Question

Is it possible to create a pop-up window that contains options within IFS?

  • 21 June 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 465 views
ZTC ZTC JGOTA
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Greetings, IFS community

I hope that everyone is doing well. 

I was wondering if there is a way to create a pop-up window that will be accessed by right-clicking.

As an example:

Whenever a Business Opportunity is "Confirmed" (Screenshot 1), the user has the option of right clicking on the header and selecting "Create a Sales Quotation"; an additional window will appear with additional details.  

 

Screenshot 1.

 

When the user clicks on Create Sales Quotation, the following window will appear (screenshot 2).

Has anyone created a window similar to that?

Can you please provide me with some information regarding how to do this?

 

Screenshot 2

 

In the past, I have created the following options:

  • A similar option is created calling an executable program which displays the window. The disadvantage is that each user must install Oracle home on each computer in order to insert the data into the table. That option is not attractive to me. 
  • A second option I have encountered is to create a small Web-application that is called by the right-click option on the page header.

Thanks,

JL

JL

2 replies

S
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Userlevel 6
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You are at a similar spot that we are.

In order to emulate IFS-native popups, I have written our own WinForms screens, and all users have the Oracle Instant Client installed. That uses ODBC to access and write data. (We do all data writes via IFS API packages, never direct INSERTs or UDPATEs.)

There are downsides to that. For one thing, all integrations run under App Owner, so we have to be careful about who can see the integration screens, because they are working outside of permission sets at that point.

Next, the integrations use WinForms, which is old. Your web app idea is definitely better.

If you would like to avoid the need for Oracle client software you could embed the IFS Data Access provider in your application, assuming it is written in .NET. I wish I had explored the Data Provider layer more before moving forward with ODBC, but I already had the whole ODBC framework up and running before I realized I could have developed something more embedded/elegant.

If you go the web application route you do away with the need for client installations and can use a more modern architecture consolidated on a single server.

Beyond that, though, I do not know of any other way to provide popup-style control over workflow. Whenever we are introduced to an IFS-native dialog box we cross our fingers we can use it as-is, otherwise we need to write another integration for it…

 

Thanks,

Joe Kaufman

Just because something is part of a plan doesn't make it right.
dsj
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Userlevel 7
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You can make a workaround solution using custom LUs + Custom Events to achieve this. Here’s my suggestion.

  • Create a new custom LU (Eg: SalesQuoteOpportunity). This LU should have all the keys of the Opportunity as well as Persistent fields for all other fields which included in the dialog box. Create a custom page
  • Create a event on Opportunity LU for Insert and update. Create SQL action to insert new record/update the custom LU.

Now for each record in the Opportunity,  you have a ‘shadow’ record in custom LU SalesQuoteOpportunity

  • Create custom menu on Opportunity and choose Create window with transfer option. provide the custom page as the destination and map the keys.

With this, user can use the RMB to come to the custom page and change the other fields as you do in the popup.

  • Now create a custom menu on the custom page (Create Sales Quotation). make a SQL action and implement the logic to create the quotation using the values in the custom page.

Above is the simplest implementation of this kind and you can add more restrictions, navigate back and forth between quotation and opportunity using menu items. Hope you find it useful.

 

Cheers!

Damith

DSJ - https://dsj23.me

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