Every piece covered so far lives inside individual records and their forms. The site map zooms out to a different level: it controls what shows up in the left-hand navigation of a model-driven app, deciding what a user can find and click into in the first place.
- The site map controls a model-driven app's navigation menu
- Four nested levels: App → Area → Group → Subarea
- A table with no subarea is effectively invisible to normal navigation
The site map is the app's menu
Picture a restaurant's printed menu. It isn't a flat list of every dish — it's organized into sections like Appetizers, Mains, and Desserts, each grouping the dishes that belong under it. A diner scans section headings first, then drills into the one they want. The site map works the same way: it's the menu deciding what's navigable, and how it's grouped, before a user ever opens a record.
Four levels: app, area, group, subarea
The site map's structure has four nested levels, each containing the next:
| Level | What it is | Menu analogy |
|---|---|---|
| App | The model-driven app itself — the whole menu | The entire printed menu |
| Area | A major section within the app's navigation | "Appetizers," "Mains," "Desserts" |
| Group | A labeled cluster of related links inside an area | Within "Mains": "Pasta" vs. "Grilled" |
| Subarea | An individual clickable link to a table, dashboard, or page | One specific dish, like "Grilled Salmon" |
- An app is the whole model-driven app a user opens — the entire menu.
- Areas are the big top-level sections, often shown as tabs or a switcher — think "Sales," "Service," or "Settings."
- Groups cluster related links inside an area under a small heading.
- Subareas are the individual clickable items — a link to Accounts, a dashboard, a specific view.
Why this matters as a customizer
Building a great table, form, and view doesn't automatically make it discoverable. No subarea pointing to a table means most users will never stumble onto it through normal navigation. Getting the site map right turns a pile of well-built tables into an app that actually guides people to the right place.