Custom Popup Applets
Obviously, with every implementation we do we aim to rollout a ‘vanilla’ solution. By now, everyone has fully ‘bought in’ to that mantra and understands the ongoing benefits of not over-customising. Having said that, there are still situations that justify slight, er, tweaks to the Siebel application…
A recent one for me included giving the user a list of options on completing an action. Now, I could get the result I needed by navigating to a new view, but the UI was pretty unfriendly. What I really wanted was a modal popup dialog.
In Siebel 7+ it’s possible to launch a pop-up applet from a normal applet by using the ShowPopup method. Details are in Bookshelf -> Configuring Siebel eBusiness Applications -> Configuring Special Purpose Applets -> Configuring Pop-Up Applets Launched from Applets. To summarise the instructions:
- Add a control to your applet
- Set the control Method Invoked to ShowPopup
- Set the control User Property Popup to the name of your popup applet
The popup applet specified in the user property must use a class derived from CSSSWEFramePopup. To see all possible classes select ‘Class’ in Tools Object Explorer and query for ‘Super Class’ = CSSSWEFramePopup: the standard class for a popup list applet is CSSSWEFrameListPopup. (What if you can’t see Class in the object explorer?) If you’re creating a new applet for your popup and you don’t expect edits in the popup, it’s simplest to configure your layout in ‘Base’ mode.
The popup applet can be based on any business component in currently active business object, and will appear in context. So you could launch a popup from the Orders applet, for instance, and list all child Order Line Items. Alternatively, you can base your popup on a VBC and display any random list of choices you desire. Because it’s all in context, capturing the user action and invoking a change on the launching business component is trivial.
So that’s all good and easy; not even too much customisation. Click a button, up pops our applet. Now, the challenge for any bored configurators out there is this: how do we automagically popup this applet on a new record when it’s written for the first time? Suggestions welcomed in the comments…
9 comments July 12th, 2007