Month: July 2015

It is often useful to provide a user some visual feedback if a script runs ok or ends with an error message. Maximo provides a complex message system which can be found in its Database configuration. Using this message system you can create message boxes like the following one.

In this post I will show you step by step the usage of the message system.

Scenario

The scenario we want to implement is to check the Priority field within a Workorder. If the Value is larger than 50 we would like to inform the user by a message and not allow to save the record.

The implementation needs the following elements:

1. A message defined in Maximo
2. A script with an Attribute Launchpoint

Preparation of Messages in Database Configuration

Start the Database Configuration by:

Goto –> System Configuration –> Platform Configuration –> Database Configuration

In the “Select Action” Menu select “Messages”. You will see an editor Window where you can edit all messages of the Maximo application.

To add new messages press the “New Row” button. A big input screen appears:

A couple of important fields in this screen need some clarification:

• Message Group: Maximo has a couple of predefined Messages Groups for the different applications or other grouping characteristics. You can either add your message to an existing group or define your own group. An own group can specially help you if you have a couple of related messages for the same context.
• Message Key: The unique Message Key is an important identifier to address a specific message from your script later on. Therefor it should be a short meaningful specification of what the message means. I prefer upper camel case conversion like “InvalidPrio”. The Message Key together with the Message Group uniquely identifies the message.
• Display Method: Can be ‘MSGBOX’ or ‘STATUS’. The ‘MSGBOX’ display a standard popup window displaying the message and a set of customizable buttons. The ‘STATUS’ displays the text above the tool bar and does not require user intervention
• Message ID Prefix: Should be “BMXZZ” which is the pre-defined message prefix  for all custom messages.
• Message ID Suffix: Specification of the Severity:
  • I = Informational
  • W = Warning
  • E = Error
• Display ID?: If checked the ID BMXZZ… will be shown in the Messagebox.
• Value: The Message text. The message Text can include placeholders {0}, {1}, {2} and so on for replacement parameters. I will show you later how to script them.

After clicking OK the new message is immediately available. No Database configuration is required at this point.

Creating the Attribute Launchpoint and the Script

GoTo –> System Configuration –> Platform Configuration –> Automation Scripts

In the “Select Action” Menu select “Create –> Script with Attribute Launchpoint”.

Fill in the following dialog and press Next:

In the following dialog enter the script name and press next:

In the final configuration screen enter the following sample code:

woPriority = mbo.getInt("WOPRIORITY")
if woPriority > 50:
    # Raise an error using a message
    errorgroup = "workorder"
    errorkey = "invalidPrio"

Please notice, that I never use In/Out variables for my scripts, because they make scripts less readable and will cause more issues with undefined variables in Eclipse. As a result I need to get the woPriorty value in line 1.

The important code for the message handling is in lines 4 and 5. We only set the explicit variables errorgroup and errorkey to existing values in the Message Database and that’s all. But how do we show the message to the screen? There is no code for this? The answer is: Maximo will do this for us. We only have to set the two variables at the end of our script. As you see this is also one big limitation, since we can use messages usually only at the end of our script.

If you now save the script and test the Workorder application you should get a message if you enter a Workorder Priority higher than 50.

Sending a message with parameters

What is still missing how we can replace parameters in messages. Let’s assume we have the following message:

Workorder {0} could not be processed because invalid Priority {1} has been specified.

To address such an message from our script we need the following code:

woPriority = mbo.getInt("WOPRIORITY")
woNumber = mbo.getString("WONUM")
if woPriority > 50:
    # Raise an error using a message
    errorgroup = "workorder"
    errorkey = "invalidPrio2"
    params=[woNumber, str(woPriority)]

The trick is the params variable which is a list of replace values for {0} and {1}. The final result looks as follows:

One big limitation of the Jython environment of ICD and Maximo is that the base installation only provides the jython.jar file in version 2.5.2 without any libraries installed. Exactly these libraries can help enormous to write powerful scripts. Some useful examples are httplib and urllib for web access or smtplib for mail functions to just mention some of them. A full reference of included libraries in standard Jython can be found here.

What many users will now know is that the jython.jar file installed in Maximo/ICD does, compared to the original version of this file, include all standard libraries from the Lib directory. That’s quit cool, because we can easily use these libraries in our own scripts without copying any files to the servers. The only thing to know is the exact path of the jython.jar file on the server. This is basically in:

%WebSphere_Home%\AppServer\profiles\ctgAppSrv01\installedApps\ctgCell01\MAXIMO.ear\lib\jython.jar

So on my Windows demo server for example it can be find under:

C:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\ctgAppSrv01\installedApps\ctgCell01\MAXIMO.ear\lib\jython.jar

The clue to use these libraries is to add the new library path in your script. To do so you need the following code:

a=10

# Extend the sys Path
import sys
foundJython = False
jythonLibPath = "C:\\Program Files\\IBM\\WebSphere\\AppServer\\profiles\\ctgAppSrv01\\installedApps\\ctgCell01\\MAXIMO.ear\\lib\\jython.jar\\Lib"
for path in sys.path:
    if (path.find(jythonLibPath) != -1) :
        foundJython = True
if (foundJython == False):
    sys.path.append(jythonLibPath)

import re
mystring = "Hello World!"
test = re.match(r'(.*)World!', mystring)

hello = test.group(1)

print hello

Lines 1-9 are used to extend the sys-path. In the following lines I demonstrate the usage of the external library module re.
If you would like to use additional libraries, which are not included in the standard Jython package you need to copy the library source files to a new directory on the Maximo server and then include this directory in a similar manner like show above.
One improvement of the scenario show above is to use a property for the Jython path (for details see here). Change line 4 to the following code after you have created a Maximo property custom.jython.lib:
from psdi.server import MXServer
configData = MXServer.getMXServer().getConfig();
jythonLibPath = configData.getProperty("custom.jython.lib");