a hierarchical grid is used to select a customer name after preliminary navigation has been performed . the preliminary navigation serves to identify an action , category or type of page to process or display data associated with the selected customer name . the h - grid can be used in various ways as a replacement for , enhancement or addition to , key or query - based searching to retrieve a page or perform an action . in a particular example , the h - grid includes customer names that have data available for display according to a form associated with a selected action or category . when the user clicks a customer name in the h - grid a current form is populated with the customer &# 39 ; s data . subsequent navigation to other pages of data are populated with the currently selected customer name . this approach can replace the requirement of having the user to perform a search or query to identify the customer name or record .