Designing with custom controls in XPages

A custom control is a collection of controls that are stored as a single object. Similar to the way a subform can be placed on more than one form, a custom control can be created once and added to multiple XPages. When you update a custom control, every XPage that uses that custom control automatically gets updated with the changes. This saves you design time because you do not have to update each XPage separately.

Common uses of custom controls include adding a company logo to business documents or adding mailing label information to mail and memo pages. A custom control can be a permanent part of an XPage or can appear conditionally, depending on the result of a formula. For example, you might offer users a choice of custom mail pages with different graphics and styles for various types of mail messages, such as memos, alerts, or letters.

In addition to reusing custom controls across multiple XPages and managing updates in a single place, you can also add editable areas to custom controls and organize custom controls in the Controls palette for easy access.

By default, custom controls are stored as XSP and XSP-CONFIG files in your workspace.