Live blog coverage from the IFS World Conference 2018 breakout session, “Adapt IFS Applications to fit your needs.”
Session Speaker: Emelie Oskarsson, business systems analyst, Technology, IFS R&D
The configuration capabilities of IFS Applications allow you to adapt it to your needs. In particular, today, we’ll be talking about custom objects.
A custom object is a concept that allows you to extend functionality with new fields, menus, etc. It allows you to improve the fit of IFS Applications to your business. Configurations allow changes without coding and can be made instantly available in your environments, unlike customizations which require an application build and deployment.
For example, in an order list, you have the site code already, but not the site name. Adding a custom field with a reference brings the site name to the form.
The types and number of configurations you have available will depend on the version of IFS Applications you’re running – we’ve been developing them alongside the development of the platform.
You can add:
- Custom menus
- Custom events and event actions
- Quick reports
- Customer fields – fields and columns can be added
- Information cards – show data on a card on a page
- Customer enumerations – user-specified values (these can be used in other custom objects)
- Custom logical units – adds storage of business objects
- Custom pages
- Custom tabs
- Conditional fields – client-side validation
These objects can be added and combined through a simple visual interface.
How to do it
- Design and plan what you want to achieve
- Always work in the test environment
- Configure your custom objects in IFS Solution Manager
- Validate and test them
- Then – and only then – export to production
Configuration packages
Over time you are likely to develop greater numbers of configurations – from multiples sources within the organization or outside consultants. At some point, you might want to audit them: who created them? Why?
The application configuration package, introduced in IFS Applications 9, is your friend.
It allows you to group configurations together, by connection or creator. You can also import and export them. They also offer validation of your configurations before you install it, flagging up anything you might need to address. It can be used at any time, not only at import. For example, as you apply an update. The export format is essentially a set of XML files.
When you create a package, the system checks for configurations your package relies on and adds them to the package automatically.
There’s an Application Configuration Status Lobby that gives you an overview of all the custom objects you have in the system. It also falls up configurations that aren’t in a package. The right hand of the screen flags out problems, unreferenced objects and other errors.
To learn more about IFS Applications head over to ifs.com.
Do you have questions or comments?
We’d love to hear them so please leave us a message below.
Andrew Elskamp
This post is incredibly vague, are there any examples or link to a video?