Be able to define collapsed by default groups in an element template

[igpetrov]

Problem you would like to solve

Consider any connectors element template, i.e. HTTP REST.

All properties are structured within Groups. All groups are expanded by default. Requesting to add a flag to the group element that would indicate that a specific group is collapsed by default.

Proposed solution

The following construct should make My Collapsed Group collapsed by default:

"groups": [
    {
      "id": "myCollapsedGroup",
      "label": "My Collapsed Group",
      "collapsedByDefault": true
    },
...
]

Alternatives considered

Since our use-case is epic-related, we could dedicate one specific group for the task definition type property and hardcode it being collapsed by default but I would not recommend taking this route.

Additional context

Via discussion: https://camunda.slack.com/archives/CKGH9LR40/p1693222832075709?thread_ts=1692785474.018059&cid=CKGH9LR40.

This FR is related to the epic, and is a feature gap related to the epic. See related explanation.

[igpetrov]

@nikku FYI. Please let me know if I can update the ticket with additional information. Thank you!

[nikku]

This sounds reasonable, and gives template authors much more freedom to decide which parts of an element template are "initially relevant". This is something we as framework authors cannot and do not want to know.

@marstamm Do you recall where we implement the "initially all open" behavior? I'd imagine this could be a fairly straight forward thing to contribute, depending on how we built "always open".

[marstamm]

The default state is defined by a toggle in the Group configuration

https://github.com/bpmn-io/bpmn-js-element-templates/blob/117f64d4c4734a4375efe35eea22748dd5fb170a/src/cloud-element-templates/properties/CustomProperties.js#L111

Currently, it is always true for element templates. This would be easy to implement.

[marstamm]

However, with the way persistence is implemented, the collapsed state of the group is shared across different templates. So if multiple templates have a Authentication group with the same ID and I open them in one element, it will be open in the others as well.

If we want to change this, we would need to add the template-id to the element template group id

[nikku]

However, with the way persistence is implemented, the collapsed state of the group is shared across different templates.

I think we want to keep this. It is a good feature. Otherwise there is no way to semantically group UI sections across templates.

[nikku]

@igpetrov Happy to take a contribution to implement collapsedByDefault behavior, cf. #3807 (comment).

Thanks @marstamm for investigating.

[marstamm]

Otherwise there is no way to semantically group UI sections across templates

I agree. If you don't want shared state for your template, you can always namespace the group-id in your template to decouple it.

[igpetrov]

Thanks a lot @nikku @marstamm!

Maybe @bastiankoerber can jump in and also share own thoughts on behalf of the Customers?

[bastiankoerber]

@igpetrov from a framework perspective this is absolut fine, we (as consumer) can then decide which behaviour
we are prefering. In general i like the same behaviour by group, so i am ok with it :-)

[nikku]

@marstamm Let's tackle documentation as a follow up / part of this issue.

[marstamm]

Created a Draft PR for the docs to be merged after integration: camunda/camunda-docs#2706

[nikku]

Fixed upstream via bpmn-io/bpmn-js-element-templates#18 and camunda/element-templates-json-schema#114.