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Figure 3. This is what happens when you try to load multi-valued custom attribute data. Lawson, can you please fix?

Creating the XML file

Creating the XML file in an efficient manner is the challenge. You could manually create the file but that would defeat the purpose. You need to create a utility that can read a simple input file and transform it to the XML format required by loadusers utility. There are dozens of language choices here, most modern languages like Perl, Java, VB have the constructs to create XML files that adhere to the Document Object Model (DOM) standard.

I chose to use JAVA since it has numerous classes to build DOM compliant document structures. I could easily have used Perl along with their XML::DOM package but I’ve made the switch to JAVA and I’ll never go back. VB/VB.net would also be an appropriate choice here and it could easily be integrated with Excel for the basic user data entry.

My source file for the user data would come from Excel via a pipe-delimited file. This would allow anybody to input the data using a well-known and understood GUI environment.

Figure 4. Sample Excel template for adding User Data.

The JAVA program would then read the file, process each record with id = 1, and create a <USER> node with each column becoming an Attribute. (Id’s 2 through 4 are used when I want to batch load ROLES, GROUPS or IDENTITIES.)

The resulting XML file is shown below:

Figure 5. A properly formatted XML document ready for’ loadusers’ utility.

At this point to actually add the user(s) to Lawson Security all you have to do is run the 'loadusers' utility:

Figure 6. Screenshot showing good outcome of running ‘loadusers’ utility.

Java Code Snippet

As with all my articles I like to include some code that can be used as a starting point for your own use. The below code snippet is a section of a simple JAVA program that converts the Pipe delimited data to XML. The main purpose of the code is to show you how easy it is to add Nodes, Child-Nodes and Attributes to create an XML document. Please be aware that I make no guarantees it will work with your system’s JAVA version and I will accept no liability for any code you develop based on this Article that may damage your Lawson ERP System.
 

• Demonstrating a product and its features via a static article is impossible. I do gloss over some steps in this article. My intention is to show you the highlights hopefully whet your appetite and imagination.
  
  
• This is not a replacement for Lawson’s documentation; as such, this article is not a re-hash of ‘this is a menu bar, this is the toolbox”, etc. etc.. If you want more detail, read the documentation and consider attending a Lawson-provided training.
  
  
• Design Studio isn’t perfect; remember that it is a browser application. It can’t do everything and it does hang, but not as much as it used to. If you’re just starting out with it, you will achieve a certain level of frustration—I guarantee it.

• Controlling the user’s navigation through the fields on the form (including switching tabs/related pages!)
  
• Setting a default action after a particular field is entered
  
• Branching in different ways based on the values on the form (e.g., you might want certain to prompt the user to enter certain fields on a AP10 Vendor form depending on the Vendor Class)

Accessing Design Studio

Lawson Design Studio—like Lawson Portal—is a browser-based application. It is an add-on product (i.e. you have to be licensed for it, and install it separately from Lawson Portal). So, if you have Design Studio, enter the URL to access it:

Env 8: http://<lawson web server>/lawson/portal/studio
LSF9: http://<lawson web server>/lawson/studio

Once you log in, click ‘File|New’ on the Menu bar, select the ‘New’ tab, choose the Wizard Designer, and double-click on the Wizard icon:

This starts the ‘New Wizard’ (Do you think Lawson was tempted to call it the “New Wizard Wizard”?), which is used to select the form upon which to build the wizard. As with the other Design Studio wizards, select your desired product line, system code, and application form:

You'll then have an empty wizard framework, with a starting and ending point:

The first thing I’m going to do is change the ‘help text’ that will display when the Wizard is invoked:

To add steps to the wizard, you double-click the step icon, and select which field to which the step should be linked:

In this example, I’m building a wizard for adding a new Accounting Unit, so the first field the user should be positioned on is the Company. In the text pane at the bottom, you can see the default Lawson-supplied “field help” for the fields as they are added. You can leave the default help text, or you can create your own, tailored to your organization.

Next I add the Accounting Unit and Posting Flag:

Then, we add some branching logic to the wizard, based on which type of Accounting Unit is being added, Posting or Summary. To do that, double-click the ‘branch’ icon, and enter the value to be used to decide the branch:

We’re adding two branches: one for Posting and one for Summary:

If this is a Posting Accounting Unit, we’ll do take the user to the Person responsible and Description fields; for Summary A/U, to Description and Contact Name (which will automatically switch the user to the 'Address' tab/related page).  Not a very robust wizard, but hey, it's just an example!

Rearranging

If you need to re-order the steps, select the one to be moved and then Edit | Shift Upwards / Shift Downwards:

Enhancing the Wizard

An additional thing you can do is to invoke an action when a particular step is reached; I'm going to default an 'Add' action when the wizard ends.  Obviously in this contrived example, the wizard hasn't walked the user through all of the required fields on the form, so the ‘Add’ action will fail, but you get the idea:

Saving Your Work

Remember to save your work frequently--after all this is a browser application:

Note that Wizard forms are saved in a different directory (/lawson/portal/content/wizard) than Form Designer forms (/lawson/portal/content/forms).

A quick refresher: Remember that Design Studio really shows two menu bars. It takes some adjustment; Design Studio has its own menu bar, which displays underneath the browser’s menu bar:

On countless occasions, I’ve dropped-down the “wrong” ‘File’ menu and tried to save a Lawson Design Studio .xml file using the browser’s menu bar!

Testing your new Wizard Form

Use the ‘View | Preview’ menu option to preview your work (remember, it’s a “live” form!):

The Wizard displays as a dialog box, with a ‘cancel’ and ‘continue’ options for starting the Wizard.
Notice the “help text” that I entered is displayed:

- QUOTE OF THE ISSUE –

“The trouble with programmers is
that you can never tell what a
programmer is doing until it's too late.”
-- Seymour Cray