Navigating P4V

This section helps you get familiar with P4V terminology and layout and walks you through basic tasks such as updating status information, modifying views, and accessing administration tools.

Terminology

P4V menus and forms use a general approach to versioning terminology and actions, to ensure that that users with a variety of backgrounds can best understand what to do. If you have experience with P4Win or the P4 command line, note the following differences in terminology in P4V.

P4/P4Win term	P4V term
Client	Workspace
Sync	Get revision
Open for edit	Check out
Open for add/delete	Mark for add/delete

Layout

P4V displays one main window with two panes: the left pane, which is also called the Tree pane, and the right pane, which is where you do most of your work in P4V. These panes, as well as the other parts of P4V are described in detail below.

Toolbar and tooltips: Across the top of the screen, there is a toolbar.

To get information about the items in the toolbar, as well as other Helix Server objects and P4V button, position the mouse cursor over the object without clicking. P4V displays a small window (tooltip) containing status or explanatory information about the object. P4V makes extensive use of tooltips.
Address bar: this field, which is displayed under the toolbar, enables you to navigate to specific folders and files in the depot and in your workspace.

You can copy from and paste into the address bar.
Log pane: The log pane, which displays the commands issued by P4V, is a tab located at the bottom of the P4V window.

To display this pane, choose View > Log Pane.
Dashboard pane: The dashboard displays a variety of details about the status of your workspace and provides quick links for common tasks.

The dashboard is a tab located at the bottom of the P4V screen. To display the dashboard, choose View > Dashboard. To configure the tasks displayed in the dashboard, click the Settings button that is displayed at the top right corner of the tab.
Context menu: To display the context menu for an object on a Mac, option-click or click and hold.

On Linux and Windows, right-click. (Note that this help system uses the platform-independent terminology "right-click" when instructing you to display a context menu.)

The left pane has two tabs: the Workspace tab shows the files on your computer, including files that are not in the depot. The Depot tab shows all of the files in the depot. To view the contents of a folder in the right-hand pane, click on that folder, and select View > Files in Folder.

The right pane contains tabs for working with changelists, labels, workspaces, users, jobs, streams, and branches. To display a tab, click the corresponding button on the toolbar or choose it from the View menu. At the bottom of the right pane, the Details tab displays details about the current selected object. To view multiple Details tabs (for example, to compare two objects), choose View > Tear Off.

Update status information

P4V indicates file information and status using a set of icons and badges. To obtain updated status information and refresh the display, P4V periodically queries the Perforce service. To force a refresh operation, click refresh icon .

Modify views

There are several ways to modify the way that information is presented in P4V’s panes and tabs. At the top of these panes and tabs, you can see one or more of the following buttons:

p4v bookmark Bookmarks

Bookmarks act like shortcuts to locations in the tree. Set a bookmark by right-clicking on a directory and selecting Bookmark. You can then use this dropdown link to go to that location.

For more information, see Bookmarking files.

p4v sort Sort order

Use this drop-down button to sort the order of the list that you are viewing. The sort options are shown when you click the button.

p4v filters Filter

This drop-down button allows you to filter your view in the following ways:

Show or hide different types of files, such as deleted files and/or local files.
Search for files and specs by various criteria and save those filters for reuse.
In the Tree pane, "re-anchor" your tree to the bookmarks that you have created. If you select a bookmark from this list, that bookmark location becomes the top of your tree view.

For more information about filters, see Searching and filtering.

p4v tearoff Tear Off

This button allows you to "tear off" the current view. This is useful for comparing two different forms side-by-side. Once you have torn off a view, you can close the tear-off by simply closing that window.

p4v views File list view

On the Files in Folder tab and the History tab (when viewing file history), use this icon to view files listed by file name or as thumbnails.