Adding Custom Links to Action Menu using DoURLWarning JavaScript Function

In the past, I wrote about how we can add custom links to the Branding - Action Menu at the system level.

Refer: Adding Custom Links to Fluid Branding

While testing this feature, I found that these custom links do not work in certain scenarios. For example, clicking those links from within the NUI Activity Guide framework (which is also used in Nav Collections).

I originally used the FieldChange event and the Response Class RedirectURL method to implement the redirection logic in Fluid Branding as shown below.

Since the Response Class RedirectURL method proved to be problematic in certain scenarios, I started investigating other options. In the process, I found this great delivered JavaScript function called DoURLWarning which is part of PT_HISTORY object in 8.55+ (PT_PAGESCRIPT_FMODE object in 8.54).

DoURLWarning function allows us to redirect to a URL using javascript. Additionally, the function will take care of checking for any unsaved data in the current page and if there is any it will display the "Save Warning" message. If not, it will redirect to the URL in the parameter list.

To use the DoURLWarning function, I removed all the redirect logic from the FieldChange Event. And added code in the RowInit event (as shown below) to utilize the DoURLWarning in combination with the Field Class JavaScriptEvents Property.

PeopleCode for reference

Demo

As we can see in the demo video, the custom link on the Action Menu works when invoked from the Activity Guide framework (which is also used in Nav Collections). The same approach described above can be used to implement custom links to internal PeopleSoft pages as well (e.g.: Process Monitor, Report Manager, etc.).

Save Warning Demo

Fluid UI New Window Feature Implementation

I used a similar technique as described above to implement the 'New Window' feature in Fluid UI as a custom link on the Branding - Action Menu.

Refer: Fluid UI - New Window Feature - Workaround

The only difference in the implementation is that instead of using the Response Class RedirectURL method (which would redirect/replace within the current window), I used the ViewContentURL method to open a new window as shown below.

We can see in the demonstration below, that the same problem described for the custom links also exists for this New Window implementation.

To workaround the problem, I took a similar approach and removed the existing logic from the FieldChange event and moved it to the RowInit event. In the RowInit event, I used the Field Class JavaScriptEvents Property in combination with the Window interface's open method as shown below. Additionally, I also updated the logic to include the %Request.QueryString to the URL to make sure that none of the additonal parameters are lost when opening the new window.

PeopleCode for reference

Demo

Fluid UI | Click To Call - Making Phone Numbers Clickable

A community member asked the following question on one of my previous blog posts.

Is there a way to dial a phone number and call the employee (someone) from a PeopleSoft page?

This is a great question! It is very simple to enable phone numbers as clickable elements - click to call/dial from a webpage to the dial screen on a mobile device. This is similar to how we enable email addresses as clickable elements using the mailto: URI scheme. Basically, replacing the href "mailto:" URI portion with "tel:".

References
https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/native-hardware/click-to-call/
https://www.iana.org/assignments/uri-schemes/uri-schemes.xhtml

Implementing this in Classic is probably not a relevant use case but the question led me to investigate how we can achieve this in Fluid which is the responsive UI for mobile devices! For something which seems as simple as described above, I had to jump through a lot of hoops (trial and error) to make this functionality work in Fluid.

Use Case

For example, wouldn't it be great if we can simply click on any phone number on the 'My Team' page under Manager Self Service (HCM) to directly launch the dial screen (with the number) on a mobile device?

If we look at the Employee email addresses on the 'My Team' Tile (HR_DIRTEAM_FLU Page), we can see that they are configured to reference the "mailto:" URI scheme.

The Fluid Attributes of the page field (Email Address):

Notice the Fluid (Tab) > Input Properties > Input Type? Also, notice the 'Generate As Hyperlink' option which is only available for 'email' Input Type? As we can see in the drop-down, there is no Input Type option for 'Phone Numbers' (tel:) in the Fluid Properties (Tab). So, we cannot use the Page Field properties to enable the phone number as a hyperlink (with the required "tel:" URI scheme).

Next, I wanted to explore if we can configure this programmatically (peoplecode) by taking advantage of these really useful Field Class 'Fluid Only' properties:
HtmlInputType
IsHyperlink

The expectation based on the Field Class API is that we could simply add the following code on the Page Activate PeopleCode or another appropriate event to make this work.

Expected PeopleCode Snippet

Unfortunately, using the %tel option (which would have been ideal) did not work. It appears that this PeopleCode Field Class Property value does not work as expected. It has no effect on the HTML generated to represent the page field element (bug?).

To workaround this issue, I set the HtmlInputType to %email instead. This is a hack to ensure the anchor tag with the href attribute and the "mailto:" URI scheme is generated in the HTML. Then, as a cleanup, I wrote a small piece of javascript to find and replace "mailto:" with "tel:". This worked!

Workaround PeopleCode Snippet

For the purpose of this demo, the above PeopleCode snippet was added to the end of delivered HR_DIRTEAM_FLU.Activate (Page Activate peopleCode). For a production use case, we may want to consider adding this code in an app class and then invoking the custom peoplecode using Event Mapping Framework in an effort to avoid customization.

Result of Workaround PeopleCode

As we can see, the phone number is wrapped in an anchor tag with the href attribute using the "mailto:" URI scheme.

Workaround JavaScript

Result of Workaround JavaScript

As we can see, the "mailto:" URI scheme has changed to "tel:" which is what we need to enable phone numbers as a clickable element on the webpage.

Demo on a Mobile Device

Link to MOSC Idea: Improve Field Class Fluid Properties and Page Field Fluid Input Properties

Please review and vote on this idea if you are convinced that it is a welcome enhancement.

Demo Environment Details

This demo was conducted on a HCM PUM Image 23 - PeopleTools 8.56.01.