The framework supports a large number of optional features. There are two standard mechanisms for enabling and disabling standard features:
Configuration parameters of the form service.feature.<feature-name> are used to enable and disable optional features. The page /scripts/view_features.jsp generates a list of the features of this type together with a short description together with their current and default setting. This mechanism controls global features that are normally either on or off. The exception to this are preferences these are features that only affect presentation not functionality. In this case users are able to specify their own preferred behaviour via the preferences menu that overrides the global system setting. A user with the Developer role enabled can also use the preference menu to edit the global setting of any feature. In this case the new property values will be stored in the database.
Some optional features are enabled and disabled by the presence or absence of optional database fields. This mechanism is usually used when adding additional customisation options to an object type. Without the field a single global setting will apply to all affected objects. Users with the RootManager or Admin role can go to the page /tables/index.jsp and view details about the major database tables in the application. When viewing a table in this way users with sufficient privilege will see an option to add additional “Standard” fields. These can either be additional fields introduced as part of a configuration-change/software-update or optional fields that are not created by default. Instead they are only created via the forms in order to activate the optional capabilities.