technician applications:

• Use security-based configuration with sigoption to control which menu items are visible to specific roles.

• Avoid using expression-based hidden or disabled attributes for Manage navigation, as these are not evaluated and are not supported.

Conclusion

• The Manage left navigation does respect sigoption as designed.

• Expression-based use of hidden or disabled is not supported and will not be added due to architectural constraints.

• This means the reported issue is not a defect, and no product change is planned in this area.

We appreciate the feedback and understand the desire for more dynamic control. At this time, security-driven (sigoption) configuration is the correct and supported solution.

Thanks; this seems like a valid idea and we will add it to the backlog

This is the issue I encountered.

Description:
I am trying to hide Materials & Tools, Map, and Create Work Order menu items from the Manage navigator for technician users.

I attempted to control visibility using the sigoption, hidden, and disabled attributes on the <menu-item> component.

These attributes work as expected on the RBA navigator page, but do not hide the corresponding menu items in the Manage left navigation panel.

Steps / Configuration Tested:

1. Added sigoption, hidden, and disabled attributes to the following menu items in app.xml:

<menu-item label="Materials &amp; Tools" icon="maximo:materialsandtools" page="materials" id="r9zjz"/>

<menu-item label="Map" icon="maximo:map" page="map" id="xb5jv"/>

2. Verified behavior:

- Works correctly in the RBA navigator page

- Does not hide menu items in the Manage left navigation panel

Additional Findings:

If the corresponding <menu-item> definitions are completely removed from app.xml:

The menu items are hidden correctly in both RBA and on the mobile device

However, the menu labels are rendered in uppercase, which appears to be a side effect and not the desired behavior.

This is the latest response from Support team:
I have reviewed the behavior you are seeing in MAS Mobile 9.1 vs Manage and discuss it internally, and your configuration is correct.

The RBA Navigator page fully respects sigoption, hidden and disabled methods, but Manage left navigation panel does not evaluate them on <menu-item>. This is solely driven by the presence of the <menu-item> in the app.xml and the page routing configuration. The results is that if the <menu-item> exists, it renders regardless of security attributes.

This is by design in 9.1 and is not a misconfiguration. We can call it a limitation.

On the other hand, when you complete remove the <menu-item> in app.xml, the Manage navigator falls back to a generated/default navigation model, putting labels in uppercase formatting and differently, hence you see the all-caps effect.

Since this is by design and limited to this functionality, from a support perspective you can raise on idea to have this tracked by the product owner, although they are preparing some changes with 9.2 and forward, however, I cannot confirm if the Manage navigator will be able to evaluate sigoptions, hidden and disabled methods similar to the RBA navigator.

Another workaround would be to create a tailored technician-specific mobile app and remove the unwanted menu items (Materials & Tools, Map, Create Work Order) from that app’s app.xml, but I'm not sure if that addressed your business need.

Under IBM review to see if this is simply a bug in the <menu-item> registry for sigoption