Something like hook activities - plans for future for GUI interaction

[Former Member]

Hello!

Hook acitvities as part of the SAP ME 5.2 SDK are quite useful.

As tested they can be used on events as PRE-START, POST-START, PRE-COMPLETE and POST-COMPLETE.

They are called as part of processing of the main actrivity (START or COMPLETE).

When they fail - that means a java exception is raised - also the overall transaction fails (START or COMPLETE).

As they are started internally on the server no GUI interaction can be started as result of the hook activity.

The jave class has NO session context - from the architectural point of view this is understandable.

In contrary to that there are GUI activities, that can be started with a button click.

They are started independantly of other activities.

As they have the session context - technically these are servlets or java server pages - a GUI can be initiated.

Are the plans for future to have have a solution for a requirement like the following:

1. When clicking on START, an activity is called that calls a customisation.

2. When this customisation returns an error the entire process is aborted or rolled back.

3. Otherwise the process flow continues - in that case the START activity is performed.

Somehow this a mixture of what is now available with hook activities and standalone GUI-activities.

Or is there a workaround even available with the current version of SAP ME?

Kr,

Erich Lind

[Former Member]

In 5.2, the plugin activity execution is dependent on where the activity executes. Start, Complete and Signoff are special in that they execute in the upper frame of the POD. Everything else is executed in the plugin planel below or in a new window. This affects which plugins the POD waits for completion on.

In 6.0, these behaviors are more formalized and consistent. A plugin can be configured to execute in a specific panel. If multiple plugins on a button are set to execute in Panel A, then they will execute one after the other. I think there is a way for a plugin to halt the processing of a chain of plugins when a serious error occurs.(I can't remember the specifics).

[Former Member]

Hello!

I tried setting several activities, which are triggered from one button click.

This works in a certain way - it's necessary to set "open in new window" for each custom activity.

Only one activity should output to to the main browser window.

I think the activity chain was activtated more or less sequentially.

As soon as the first response arrives from the server the new activity in the chain is started

(and the new browser window opened).

But of cause it is a long way from that behaviour to the desired outcome.

=> The final activity should only be processed if the previous activities all succeeded.

I heard there will be new possibilities in SAP ME 6.0 - adding WPMF (new SAP ME UI framework) support to the SDK

to allow the ability to create custom plug-ins in the new SAP ME 6.0 POD

Could this be useable for this form of "activity chain with error handling"?

Kr,

Erich Lind

[Former Member]

Hi Erich,

In POD maintenance you can assign multiple activities to the start button even now. So basically you can chain the custom actvity with the core activities.

You can also change the default behavior and replace the core start activity with a custom actitvity.

Thanks,

Mikhail