OSLC links are created and reviewed from the Links Explorer, which is the main page of ${local-app-connector}.
The Links Explorer page is empty as a default. Click New Tab to select ${local-app} ${term-artifact-plural} to add in the page. A tab is added for each selected ${term-artifact-singular} and displays its main properties on top of its existing OSLC links. A tab may be removed when no longer needed by clicking the cross icon or using the dropdown menu on the tab. Next time the Links Explorer page is open, click Restore Tabs if you wish to reuse the same set of ${local-app} ${term-artifact-plural}.
The Contexts panel shows useful information to understand in which global configuration context the ${term-artifact-singular} operates, if any. It shows the Source Context and Target Context, which are the global configurations associated to ${local-app} ${term-deliverable-plural} for the given ${term-artifact-singular}, if any. Those contexts drive the list of remote resources that can be linked to the ${term-artifact-singular}. Whether Source Context or Target Context is used to resolve OSLC links depends on the link type.
Hovering the branch icon on the right and clicking Why is this Configuration used? shows a dialog that explains how a context is determined. It is useful to understand both why a given global configuration is used or why no configuration is used.
The bottom panel shows all existing OSLC links of the selected ${term-artifact-singular}. Links are grouped by link types. Clicking the three dots button next to the Add Link button enables to also group them by OSLC domain.
Each link includes an icon and the title of the linked resource. Some important attributes of the linked resource may also be displayed along the link, on right side, as configured in Link Appearance by the ${local-app} administrator.
Clicking a link opens a new tab in the browser to navigate to the linked resource, in the OSLC Remote Application. Clicking the row where the link is displayed shows in the right panel a rich preview of the linked resource. This preview shows the most important properties of the resource and is provided by the OSLC Remote Application itself. A larger preview may optionally be offered by the OSLC Remote Application, to access more details about the linked resource. You may click Collapse preview next to the Add Link button if you prefer to hide this preview panel, to maximize the area displaying links, in which case the rich preview can be obtained in a popover when keeping the mouse over the link.
If you have not started yet a session with the OSLC Remote Application, you won't be able to see the actual icon or the artifact preview. If private linking is enabled, you won't even see its title. In such case, a Log in button is displayed on the left of the link, to initiate the authentication/authorization process. The preview panel also shows an invite to log-in, when required. Once the authentication/authorization process is completed, you should see the actual resource icon and up-to-date title. This is the case except when OSLC Scheme Auto-Refresh feature is disabled, by a ${local-app} administrator, for the friend application that owns the linked resource. In this latter case, refreshing the icon and title must be done manually by pressing the Refresh button, located where the Log in button used to be.
Clicking the Add Link button enables to create new OSLC links. This action is detailed in ${anchor-title-create-links} section. Links can also be created using drag and drop of URLs in the Links panel. This process and accepted URLs are detailed in ${anchor-title-dnd-links} section.
Existing OSLC links can be deleted by hovering a given link and clicking the cross icon on its right. This action triggers the deletion of the back-link on the OSLC Remote Application, if applicable, and then deletes the link locally.
If the ${local-app} ${term-artifact-singular} is using a Global Configuration, the rich preview of the linked resource corresponds to the versioned resource in that configuration. You can know which configuration is used by hovering the branch icon at the right of the link's row.
If the remote resource is removed, an error-link icon is usually displayed to inform about the broken link. However, with Global Configurations, the situation is a bit different because the resource could still exist in another configuration. A warning-link icon is used instead of the error-link and a message while hovering it advises the user on this case. Another case for using a warning-icon is when the ${term-artifact-singular} is not using a Global Configuration but the OSLC Link expects so. Users may end up in this situation if they deliberately remove the Global Configuration association from the ${term-artifact-singular} or they were using the creation dialog and ignored the warning about not finding ${term-deliverable-indefinite-singular} mapped to the current Global Configuration used on the remote application. For this case, the hovering message will advise the user on how to set a Global Configuration.