IBM i General Design Standards › Design Standards for Menus › Arranging Menus

Arranging Menus

In some cases, it will be more appropriate to group tasks into menus by function, such as Order Entry, and in others by when they are invoked, such as Month End Processing.

You should provide several different menu arrangements of the functions so that users may use alternative search paths to find ways to a function. For example:

• All commands in alphabetical order
• Commands by functional group, such as End of year commands or Order entry tasks
• Commands by subject, such as configuration commands
• Commands by verb, such as all commands beginning with DSP)
• Commands by object, such as all commands for manipulating folders

The disadvantage of using menus is that if there are a large number of functions in the application system, it may take several steps to find your way to the appropriate menu. It is therefore desirable to provide a command line on menus that will be used by experienced users.

The OS/400 and the CA 2E system menus provide examples of alternate menu arrangements.

Menus should not contain additional input-capable fields apart from the option input or command line.