Accessing Oracle Forms from Workflow(and a nifty Personalization)

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.
2.

Register a form function as per requirement

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.