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User Interface Extension Overview

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This page is now retired and kept for archival purposes. This programming guide has been published on MSDN at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/jj860311.aspx

The information in this topic applies only to System Center 2012 SP1.

The Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) console can be extended through add-ins by providing views. Views appear as ribbon buttons on the VMM console, but when it is clicked, display a user control in the console. The user control is a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) 4.0 control that is provided by a Microsoft .NET 4.0 assembly included in the add-in package.

Manifest

An add-in entry for a view must be created in the add-in package manifest. This entry references the view provided by a Microsoft .NET assembly. For more information, see [[Manifests]]. For an example on how to create a manifest entry, see [[How to Define a View in the Manifest]].

The view add-in

A view add-in is created by creating a class that inherits from the Microsoft.SystemCenter.VirtualMachineManager.UIAddIns.ViewAddInBase base class. Your class should then declare the System.Addin.AddinAttribute attribute, assigning it a unique name between all your other add-ins.

The ribbon button created by the console for your add-in uses the manifest to define the caption of the button. However, if you want to change the caption when your add-in is loaded, for example if you wanted to translate the text into another language, you can override the GetButtonLabelString method.

The view base class provides two methods for add-ins. The first method is CreateViewControl. This method is called when the console first displays your view and it will never be called again. This method returns a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) FrameworkElement object instance. The object returned is the user control that will be displayed in the console. The console caches reference to that user control you will want to make sure that you do too. The second method provided by the view base class is SetCurrentScope. This method is called when the console changes the current context type and context object targeted by the view.

For more information about how to create a view, see [[How to Design a View]].

See Also

[[Virtual Machine Manager Add-in SDK]]

[[How to Define a View in the Manifest]]

[[How to Design a View]]