Question: I have a little problem, how I can activate a tab from the main menu...

when you click on the main menu select the tab and display its contents, becouse the tabs contents call's via `data-toggle="tab"` you can't use the `data-toggle="tab"`, at main menu don't works

here one [screenshot](http://prntscr.com/6rna68)

because of the way they have at the moment is that all the menu as "Digilencias, Asesorias and Citaciones" send me the file "lista\_procesos.php" but what I want to do is to click on each tab activate and show its contents, not the main thing is the "Procesos"

here the example [jsfiddle](http://jsfiddle.net/61gn1ezq/)

Answer: 
I created an example in the fiddle; <http://jsfiddle.net/61gn1ezq/1>. As bpeterson76 said, create a selector that selects the correct tabs. I added `data-show-tab="tabidtoshow"` attributes in the menu, and created a script that shows the tabs using the API.

```js
jQuery(function ($) {
    //get all tab-buttons
    var lista_tab = $('#estudiantes_lista_tab a');
    //select anchors from menu that have'data-show-tab'
    $('[data-show-tab]').each(function () {
        //get tab-id from data-attribute
        var tab_id = $(this).data('showTab');
        //set click event
        $(this).click(function (e) {
            //prevent default click
            e.preventDefault();
            //remove all active classes from list
            lista_tab.removeClass('active');
            //show correct tab and make active
            lista_tab.filter('[href=#' + tab_id + ']').tab('show').addClass('active');
        });
    });
});
```
Bootstrap has an [API method](http://getbootstrap.com/javascript/#tabs) you can call to show or hide tabs.

$(selector).tab('show')

You'd have to come up with a strategy for building selectors to match the tabs you want to show/hide.

Likewise, there's an event handler built for Show, Shown, hide, and hidden that are useful if you want to trigger events based on tab's clicks, such as highlighting your top menu if the bottom menu is interacted with.