Chris & Jason, I liked the idea of Services when 7.1 came out..allowing you to trigger Filter only workflow with AL's.but I'm SUPER excited about service actions in Filters..this finally gives me a 'method' based opportunity within Remedy..almost allowing true OO programming..let me give you an real life example in my application
I have an order (just a record) that needs to have about 30 validations done on it before I can consider it 'OK' to move from one state to another.we can consider these business rules. As anyone who has gone to the Admin classes knows, you implement business rules via Filter to ensure they are always enforced, no matter how the update is done..well.the problem of course is the transaction is kicked off from the client..thus needing to be fired from a button click. With Service as a Filter action, I can now have my AL and my Filter call the same Service, and not need to re-write my code twice, one set as AL's, another as Filters.I just have my AL call the service and everything works exactly same as when my Filter calls that same service. Have you ever used WebServices? You are given a WSDL, it provides inputs and outputs..you don't know exactly what happens on the other side, in between, those inputs and outputs, all you care about is the outcome..think of Service actions in the same way.but you control what happens on the other side.it reminds me of real OO programming.where you provide your interfaces, you define what will be the input and output to the method.the consumer of the method doesn't need to know what goes on inside, just that the 'contract' doesn't change.I think it's a VERY good step to the future.I'm expecting it to allow me to transform my application in several different ways that I consider very exciting.J From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jason Miller Sent: Thursday, August 05, 2010 11:23 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: The Service Action in an Active Link ** Hi Chris, I felt the same way you do when I read the docs regarding the Service action. I have dabbled with the Service action a little bit and the doc left me with some questions also. I am still not sure I understand its full power. The "butt" values you see are most likely in Run If qualifications in Filters. Something like 'z1D Action' = "GETDEFAULTCOMPANY". Then the filter is triggered on Service and GETDEFAULTCOMPANY is passed to it in the Service action mapping. A few uses would be: * Now you can really trigger a notification action from an Active Link instead of having do a Commit Changes or push a record to a form to trigger a filter. * Along the same lines you can now have an AL call a Service filter with a Set Fields from a Web Service or Filter API without having to do a commit to trigger a filter. * You can trigger a filter from an AL to to elevate permissions and perform an action with Admin privileges. (If not used appropriately this could also undermine permissions) In some ways it can clean up some creative coding we had to use in the past. Such as have a button/AL that sets a value to a DO field, does a Commit Changes that triggers a filter with low Execution Order looking for that value in the DO field to perform a Filter only action and then the Filter has a Go To action which bypasses the remaining filters just to avoid actually updating the record (Modified Date/Last Modified By). Now the AL can just trigger the filter (actually all Service filters related to the form). Hope that helps. Jason On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 9:07 PM, strauss <[email protected]> wrote: ** I am trying to reconstruct some of our customizations from ITSM 7.0 on the ITSM 7.6 system. One of the things I have run into is a new ARS 7.5 "feature" called a Service action. The documentation (two whole pages in the Workflow Objects Guide - pp. 107-108) might mean something to whoever wrote it, but I have yet to learn what these actions are, how they work, and how to trigger them just by reading it. According to ARUtilities, there are something like 137 active links (and 2 filters) that use this action, so _somebody_ knows how (and isn't telling). Many are the exact same name as the original 7.0 object, but the "set fields from form on a qualification" action used before has been replaced by these obtuse constructs. In the places in ITSM 7.6 where they were used, an Input Mapping sets a value in the hidden z1D Action field, which must trigger something. The values are things like "PERFORMCONTACTSEARCHNAME" - some sort of a flag word, which I cannot find documented ANYWHERE. Others are "GETDEFAULTCOMPANY", "BOUNDCOUNT", "PKECOORDSINGLEGRP", etc. Unless these are just placeholders that the programmers have pulled out of their butts at random, I would expect them to correlate to some intelligently designed action. My absolute favorite so far is "GIN" and I think I'll go look for some right now - maybe several glasses of it will help me with the BMC documentation. Any comprehensive explanations out there? Obviously I have been looking at ITSM 7.6 code and table data for way too long. Christopher Strauss, Ph.D. Call Tracking Administration Manager University of North Texas Computing & IT Center http://itsm.unt.edu/ _attend WWRUG10 www.wwrug.com ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are"_ _attend WWRUG10 www.wwrug.com ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are"_ _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org attend wwrug10 www.wwrug.com ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are"
