Events

Manage Event Actions is about setting up which actions to perform when Events are triggered in IFS Applications. The Events are predefined in the system. The action can be for example to send a mail when an order is released for a specific customer.

Event Actions Start Page

The Manage Event Actions form is the starting point when managing event actions. The most common tasks are available as short links on this page for example Create Event Action and List Event Actions.

From this start page you can easily find and navigate to existing Event Actions. Type the initial letters of the Event in Find Event Action followed by <Ctrl>-K. Once the Event Action is shown in the field press the navigate button to the right and the Event Action including detail information is shown in the Event Action form. If Event actions are enabled, which means that events are triggered and the actions are performed, the link Event Actions Enabled is shown, otherwise the link Event Actions Disabled is shown. Click on the link to turn the events on or off. To edit the default date and time formats for event actions click on the Default Time and Date Formats link and modify the format values in the dialog box.

Create Event Action

New event Actions are created in the Event Action form. You can do that by simply clicking on Create New Event Action in the start page or in the start menu navigator in folder Solution Manager/Configuration/Event Actions or you can list the Event or Event Actions and right-click on one selected Event and invoke Create New Action for Event.

Action Type and Perform upon Event are mandatory. Besides that the Event Actions functionality must be turned on (this you can see in the Event Actions start page) and that IFS Connect must be configured to handle events each event action can be turned on and off. The event action must thus be enabled in order to be performed. When the Event action is enabled the Event is also enabled.

Action Types

There are different kinds of actions that can be performed when an event is triggered. For each event you can set up several actions of different types. The action can be E-Mail, Shell Command, SMS-Message, Execute Online SQL, Personal Message or Application Message. These action types are described in the table below.

Action	Description
E-Mail	Send a mail to receiver. Event Registry's action email use method mail in `Command_SYS` to send the mail. Parameters: To: The e-mail address of the person to whom the e-mail message will be sent, i.e., the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) e-mail address. From Foundation1 User: The user ID of Foundation 1 user who sent the message. Subject: The subject of the e-mail message. Attach Files: Files that needs to be send as e-mail attachments. Message: The content of the message to be sent.
Shell Command	Execute the statement submitted in the dialog as an OS command line. Can be used to start program for example. Event Registry's action Shell Command use method `shell_command` in `Command_SYS` to send the command. Parameters: Command Line: The statement that executes as an OS command line.
SMS-Message	Sends an SMS-message to a GSM-client. Event Registry's action Socket Message use method `socket_message` in `Command_SYS` to send the message. Parameters: Phone: The phone number of the contact person. Message: The content of the message to be sent.
Execute Online SQL	Execute the SQL-statement in the dialog. The statement will be executed in the current database. The statement is executed online without involving any executor of actions. The action Execute Online SQL is intended to execute a method (or UPDATE or INSERT), not to do a SELECT. The reason is that there is no place to put the result, since the Event, and hence the SQL, is executed in runtime, where there is no user to output to. Parameters: SQL Command: Valid SQL statement that needs to be executed.
Personal Message	Save the message in the database as a personal message, meaning that the information about what user owns the message is stored together with the message. The message can be viewed at any time until it is deleted. In order to get Personal Messages the Foundation1 user must subscribe to the specific Personal Message. For more information read about Subscriptions and Personal Messages in end user documentation. Foundation1 Heavy Cleanup handles removal. Foundation1 Setting Cleanup age limit in days for read personal messages controls the lifetime. The message is saved without involving any executor of actions, this makes Personal Messages perfect for testing of event actions. Personal Messages are suitable for viewing for example in a personal portlet. Parameters: To Foundation1 User: The recipient of the message. Reference: The name of the form that displays the record that was involved in the event. Reference parameters: The parameters that indicate the record that was involved in the event specified in the reference. This should be in the format: KeyName1=KeyValue1[,KeyName2=KeyValue2, ...]. Message: The content of the message to be sent.
Application Message	Creates an Application Message that is sent to Connect. All the information available in the Event is included in the message. No formatting of a specific text is available here; it is all handled by Connect. It is though possible to set Connector, Address Data, Envelope and Transformer. If Connector is specified Address Data is mandatory. If Connector is not specified the message will be routed by Connect. This event action is not possible to subscribe to. Parameters: Connector: Handles the communication between the business system and message hubs, output services/devices, and application connectors. Address Data: Information about the destination address. Envelope: The format that is used to encapsulate XML data. Transformer: Support conversion of IFS Record XML format to/from other formats required by other systems.
Task	Creates a Task to one or many users visible in IFS Enterprise Explorer. Parameters: Receiver: The user id as specified in User Administration (FndUser/Identity). Receiver can be a list of users separated by , or ; character. Each of the users will be able to see the same task. The Task is only to be performed once and can only be set to complete by one user. Subject: Title on the task. Message: Description of the task. Details what the user should do in order to complete the task . Url: A link that can help the user complete the task. It can refer to a specific window within IFS Applications. Example "ifsapf:frmCustomerOrder?action=get&key1=<ORDER_NO>" where <ORDER_NO> is to be replaced by an valid order id. It can also refer to an external web page. Use the Default button to get help setting the url to a window in IFS Applications Priority: The priority of the task as defined by the sender. Values can be "High", "Low" or "Normal". Complete on Event: An event fired on the same object that will set the tasks to completed. The task can be manually completed by the user. The task can also be completed if another Event is fired on the same object. Only objects where rowkey is enabled will have this possibility.
Start Workflow	Calls an external web service. The intention is to be able to call a workflow engine that expose web services to start a new instance of a defined workflow. Parameters: Workflow Server: The address to the workflow server. This can be set for each event action or select Use Default to always use the address as defined in System Parameters. Web Service Name: Web service to call. Workflow Server + Web Service Name is the web service endpoint. When these are specified you can use the Browse button to browse for web service operations. Operation: One of the operations the web service exposes. Operation Parameters: Arguments sent to the web service. Use the Browse button and reselect the Operation to verify that the correct parameters are set. Parameters not used will be marked and additional parameters will be added.

Allow Subscription

Allow Subscription indicates that this action is available for subscription by end users. You can limit the possibility to subscribe to the action by entering a required permission set. Only users that are granted this permission set can then subscribe to the event action.

If an end user subscribes to an action, this means that the action handler sends this action to the subscribers as well as to the original receiver, stated in the action itself. It is not necessary to state a specific receiver if the action is especially designed for subscription. Actions possible to subscribe to are E-Mail, SMS-Message and Personal Message.

Conditions

To be able to control the execution of the action you can enter a number of conditions that must be fulfilled. The action is thus only performed if all conditions are met. Click Edit... to edit the condition for the event action.

Substitution fields

To create an action that contains useful information about the event it is possible to enter substitution fields into the message or subject. There are two types of substitution fields, Event and General.

Event Substitution fields

Each event supplies a number of substitution fields with valuable information about the specific event. Select the substitution field and drag it into the message and place it where appropriate. The substitution field will automatically get prefixed "&" to mark it as a substitution field that will be replaced by real data.

General Substitution fields

The application provides a list of general Context Substitution Variables. These are not related to the actual event but can be useful to include in the message. A context substitution field can for example be the current users email address. Select the substitution field and drag it into the message and place it where appropriate. The substitution field will automatically get a pre- and postfix "#" marker to mark it as a context substitution variable substitution field that will be replaced by real data.

Email Attachments

For email event actions you can add one or more files as attachments. Click on the button next to the Attached Files field to open a dialog where you can type the full path to the files that should be included. You can also in this dialog select option "Create and include file" and enter the text directly in the file contents field.

List Event Actions

Click on List Event Actions in folder Solution Manager/Configuration/Event Actions to see all the event actions.

List Events

Click on List Events in folder Solution Manager/Configuration/Event Actions to see all the events that is possible to create actions for.
The see the actions for an event right-click and select Show Actions. For Custom Defined Events you can also select Show Details in the same menu to view/edit the event.

Custom Defined Events

Custom Defined Events are events that are defined in a specific installation. The difference between Custom Defined Events and Application Defined Events is that Application Defined Events is defined in the code by the programmer meanwhile Custom Defined Events is configured and executed by triggers. The triggers is only created when the event is enabled, in order to recreate the triggers you need to disable the event and then enable it again.

When you create a Custom Defined Event you select a Table on a Logical Unit that should handle the event. The event can be fired on three different occasions; New, Update and Remove.

New objects are created (A new row in the table is created)
Objects are changed (A row in the table has been modified)
In this selection you also can select which attributes should be changed in order to fire. If no attributes is selected it means the event is fired when any attribute is changed.
Objects are removed (A row in the table is removed)

Attributes

Almost all attributes in the table are available to use in the Event Action message. The only exceptions are LOB's and other special data types. In the attribute list select which attributes that should be available when creating event actions by checking the New Value and Old Value. This creates variables called NEW:<AttibuteName> for New Value and OLD:<AttributeName> for Old Value, for example "DESCRIPTION" and "NEW:DESCRIPTION" or "OLD:DESCRIPTION".

When the event is fired due to an object has changed the NEW:<AttibuteName> is the variable for the new value after the transaction has occurred and OLD:<AttributeName> is the variable for the old value before the transaction did take place. This is how the variables get their value when event is firing:

New objects
NEW:<AttibuteName> and OLD:<AttributeName> is the same value since no old values exists.
Changed objects
NEW:<AttibuteName> is the new value after the transaction and OLD:<AttributeName> is the old value before the transaction.
Removed objects
NEW:<AttibuteName> and OLD:<AttributeName> is the same value since no new value exists.

Custom attributes

A Custom Defined Event can have Custom Defined Attributes. To enter a new attribute right-click in the list of Custom Attributes and select Insert. Enter a name for the parameter and a PL/SQL function <Package name>.<Method>. The PL/SQL function can use Attributes described above as arguments.

Note: It is not possible to use Context Substitution Variables as arguments to Custom Attributes.
Fnd_User_API.Get_Description(#USER_ID#) is not allowed.

Example:

Fnd_Role_API.Get_Description(&NEW:ROLE) or Fnd_Role_API.Get_Description(&OLD:ROLE)

Note: If a Custom Defined Parameter selects from the Custom Defined Events table you will run into Oracle error 4091.
ORA-04091: table SCOTT.Emp_tab is mutating, trigger/function may not see it

Export Custom Events

A Custom Defined Event can be exported to the file system as a (*.ins) file. Right-Click in the Custom Defined Event detail form to open the context menu and select Export Custom Event. Set a filename for the export file and click on save to save the file. The Event can then be imported into another environment by executing the export file in the database.