Working with application links

When you define an application link, you must also specify a Java class. The class you specify must reside in the J2EE application server that is running Smart Notification. When a user receives a notification and clicks the Detail link, the server loads the class that calls the information related to the selected detail item.

The Java class must also use a specific interface. For example, com.lawson.lsn.common.LinkContext. When a user clicks the Detail link within a notification, theSmart Notification server provides contextual information, the InfoSet ID, the tag that you specified in the InfoSet, and other information, to the Java class. This contextual information creates unique links for each row of application data that is delivered to the user. Users then may click a specific row of data in a report or notification to access information specific to that row. The Java class also performs any action required to launch the corresponding application.

For example, the Java class can perform a database query, authenticate the user, or redirect the user to another URL. Also, if you define multiple cell level application links for an InfoSet and the user clicks a cell, Smart Notification prompts the users to choose the application to link to.

You can customize the way that Application Links are accessed in a notification. By default,Smart Notification adds a Details link to each row of data. Using the Notification wizard you can specify to apply Application Links to columns within the row of data.

Example

You can apply the link to AR10 to the column containing the customer ID so that when users click on the customer ID they are taken to AR10.

You can also define application links at the InfoSet level instead of the row or cell level. If you set up application links in this way, any notification using data from that InfoSet will have those Application Links available.

Links to Lawson Enterprise applications

You can set up the InfoSet's application links to link to Lawson Portal or LID forms.

You must specify a property name and value for each link that you add to the lawson.xml document.

For example, <property name="AP30.2" value="Distribution Adjustments">. After adding this information to the lawson.xml document, you must specify the property into the Tag field of the Application Link. You must also select the value that Smart Notification needs to populate the form.

The lawson.xml document specifies links to a number of Lawson forms. If the form is already listed in lawson.xml, you do not need to change anything in the file. If the form is not listed in lawson.xml, you must add a new section to the file for the new form.

Links to URLs

You can set up the InfoSet's application links to link to URLs and pass parameters from the notification to the URL. The parameters will be taken from the row of data that the user selected and inserted into the URL.

You can use URL links instead of creating Application Link Java classes in many cases. To do this, you must:

  • Give the link a name
  • Specify URL for the class
  • Provide the URL for the Application Link tag

The tag contains the URL to link to and can contain replaceable parameters, surrounded by [ and ]. The parameters are the names of the columns that the data should be taken from to complete the URL. Where columns have a column name and a different display name, the column name should be used.

Example

If an InfoSet has a column called Customer ID you could construct dynamic URLs to a web site by using the following syntax: http://<<www.myapp.com>>/showCust?cust=[Customer Id].

On each row of data the value from the Custom ID column will be used to complete the URL.

Application link maps

Application link maps are specifications that you attach to the application link. Smart Notification then maps an InfoSet's column names to a common set of column names before the data is passed to the Java class.

Setting up maps helps to standardize the names of the data columns that display on your notifications.

For example, in one InfoSet city is named Sales Region, and in another InfoSet city is named city. You can use an application link map to ensure that citymart is always passed to the Application Linker as Sales Region.

Application link selections

Application link selections are specifications that you attach to the application link. These links enable users to select an application and view selections. Smart Notification shows these selections to the user in a web page. Users must specify the required criteria before they can link to the application.

For example, to link to an application that presents a grid, you can set up application link selections that enable users to choose what they want to be displayed in the grid. If the user clicks a row of data that contains sales channel, sales region, and product suite, the user would also have to specify whether to view channel detail by region detail, channel detail by product, or region detail by product.