1. Add the Application Categories

In this step you will add categories to the K2 Designer explorer. Categories are similar to folders, and are often used to organize your K2 environment, the applications in a K2 environment, and the application elements of an application. Elements include SmartObjects, views, forms and workflows. While it is not required to create Application-specific categories and folders, they are helpful to keep your work organized. This is especially important when working in a shared environment where multiple people are building applications. In this context, we will use categories to separate your tutorials from other applications.

1. Add the following categories to the All Items node in the K2 Designer explorer.
   • K2 Learning
     • Leave Request
       • Forms
       • SmartObjects
       • Views
       • Workflow

   Leave Request Categories
   

   1. Launch the K2 Designer site. Typically, you can access the K2 Designer site through a URL like https://[K2Environment]/Designer/, where [K2Environment] is the unique name of your K2 environment. If you do not know what this value is, please ask your K2 administrator.
      
      If you are using a training or evaluation environment provided by K2, you can log in to the environment with the following credentials:
      Username: Denallix\Administrator
      Password: K2pass!
      To launch K2 Designer, you can use the Start Menu (Start > (All Programs) > K2 > K2 Designer), click the start menu and start typing "k2 designer", or there should also be a shortcut in the favorites of the web browser.
   2. K2 Designer will open on the home page. You will be creating new categories in the explorer; to navigate to the explorer page, click the BROWSE button.
      
   3. Right-click All Items and select New Category.
      
   4. For the category Name, enter
      K2 Learning
      then click OK. (If the K2 Learning category already exists, continue to the next step)
   5. The K2 Learning category keeps all your learning tutorials organized in one place. If you have many users accessing the designer to build tutorials, consider making the category names unique to you. For example
      K2 Learning My Initials
   6. Now we will create a category for the application itself. Locate the K2 Learning category, then right-click and select New Category. For the category name, enter
      Leave Request
      then click OK.
   7. Now we will create sub-categories to hold the various elements that will make up our application. Right-click the Leave Request category and select New Category. For the category name, enter
      Forms
      then click OK.
   8. Repeat the previous step three more times to add the following additional categories under Leave Request:
      SmartObjects
      Views
      Workflow

   Your explorer should look similar to the image below.
   

Review

In this step, you created the categories for the Leave Request (Basic Version) application. While not required, categories help keep your projects organized, especially if you are working within a shared environment. In the next step, you will create the Leave Request (SmartBox) SmartObject.

Next Step: 2. Build the Leave Request SmartObject