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My client, a major hospital chain in Miami, wanted to
add a Transfer action on PA52 – Individual Action
when an internal applicant’s acceptance was keyed on
PA45 – Requisition Offers: 
By using Design Studio we were able
to automate this process; however we did face some
interesting challenges during our design.
Conditional event based
“trigger”
The triggering of our JavaScript
function would be conditional upon the “Add” or “Change”
buttons being pressed. We elected to use the Form
object OnBeforeTransaction event available in the
Script section of Design Studio. Our trigger was
based upon the function code (fc) being either “C”
(Change) or “A” (Add) – meaning the Change or Add button
had been pressed.
The next conditions to check were
whether the applicant Type was “Internal” and
whether the Offer Type was “Accept.”
The
Type field is named “select1” and the Offer
Type field is named “select2.”
We got the values of these fields
and assigned them to variables (which we also named
select1 and select2). We then checked these variables
to make sure the required conditions are met.
[JavaScript uses the double equal sign = = when
comparing values and the single equal sign = when
assigning values.]
Note that unlike the value of fc,
which could be either “C” or “A”, both values for
select1 and select2 had to be met. [In JavaScript, the
double ampersand && equals “and” and the double pipe ||
equals “or.”]
Since we’ve now validated that our
form and field value conditions have been met, we’re
ready to move forward.
Calling functions to perform
tasks
Since we’re going to perform
several different tasks we decided to keep them separate
and built a different function for each. The code below
demonstrates how we’re calling each function in the
order we want them processed.
Variables
My
JavaScript for Dummies book tells me that you
can’t define a variable within a function and have it
available outside of that function. I found this to be
true when I defined my variables within my inquirePA42()
function but couldn’t use them in later functions.
I remembered seeing within Lawson’s
ProcessFlow requisition approval JavaScript sample (recsum.htm)
that they defined their variables using a loadvariables()
function so copied that methodology.
Gathering required information
In order to eventually add the
Transfer action on PA52, we need a lot more data than is
available on our PA45 form. This requires that we get
information from the job Requisition (PA42), the
Position (PA02) and the employee’s current values from
PA52.
We decided to inquire on the actual
forms (AGS) rather than the data tables (DME) because it
was easier to reference the data we needed and because
we only needed one record instead of multiple records.
The first form we needed additional
data from was the PA42 – Requisition form. We needed to
pass selection criteria in order to inquire on the
correct record. We were able to hard code the company
but needed to use the Requisition number (stored in the
“text2” form field).
We defined the “s” variable with
the AGS call and then submitted the AGS call through the
sAGSInfo variable definition. We could now reference
the AGS object and get the field values to assign to our
variables. (Be sure to include the _RTN=DATA portion in
the AGS call or you won’t be able to reference the
values you need to assign to your variables.)
In order to perform the AGS call on
the Position (PA02) we needed the Position value
assigned to the variable newPosition but we also needed
the position’s effective date. To get this date, we did
perform a DME call against the data table but then used
the inquire AGS call against PA02 (again, because it was
easier to reference the data values).
The last inquire AGS call we
performed was against the PA52 form and this was done in
order to quickly access the employee’s current values.
When you add the information to PA52 you can’t key the
same data into the Selected Items “Change To” field if
it is equal to the “Current Value.”
Since we had all of the data values
we need to “change to” from the PA45, PA42 and PA02
forms and have them assigned to specific variables, we
needed to compare them to their current values on PA52.
If the “change to” value was equal to the “current
value” we updated the variable to a null value.
[Note the inquire AGS call being
set to _OUT=XML you need reference the fields as they
are returned in XML. We used the API Builder to get the
correct formatting.]
Adding the PA52 Transfer Action
Having the data (and updating it as
needed) we were ready to perform our last function - we
were ready to add the transfer action via an AGS call to
PA52.
We were actually told we couldn’t
add the transaction on PA52 because of the form’s
functionality. This form requires you to add the
Company, Employee, and Action and then Inquire before
you can fill in the remaining fields and add the
transaction.
We got around this by using _EVT=CHG
within the AGS call instead of _EVT=ADD as you would
normally expect. Since FC=Add was set in the AGS call
the system added the transaction.
In some cases, the add function to
PA52 would fail – this occurred during our testing when
the supervisor data was missing on PA02 or when the new
pay was outside of the position’s range. In order to
let the user know that the PA52 was added correctly we
included the system message in an alert box.
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