Can I reuse a sidebar panel for the same widget action?

You can set a preference in a widget's XML to define whether a new sidebar panel is opened for each widget action or whether the same sidebar panel is reopened and overwritten for each action initiated by that widget.

About this task

There are three types of actions that add a widget to the client sidebar panel.
  • The widget property Contribute to Sidebar on startup. When enabling this option, a sidebar panel is opened in the sidebar for the widget.
  • Right click on a widget in the My Widgets sidebar panel and choose Open in -> Sidebar. Every time this action is executed, a new sidebar panel is opened.
  • Create a Live Text action that puts the action results into the sidebar. Every time this action is executed, a new sidebar panel is opened.
If a user needs to look up multiple pieces of data using a widget, there would be a new sidebar panel opened for each lookup.
Administrators and power uses can add a new singletonSidebar attribute to the palleteItem element in the widget's XML definition after creating and exporting the widget. Valid values are true and false and sample syntax, where it would appear in the widget's XML file, is as follows:
<webcontextConfiguration version="1.1">
<palleteItem singletonSidebar="false"
or
<webcontextConfiguration version="1.1">
<palleteItem singletonSidebar="true"
Note: The default value is false so as not to affect Notes 8.5.1 and prior behavior.
Note: If there were multiple sidebars opened for a widget prior to applying this feature improvement and then you upgrade to a release with this feature improvement (and implement it), the previous sidebars will not be reused and will remain open until the user manually closes them.