User Interface Overview

The user interface is accessed via a web browser and works best with our Recommended Browsers. The repository manager provides anonymous access for users who only need to search for components, browse the repositories and access components via client tools such as Maven or NuGet. This anonymous access level is a configurable, read-only mode that includes the main user interface elements as shown in Figure: “User Interface for Anonymous Users”.

Figure: User Interface for Anonymous Users

Once a user is logged in further features become available depending on the user’s privileges. An example for the admin user including the Administration menu icon is visible in Figure: “User Interface for Logged In admin User”.

Figure: User Interface for Logged In admin User


The user interface is separated into a number of different sections.

Main toolbar

The top of the page contains the header with a number of elements starting on the left with the logo:

Logo and version label

The logo and the version label differ for Nexus Repository Manager OSS and Nexus Repository Manager Pro and allows you to know what version of the repository manager you are accessing at a glance.

Browse button 

The browse button allows you to switch to the Browse menu items in the main menu section on the left of the user interface. The contents of the menu will depend on your assigned user privileges.

Administration button 

The administration button allows to switch to the Administration menu items in the main menu section on the left of the user interface as visible in Figure 3.2, “User Interface for Logged In admin User”.The contents of the menu will depend on your assigned user privileges.

Search input box

The search input box can be used to start a keyword search. The results are displayed in the feature view panel.

Refresh button 

The refresh button is a global refresh button that affects all views in the user interface including the feature view panel. E.g., it refreshes the search results view, the user list or the staging repository list, if they are currently the active feature view.

Help button

Clicking the help button opens up the help menu. It contains a link to specific help about the currently active feature view. The About item displays a dialog with details about the version as well as license and copyright information. The DocumentationKnowledge baseCommunityIssue tracker and Support items link to the respective pages on the Sonatype websites.

Sign In and user account/Sign Out buttons 

The Sign In button allows you to sign in to the user interface as a specific user. Doing so gives you access to the privileges assigned to the user, changes the Sign in button to a Sign out button and adds a button displaying the user’s name. The user’s name button functions to access the Account feature view as part of the User menu in the main menu on the left with any other user features the account can access.

Main Menu

The main menu on the left contains either the Browse, the Administration or the User menu items. The exact list of available menu items depends on the current user’s assigned privileges. E.g., the Administration menu as visible in Figure: “User Interface for Logged In admin User” includes the Security section, which is not available to anonymous users by default. The panel itself can be horizontally collapsed and expanded with the button in the top right-hand corner of the panel. Each submenu can be vertically collapsed and expanded with the button beside the title for each submenu. Selecting a menu item triggers the display of the respective feature view in the feature view panel.

Feature View Panel

The feature view panel in the center of the user interface right of the main menu initially displays the Welcome feature view. It changes display based on your selected item in the main menu.

Figure: “Typical Example Interface with a List” shows a typical user interface appearance of the repository manager with the Users feature view in the feature view panel. It shows a list of users.

Figure: Typical Example Interface with a List

Clicking on a row in the list, switches the feature view to a specific display for the item in the row as visible in Figure: “Typical Example Interface for Editing and Viewing”. The top level navigation allows you get back to the list by clicking on the Users label. The form below has a number of sections that can be accessed via buttons as well as specific functionality like deletion and their associated buttons.

Figure: Typical Example Interface for Editing and Viewing

The list header features buttons for various operations that differ per list as well as an input box that allows you to filter the list by any terms used in any column. Figure: “Filtering the Repository List to Display Only Hosted Repositories” shows an example use case where a user typed "hosted" in the filter box and the list of repositories only shows hosted repositories. This filtering works for all columns in a list and can be used in most list displays in the repository manager. For example, you can use it to filter the users list to find disabled users, filter the routing list, the roles list and others.

Figure: Filtering the Repository List to Display Only Hosted Repositories

The column headers in most lists can be clicked to invoke a sorting of the list by the respective column as well as activate and deactivate some of the columns.