Deploying User control in EP

Once a certain functionality has been developed using User Controls for EP, the next step is to deploy this functionality on the EP portal. Following are the steps that are used to deploy an SSRS report, using a parameters forms (User control) on EP.

Basically the process involves two steps :- 

1. Creating the UserControl to accept the report parameters
2. Creating a new page to host the UserControl, which is used to accept the parameters. 
3. Creating a navigation to viewing this page.

Step 1: Creating of the user control to accept report parameters

• Start by creating a new project in Visual Studio for the EP Web Application and then add EP User Control to the project. 
• The control that would be used for viewing a report would be the AxReportViewer control and to be able to use this we will have to ensure that the AxBaseUserControl is added and reference to the ApplicationProxies is added to the project.  

•  Create the necessary interface for accepting the parameters on the screen. This could be a combination of asp and Ax controls if required. 
• The Report that needs to be printed should be a SSRS report and should be based on the SRSReportDataProviderBase class
• The report should have an output menu ( LeaveBalance in this example ) 
• Add the AxReportViewerControl from the toolbox and assign the output menu as a property as shown below 

• Now lets add the code for the print button click. The first thing we need to do is to open our SSRS report and view all the parameters that are present. Its important that we assign a value to all the parameters that the report uses
• Please note that we can ignore the DynamicParameter as these are due to query dialogs on the report and cannot be used on the EP.

• Now that we know we have three parameters as highlighted above being used in the report. Please create the button click procedure to pass all the parameters to the report and when the AddParameters method is called the report is triggered. 

public partial class SPYLeaveBalanceReport : System.Web.UI.UserControl
{
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {

    }
    protected void btnPrint_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        Dictionary parms = new Dictionary();

        parms.Add("LeaveDetails_AsOnDate", DateTime.Parse(txtAsOnDate.Text).ToString("G"));

        if ( chkShowDetails.Checked == true)
        {
            parms.Add("LeaveDetails_ShowDetails", "Yes");
        }            
        else
        {
            parms.Add("LeaveDetails_ShowDetails", "No");
        }            
        parms.Add("LeaveDetails_absenceCode", "");

        this.axLeaveBalanceReport.AddParameters(parms);        
    }
}

Step 2: Creating a page to host the User control created in step 1

• Open Enterprise portal and navigate to the page where the new link has to be created and then click on -> Site Actions –> More Options –> Page –> Create –> 

• Provide name for the page –> Select the layout –> Select Library as Enterprise Portal –> OK.

Please use the right page type (Header, Footer, 3 columns) else the page might not show the page navigation of the parent page. A new page will now be created relative to the page we started from. The address of the newly created page will be visible in the address bar. Click edit to open the page in design mode and add a webpart called SPYLeaveBalancesESS created above.

Step 3: Create a navigation to the above sharepoint page

Now that the sharepoint page with the UserControl has been created and saved. We have to create a navigation to the same from the menu where we desire. 

• So we start from the front end screen where we wish to place the new link. Given the screen below one would start from the Web Menus in the AOT

• We browse the Web menu intuitively to figure out the above menu. Once we get the menu in the property sheet we will be able to find the WebMenu that is used in the property sheet under the property QuickLaunch : SPYHCPMListPageQuickLaunch (shown below)

Once the Web Menu name is identified we can expand the same in the AOT and we will be able to notice that the Web Menu is a group of Web Menu Items of url type. 

Each Menu item is hence a url to a specific page on the sharepoint portal. We will have to now create a new URL web menu item and add the page that we created in step 1 as the URL. The URL should begin relative from the portal where it is being assigned. Hence the url for web page "Leave balance.aspx" which was added under employee portal would be 

EmployeeServices/Enterprise%20Portal/Leave%20balance.aspx 

Once the menu has been created and the URL has been specified the page can be imported into AOT from the sharepoint portal. This is useful when the deployment has to be migrated from the DEV server to the Production server. Once the page has been imported we will get an Info Log as shown below.

The last piece of the deployment is to add this newly created Web Menu URL to the Web Menu by dragging and drop it on the menu. 

 

AX2012 Deploy ListPage with QuickLaunch menu

Generally when a List page is deployed it only gives an option to be deployed in the subsites that have been created in EP.  There could be a scenario where one would want the list page to open with a quick launch menu (navigation pane on the left )

We had created a new list page which had to appear inside the Timesheet Quick Launch Menu. The problem with the deployment was there was no option to deploy inside the Timesheet node, and if the list page was deployed under the EmployeeServices node, the user would lose the Quick Launch Menu each time the url was clicked.

Below are the steps involved to deploy a list page inside a Quick Lauch menu

Step 1. Create a Display menu for the listpage

Step 2. Right click the display menu and deploy the list page to the root site. When the list page is deployed to EP the deployment process will automatically create a WebURL

Step 3. Right click the WebURL menu created and import the page.

Step 4. Select the page (in my case the page name is AFZ_AllocationsListPage) and change the WebModule address. I have added Timesheets in the existing link

Step 5. Now right click on the Page Definition and deploy the page to the new address that has been specified.

Step 6. Once the page has been deployed at the new location the URL can be updated to refer to the new address

Step 7. At this stage the WebURL can be added to the quick launch menu created for timesheets, and when this link is click it would open with the left navigation pane in place as shown below.

AX2012 EP Pass Record context beween EP forms

Requirement : Open one modal form from another and pass the context.

The best way to pass the context is using the Dataset init method of the relevant table. In my case i had to pass the InventJournalTrans table's reference from a grid to a new form, where the details would be entered. Below are the steps for the same.

Step 1: Create the init method in the relevant table under the dataset.



The definition of the init method would be as follows:
public void init()
{
    Common              callerRecord = element.args().record();
    super();

    if ( callerRecord.TableId == tablenum(InventJournalTrans) )
    {
      this.query((EPQuery::makeRecIdQuery(this.query(),tablenum(InventJournalTrans),callerRecord.RecId)));
    }
}

Once the above is done we are sure that a filter would be imposed on the database if the calling form is sending the record context of the InventJournalTrans table.

Step 2: Is to ensure that a record context is passed from the source. We first create a new sharepoint page with a new web control and render a presentation that we want to be displayed.

A url type of WebMenuItem would be required to point to the newly created sharepoint page and the new userControl created. Create a new webMenuItem as shown below




Step 3: Attach the menu item in the parent UserControl such that it has the right context. In my case it happens to be a grid control which has a toolbar attached to it. So simply drag the url menu item to the relevant webmenu, which in this case is AFZEPInventJournalLineToolbar