Can I create a catalogue of shared menus for my team or workgroup?

The Shared Menus Catalogue is a repository of Shared Menu files managed by menu administrators or by other workgroup members (more info on Shared Menus). It is designed to facilitate the addition of shared menus by users.  The settings files (.ini files) in the catalogue are located on a shared network drive. They can stay in the root folder or they can be saved in subfolders for clarity or in order to manage various access rights. But all settings files will be displayed as one sortable list.

If the Shared Menus Catalogue is enabled (see below how to enable it) when adding a Shared menu, the user is offered to select an existing Shared menu file from the repository and click the button Add selected shared menu(s). User can click list headers to sort the catalogue by menu name or by menu settings file path. User can also add any other shared menu or create a new shared menu regardless of the Catalogue by clicking on the button Add another shared menu.

User can double-click on a catalogue line to view the clicked shared menu info (menu name, type, owners, etc). Users having write access to the shared menu file (Mary and Jean, in this example) see the Open shared menu file? prompt allowing them to edit the shared menu properties in the ini file (of course, users also need network write access to the containing folder).

Enabling the Shared Menus Catalogue

The catalogue can be enabled in the Options dialog box (Various Advanced Options tab) by checking Enable Shared Menus Catalogue checkbox and by entering the path of the Catalogue root folder.

 

System administrator could also edit the users’ QuickAccessPopup.ini files (see How can I edit the file QuickAccessPopup.ini?) and, for each user, enter these values under the [Global] section:

ExternalMenusCataloguePath=
Path to the catalogue root on a shared drive (as entered in the Options dialog box).

ExternalMenusCataloguePathReadOnly=1
This variable set to “1” can prevent the user from enabling/disabling the catalogue or changing its path in the Options dialog box (of course, user could still change it in its own personal QuickAccessPopup.ini file).

For future users, the admin can also add these values in the ini file template used to create new users settings file. More info here: Are administrator rights required to install QAP?