Sunday, October 30, 2011

Update field automaticaly once another field get updated

Now, I just want to share out a bit of how to update the field automatically in Maximo. A lot of time, we have requirement on how to update the field once another field get updated. Yes, this is really to ease user for not updating another field manually while the information exists in another table. Well, this kind of behaviour is quite common in the UI of maximo. Let's say in the Purchase Order application. Once you update the field of quantity, you should get the total cost of the purchase. that is, one of the default behavior of the Maximo UI.


In order to perform the above behavior, you can do it in 2 ways.
  1. Coding in the level of Mbo
  2. Coding in the level of Bean
Both must be done by coding. :P Well, it's indeed this blog is meant to be.
Anyway, doing coding in level Mbo, you can do it in Fld classes. Thus, you need to perform some changes on metada of Maximo's database. But, one thing that you need to ensure is that you update the same Mbo as what the bean is actually display. Because, a lot of time, the mbo object is not the same as what the mbo object used in Bean. Thus, updating the data will take no effect on the mbo which current bean displays.

doing coding in the level of Bean, will definitely give you the right Mbo. Thus, there is no need to worry about different Mbo object problem as I describe above.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Maximo does not publish the changes created by MIF

During my project in AORA, I have been configuring a lot about integration/MIF as it deals a lot with external application so called Satellite Application. The idea is the satellite application does not deal directly to Maximo database, but they are accessing Maximo database through iface table. Well, that is general idea of why Integration exists.

In the business process of our client, there is a process to transfer their assets from one storeroom to another storeroom. Well, the satellite application will expect to have a record of Transfer Order to perform Transfer Out-In process. The record is created in the iface table (this is the term representing a table used to exchange data between external application and maximo). Transfer out will be performed first, from Maximo. Once, the process of transfer out is finished. Transfer in will be processed. Transfer in will not be executed if the transfer out has not been done. The transfer asset process involves a hundred of assets to be transferred even thousand, thus, we cannot use a standard Maximo to do this.

To fulfill the above scenario, I make some customization to process the assets. I am using excel reader to read excel and then process it to MIF. Using MIF, I am able to create record. Well, upon creating the record I am expecting to get a record for transfer in. But in fact, it does not get created which is weird. I have created a publish channel to monitor the objects but still the transfer in object does not get created. Well, my hypothesis is that it has different behavior between integration and created directly from UI, which I think, it is not supposed to be so. Thus, the solution to deal with with the problem is to perform some changes on the object either using mbo changes or using escalation to monitor the existence of object and do some changes (adding description to object or any kind of changes to trigger MIF to publish the changes) on that.