One of the core features of IDM is its ability to show documents in-context of an application. This allows IDM to provide documents, related to specific business data, in external applications such as ERPs or Infor OS applications.
Related Information Widget
The Related Information Widget is how IDM shows documents in-context. The widget can be found in the Context Apps Panel. To open this panel, click the double arrow icon located in the top right-hand corner of the Ming.le portal. Document thumbnails will appear in the Related Information Widget for documents that match the contextual information published by the current application. This context information can be configured in IDM in the Business Context Model tab inside Control Center.
The Related Information Widget consists of the following parts:
- entityType
List of published entityTypes. Selecting an entityType will only show documents that match the selected type.
- Add File
Allows you to quickly add documents to IDM. Documents uploaded through the Related Information Widget will have contextual information automatically stored. This means that each time a user returns to the current application screen, the newly uploaded document will be visible. When adding a document via the Related Information Widget:
- Attach a file
- Select an entityType that the new document will be associated with
- Select a document type for the new document
- If the document type requires, provide any additional attribute values
Note: Attributes that are listed in an XQuery Search will be readonly.
- Picture View/List View
Switch between viewing document thumbnails (Picture View) and viewing a list of documents (List View).
- Document Thumbnail/Document Name
Shows a thumbnail of the document or video player. If List View is selected a list of documents will be shown, each labeled with its IDM display name.
- Show in IDM
Link to the document in IDM. Clicking this will display the document in IDM.
- Share
Share document via Ming.le Share.
- Page Controls
Navigate between multiple documents.
Note: The IDM-RelatedInformationUser role (introduced in IDM 12.0.4) grants access to the IDM Related Information Widget only (users that have the IDM-User role will still be able to access the Related Information Widget). A user with this role is not granted access to other IDM interfaces. This role does not affect access to content in IDM but the role can (as all roles can) be used in the Access Control Lists (ACL) to manage authorization (access to content/documents) within IDM.
Infor Business Context
To understand how IDM reads contextual information in applications it is important to understand the basics of Infor Business Context. Infor Business Context provides a message (JSON) in which Infor Applications send details about the current screen and entities related to it. IDM's Related Information Widget searches the business context message for a match. If a match is found, an xquery search is performed. The results of that search are the documents visible in the Related Information Widget.
IDM is concerned with many parts of the context message, but mostly :
Example context message:
{
"type": "inforBusinessContext",
"data": {
"screenId": "m3_MMS001_B",
"entities": [
{
"accountingEntity": "760_AAA",
"entityType": "InforItemMaster",
"id1": "0001-8123",
"visible": true
}]
}
}
Note: The full Infor Business Context can be viewed for each screen, dynamically, in the Context Viewer Widget.
Business Context Model
The Business Context Model, located in the IDM Control Center, is where administrators can configure the documents that appear in the Related Information Widget. The Business Context Model consists of the following parts:
- Key
- Entity
The entityType that will be matched against in the target application.
- Product
The target application. This is the first part of the screenId.
- Screen
The screen within the target application. This is the last part of the screenId. Wildcards were introduced in IDM 12.0.10 - the most specific screen will take priority if multiple keys with the same screen are present.
- Document Type
The document type that will be searched in IDM.
Example using the context message above:
Key: InforItemMaster m3 MMS001_B <Document Type>
All parts of the key are optional. The most specific key will take priority if multiple keys are present. If there are multiple keys with the same entity, product and screen, but different document types, IDM will combine the results for those queries.
- XQuery
The search specified here will determine the documents that are visible in the Related Information Widget. You can build this query by using the Document Type Search method and copying/pasting the XQuery Search from the Advanced Tab. Using the data above, the search would look like this:
/MDS_GenericDocument[@MDS_id1 = "0001-8123"]
In this case, we are looking for documents of the document type "MDS_GenericDocument" and we are checking the attribute "id1" for a value of "0001-8123." If a document is found that matches this criteria, IDM will return it. It is also possible to have documents returned dynamically based on the Business Context Message. Instead of searching for documents that have a user-defined attribute value, we can search for documents that match an incoming attribute value from the context message. For example:
/MDS_GenericDocument[@MDS_id1 = {id1}]
Because the context message contains data about the attribute id1, we can replace the {id1} placeholder with the incoming value. When IDM reads a context message in the target application that publishes data for the attribute id1, IDM will search for documents that match that attribute value.
Note: If you use dynamic values in the XQuery, the document type attribute value for the new document will be already configured in the Related Information Widget
- Additional
- ACL
Set an ACL to be used when uploading documents via the Related Information Widget. If an ACL is added here it will be readonly in the Related Information Widget, otherwise the user can select an ACL to use when uploading a document.
- Additional Attributes
Set additional dynamic values to be automatically configured based on incoming context data. These attributes will not be used in the search.