Sometimes I Like To Pretend: Maximo 7.5 - Use button with Automation Script

Goal:

To Create an automation script in Maximo 7.5.0.4 that is triggered by clicking on an button in an application.

Example:

A button on the Work Order Tracking application that triggers a script. The script will read the Target Start Date from the Work Order, add the Duration to it and will automatically fill in the Target Finish Date.

How to:
Open the Automation Scripts application. Create a new ‘Script with Action Launch Point’

Fill in the name of the Launch Point, the Object and the Name of the Action.

We will see this Actionname later when we configure the button and an Action with this name will automatically be created. We choose to use a New script. Click [Next] to continue

Next give the New Script a name and description. I use jython as the script language. We will add variabeles later on, so leave them for now and click [Next] to continue.

We need to fill in the script here. As we cannot test it here we will fill in a ‘1’ (cannot leave it blank for some reason) We will return later to add the correct script. Click the [Create] button

Open the script and go to the ‘Variables’ tab.

Add the following variables by pressing the [New Row] button

Variable:             TARGSTART_IN
Description:       Target Start Date
Variable Type:   IN
Override:            Checked
Binding Type:    Attribute

Variable:             ESTDUR_IN
Description:       Estimated Duration
Variable Type:   IN
Override:            Checked
Binding Type:    Attribute

Variable:             TARGFINISH_OUT
Description:       Target Finish Date
Variable Type:   OUT
Override:            Checked
Binding Type:    Attribute

Click the ‘Save’ icon at the top of the screen and go to the ‘Launch Points’ tab. Click on the ‘Edit Launch Point Detail’ button.

In this screen we bind the created variables to Attributes. This can be done per Launch point. So if you create multiple launch points you can use the same variables but bind them to different Attributes.

Open the Details of the attribute and click on the ‘Select Attribute Name’ button.

Check the Action application to see the configuration of the Action that was created.

Do not change anything here, this is configured by creating the launch point, we will just check it here.

Next we will add the button to the screen. Open the Application Designer en open the WOTRACK application.

Add a Signature Option to the WOTRACK application by going to the ‘Select Action’ menu and clicking on ‘Add/Modify Signature Options’

Create a new Signature with the same name as the Action.

Open the ‘Advanced Signature Options’ at the bottom of the dialog and make sure that “This is an action that must be invoked by use in the UI” is selected.

Click [OK] and Save the ‘WOTRACK’ application.

Now we add a ‘Pushbutton’ to the Work Order tab. Just somewhere near the Target Start and Target Finish Date fields.

Open the properties of the Pushbutton. Give the Pushbutton a label and enter the Signature name as Event.

Save the WOTRACK application.

Now we need to give rights to the authorized groups on the button. Open the Security Groups application. Open the MAXADMIN group, go to the ‘Applications’ tab and filter for the ‘Work Order Tracking’ application.

Next filter or search for the Signature option we created and check the ‘Grant Access?’ option.

Save the group.

Now we need to create the actual script. Go to the ‘Automation Scripting’ application. Open the script we created earlier.

We will replace the current code with the code below;

from java.util import Date

TARGFINISH_OUT = Date(TARGSTART_IN.getTime() + long(ESTDUR_IN * 60 * 60 *1000))

In short the code does the following;

Coverting the TargetStartDate to milliseconds, converting the estimated Duration to milliseconds and adding them up, converting the total of milliseconds to a date and storing that in the Target Finish Data.

Click the ‘Save’ button, and to test the script, click the ‘Run’ button.