Accessing Oracle Forms from Workflow(and a nifty

Personalization)
5 Comments Posted by oracleappsnotes on April 15, 2011
It is quite an easy task to enable a user to open a Form directly from an Oracle Workflow
Notifications page. In fact, we can also pass parameters to the form so that it automatically
queries the form and displays a record based on the parameter which is passed. This post
demonstrates how this is done. Along the way we will also look at a small but pretty useful
trick clicking a button through Form Personalization.
Following are the basic steps:
1. Register a form function as per requirement
2. Create an attribute of type Form which stores the name of the form function and the
parameter with which we want to call it.
3. In a workflow process include a notification message.
4. Associate the attribute with the notification message
The form that I want to call from Notifications window is the Find Service Request function.
When calling the function, I will be passing a parameter which will be populated in the
appropriate field and the search button will be clicked automatically.

Since the Find Service Request function does not accept any parameters, first I will register
my own function(XXXSRTEST) based on the seeded form so that my function will be able to
accept the parameter which I will pass to it from the Workflow.

As you can see from the following screen shots, the only difference between my function and
the seeded Find Service Request function(CSXSRISV) is that my function can accept the
CUSTOMER_ID parameter.

Add the function to the appropriate menu so that it is accessible from the responsibility from
where the Workflow Notifications will be viewed. Now I will open the function and
personalize it so that the parameter that I pass is populated in the appropriate field and the
Search button is clicked automatically. I create the following personalization rule:
Seq:10
Description:Accept parameter and execute query
Condition
Trigger Event:WHEN-NEW-FORM-INSTANCE
Trigger Object:None
Condition:None
Processing Mode:Not In Enter-Query Mode
Context:
Level: Site
Then I add three actions to the rule. In the first action(seq#20), I populate the appropriate
field in the form with the value stored in the parameter which I created for this function.
During runtime, I will pass a value to this parameter from the Workflow.

In the second(seq#30) and third actions(seq#31) I click the Search button automatically
through personalization. First I shift focus to the Search button using the GO_ITEM builtin.

Then I call the EXECUTE_TRIGGER builtin with argument WHEN-BUTTON-PRESSED to

simulate the button press.

Once these personalizations are done, I will make the function inaccessible from the front end
by removing the prompt name for the function from the menu.
In the Workflow, I add two attributes PO Number and Open a Form. PO Number is a
text type attribute which is set to a value of 4880(this is the parameter which I will pass to my
form) and it has the internal name PO_NUM

Open a Form is an attribute of type Form and it is set to a value

XXXSRTEST:CUSTOMER_ID=&PO_NUM. The value indicates that the form function to
be opened is XXXSRTEST with the parameter CUSTOMER_ID. The value stored in the
attribute PO_NUM will be passed to the parameter.

Create a message and associate both these attributes with the message. Attach the message to
a notification.Associating a Form type attribute with the notification message displays a link
in the Notification at runtime which can be clicked to open the Form.

Run the Workflow and open the notifications page. You will see a link in the References
sections with the same name as that of the Form type attribute.

Clicking on the link opens my custom function XXXSRTEST while passing the value
4880(stored in the PO Number attribute) to parameter CUSTOMER_ID. The personalizations
in the function populates the Service Request Number field with the value of the parameter
and automatically clicks on the Search button to execute the query and the appropriate record
is displayed.

Note:
1. The form function will open automatically only if it is accessible from the same
responsibility from which the Workflow Notification is viewed otherwise it will
prompt you to choose the responsibility manually.
2. The syntax for accessing a form with parameters may vary depending upon the EBS
version, in my instance XXXSRTEST:CUSTOMER_ID=&PO_NUM works. If it
doesnt work in your system try using XXXSRTEST:CUSTOMER_ID=&PO_NUM
or XXXSRTEST:CUSTOMER_ID=&PO_NUM.