Is there a way to programatically select row in collection widget?

We use collection widget to show menu style row in main mashup. This essentially renders n  number of icons in the footer. This main mashup also contains contained mashup in often we have to drive the contained mashup based on some action within those contained mashups. This works fine.

However, the challenge we face is for instance if a user clicks on Menu A which loads Mashup A in contained mashup and based on some action on contained mashup A user is automatically directed to Contained mashups B. Since switch between mashup wasn't the result of manual click on the icon in the footer the selection on the collection widget falls out of sync. Which would mean in above e.g. as user was navigated  programatically to Contained mashup B from Contained Mashup A, the footer with collection widget still shows icon A as selected when actually the user is viewing mashup B which corresponds to Icon B.

I hope i didn't make it too confusing 🙂

Is there anyway we can also drive collection widget selection programatically?

Thanks for any hints in advance!