How to manage actions that could be nested 3 or 4 levels deep?

Question

I have a site that has a main menu that is tabbed, and a sub-menu that always displays actions for the current selected tab.

For more areas on the site, this works perfectly, but one of the tabs is very complex. For example, the main tab is "Templates", and it's actions are "Create Template". The main "Templates" page lists all the templates for that user and offers links to deeper into it.

Now, each template has a list of tasks... and each task has its own actions. Each task also has a list of questions... and even each question has a bunch of actions and lists of other components.

How does one manage the menus for something like this? What tab should remain selected? How do you visually communicate this nested nature when using a main menu and a sub-menu?

Answer 1

Perhaps a cookie crumb would help let users know where they are, where they came from, and how to get back.

Then, you could use contextual actions and menus to help present the correct options on the template page once a user is there. Contextual menus could only appear on this level, and be specific to the actions required for the template.