WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
In many of the K2 tutorials, we see that most of the views are created off of a smartobject. AKA they are dependant and attached to a smartobject.
However, it doesn't cover the other option, which is to create a view without linking a smartobject to it.
Yes. You can create a view without linking it to a smartobject. You can even delete the smartobject you created a view on! And sometimes, this might be fairly unintuitive, so hopefully, this article can help shine some light on the matter.
HOW DO WE DO THIS?
Below, you can see a picture of this. Instead of right-clicking on a smartobject -> "Generate View", instead we right click on a file / category (in my case, "Quote to Cash") and select "New View".
Then, you can proceed to fill out the following according to your needs.
Note that we do not need to link this to a smartobject, if we do not want to. Go ahead and click "Next".
WHY DO WE DO THIS?
Many people will wonder, "well what is the use of doing this?".
You can keep this view! If you wanted to link a SmartObject to it, you still can! The controls, the rules, any and all personalizations-- they will still be there!
Many people have asked whether or not they can just "copy and paste" rules. Well, you can create a view template. Don't attach any smartobjects to it. Re-use it over and over again. Attach the data-sources later. Same view, but completely different data-sources. This will save on recreating
Additionally, if you have a view tied to a smartobject, but due to design requirements, you need to remove this smartobject-- You can!
Just go to the General tab -> Data Source -> Click and Backspace
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A few notes about this:
1. This is not for beginners.
2. Please understand that if you remove the data source, your controls and rules will still be there. Everything will still be there. You will need to go in and remove all dependencies yourself. So if you do not remember where all the dependencies are, you will have trouble saving, checking in the view, packaging, etc.
3. If you would like to link a new smartobject, sometimes it is easier to completely re-create the view.
CONCLUSION
Sometimes it is necessary to remove reference to a SmartObject attached to an Item View or List View due to change in design, but you don't want to have to recreate the form without it.
It is not always the case that a View NEEDS to be tied to a SmartObject. Sometimes you just want a view for user interaction, not specifically tied to a SmartObject. Although the Initialize rule and other SmO dependant rules would be invalidated, you can go in there a remove those rules and everything is good again. Having the screen elements still there helps so you don't have to recreate all the other rules and logic, that are not necessarily tied to a SmartObject.
