Core Content Only

Ever wanted to create a custom form with added metadata inside a workflow review? This post will show you how.  This topic has come up many times on the Oracle forums. Customizing the workflow form is not really that difficult. Below are the steps you will need to know in order to customize the workflow form.

1. Create a custom component called MyWorkflowComponent

2. Add a template which overrides WORKFLOW_REVIEW_FRAMES

3. Edit this template. Insert the following in the HTML head after this line <$include std_html_head_declarations$>

<$if dWfName like "MyWorkflow" and dWfStepName like "Data.Input"$>

   <$include my_workflow_custom_javascript$>

<$endif$>

This code checks the workflow name and step to see if they match what you want. This way you can customize the workflow form for different workflows.

Search for this line within the WORKFLOW_REVIEW_FRAMES template: <$include workflow_doc_action_forms$> There will be a </table> </td> right before this. Insert the following code before this this </table>:

<$if dWfName like "MyWorkflow" and dWfStepName like "Data.Input"$>

   <$include my_workflow_custom_forms$>

<$endif$>

Again we check to make sure this is the Workflow we want to customize. If so, we insert a custom include that we will be creating.

4. Within your component, create a Dynamic HTML resource file.

5. Edit this resource file.

Create a dynamic include for anything that should go within the HTML head (this example includes jQuery and jQueryUI.

<@dynamichtml my_workflow_custom_javascript@>
<script src="<$HttpRelativeWebRoot$>resources/CSXWorkflowEnhancements/jquery-1.4.4.min.js"></script>
<script src="<$HttpRelativeWebRoot$>resources/CSXWorkflowEnhancements/jquery-ui-1.8.5.custom.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(function(){
   $("a[href^='javascript:document.Approve_<$dID$>']").click(function() {
      $("input[name='xEmployeeID']").val($("input[id='xEmployeeID']").val());
 [[% Submit my form %]]

 $("#frm_medical").submit();

 return false;    });

});

<@end@> 

Notice the use of HttpRelativeWebRoot. When you use this, you will need to put these files within your weblayout directory. Use this blog post as a reference.

Now we will create the actual form that shows up below or Approve / Reject links.

<@dynamichtml my_workflow_custom_forms@>

<tr>

 <td style="padding-top:10px">

 <form id="frm_employee_info" method="POST" action="javascript:document.Approve_<$dID$>.submit();">

 <p><label for="xEmployeeID">Employee ID</label><input type="text" id="xEmployeeID" /></p>

 </form>

 </td>

</tr>

<@end@>

Notice the form POST action. This is where we hook into the Approve link. When someone clicks the Approve link, our form (frm_employee_info) will get submitted first. This is where we can do validation and if something is not correct we can return FALSE and stay on the page. For this blog post, we are simply going to copy the values from this form and put them in the hidden field (which we will create next) that actually gets submitted to Content Server. If our form submits fine, then we will submit the Content Server form.

Create a dynamic include that overrides workflow_doc_approve_special_parameters. Within this include, we need to place HTML input elements that will get populated from or forms above.

<@dynamichtml workflow_doc_approve_special_parameters@>

<$include super.workflow_doc_approve_special_parameters$>

 <input type="hidden" name="xEmployeeID" value="" />

<@end@>

It may look like a lot of code, but it is not too much work. Have any tips or tricks to making your own custom forms? Send them to tips@corecontentonly.com.

It is easy to misspell variable names in Java. Using Java static final Strings (perhaps better known as constants) are a great way to help avoid this problem. Here and here are two articles on the subject. Below is a sample class for some very commonly used metadata field names in UCM.

public class RCSConstants
{
public static final String dDocTitle = “dDocTitle”;
public static final String dDocName = “dDocName”;
public static final String dDocName_encoded = “dDocName_encoded”;
public static final String dFormat = “dFormat”;
public static final String dID = “dID”;
public static final String dDocType =”dDocType”;
public static final String dRevLabel = “dRevLabel”;
public static final String dOriginalName = “dOriginalName”;
public static final String dDocAuthor = “dDocAuthor”;
public static final String dSecurityGroup = “dSecurityGroup”;
}

These constants (strings) can now be used in other classes as follows:

RCSConstants.dDocTitle

If you are using an IDE (such as JDeveloper or Eclipse) it will only let you choose values that are spelled correctly (provided you spelled them correctly in your constants class).

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/content-management/downloads/index-085241.html

Get it while it’s hot!  Oracle released Patch Set 4, version 11.1.1.5 of ECM recently.  Includes updates to IRM, IPM, UCM and the whole stack as well as matching updates for RCU, WebLogic and JDeveloper.