JavaScript Injection Framework - Updates, Bugs and Fixes

The reason I am writing this blog post is to make readers aware of the latest version of the JavaScript Injection Framework and known bugs/fixes associated with the older versions.

If you read some of my previous posts on Branding and other UI enhancements, you may have come across several attempts made by me to find a means to globally (system wide) inject JavaScript/CSS. Unfortunately, there is no way to do this via delivered configuration/code so I ended up writing custom javascript code.

Over the years, I have made iterative improvements to this code and created a framework of sorts with a minimally invasive customization.

Early (Beta) version
https://pe0ples0ft.blogspot.com/2015/11/peopletools-854-branding-part-5b-fluid.html#FluJSInjectionBootstrap

Updated version (using RequireJS)
https://pe0ples0ft.blogspot.com/p/javascript-injection-framework.html

As I was making further changes, I moved this framework to GitHub in an effort to better manage the code/versioning.

GitHub Project
https://github.com/SasankVemana/PeopleTools-JavaScript-Injection-Framework

Recently, the following Doc ID was brought to my attention via a twitter post.

Oracle Support Document 2294106.1
E-PIA: Run to HTML,Excel and XML links in Query Manager and Query Viewer spinning for ever while running a report having prompt criteria

Twitter Thread
https://twitter.com/ArcherHuck/status/1085635936053051394

@ArcherHuck Great question! Yes. This was an issue with an older version of my bootstrap code. I ran into a similar issue with Worklist pages as well. See this thread which has the details:https://t.co/CD7eRnBIyL

— Sasank Vemana (@sasank_vemana) January 17, 2019

After reviewing Doc ID 2294106.1, I realized that this issue is most likely caused by a customer who implemented this JavaScript Injection Framework. The issue reported in the Doc ID, is very similar to an existing issue identified with an older version of the framework.

Reported Issue: https://pe0ples0ft.blogspot.com/p/javascript-injection-framework.html#c6317103235239955618

The solution provided by Oracle in the Doc ID is to completely remove the custom framework which is understandable since this is not Oracle code. But this issue can be overcome by using the latest version of the JavaScript Injection Framework. In the latest version of the bootstrap javascript as shown below, the regex pattern is updated to account for an extended list of PeopleSoft URL types.

Additionally, the latest version of the framework that is available on GitHub also addresses and fixes some race conditions (which I ran into under certain circumstances) associated with RequireJS and other custom scripts.

Here are some resources that are very useful to understand common timing issues related to javascript functions and callbacks.

https://blog.kevinchisholm.com/functions-javascript/javascript-callback-functions-the-absolute-basics/
https://www.sitepoint.com/understanding-requirejs-for-effective-javascript-module-loading/

Fluid Branding - File Attachments Icon

Here is a question from PeopleSoft General Discussion community.

How can we customize the icons in the Fluid file attachment dialog box?

Further, how do we use different icons for different form factors?

We can do this by using CSS to override the icon on different form factors. I added the following styles at the end of my Fluid - Global Override Style Sheet used in my Branding Theme.

Fluid - Global Override Style Sheet

CSS referenced in Theme Definiton

CSS for Reference

As we can see in the CSS, we can use a different image as the content for the File Upload icon based on the form factor.

Demo on Desktop (Extra Large Form Factor)

Demo on Mobile Device (Small Form Factor)

PeopleTools 8.55+ Branding | Conditionally Display Header Icons

The PeopleTools New User Interface (NUI) and Branding has been available for a while and it should not be news to anyone that the system level header appears as shown below.

As we can see, the Branding header provides icons such as Home, Search, Notifications, Actions Menu and Navigator. This is a system wide setting controlled by the application branding configuration/setup. That means these icons will appear on any page/component we navigate to. For example:

What if we want to disable some or all of these icons at a component level?

There is a configuration in the Component - Fluid Properties - Header Toolbar Actions which allows us to disable some or all of these icons.

What if we want to programmatically/conditionally control the visibility of these header icons?

Someone asked me this question in one of posts here. I found that this is very much possible using the delivered (8.55+) PT_PAGE_UTILS API (App Package).

We can simply use the Banner App Class available in the PT_PAGE_UTILS App Package to control the visibility of the header icons in PeopleCode at the page/component level.

PeopleBooks Reference:
Fluid Page Utilities Classes
Banner Class

For example:

Results:

We can see that the 'Home' icon is disabled using PeopleCode on this particular page.

Similarly we can use the following Banner class methods to disable other Branding header icons:
SetVisibilityActionList
SetVisibilityAddto
SetVisibilityHelp
SetVisibilityMyPreferences
SetVisibilityNavbar
SetVisibilityNotifications
SetVisibilitySearch
SetVisibilitySignout

Further, some of these options (Search) are not available via Component - Fluid Properties.

PeopleCode for reference:

PeopleTools 8.56 - Branding Review

PeopleTools 8.56 has been out for a few months now. This is a review of what is new in the Branding Framework pertaining to the 8.56 release.

Review Environment Details:

- HCM 9.2 PUM Image 23
- PeopleTools 8.56.01

Branding Framework:

Not much has changed with the Branding Framework. I was expecting some improvements to the Theme Macro Set functionality which was introduced in 8.55. There are still some hard-coded references to images in javascript which would have been nice to move to Theme Macro Set CSS functionality. For example:

The delivered macro set, PT_DEFAULT_MACROSET_855, still contains 117 macros (same as in 8.55) with no changes in 8.56.

As you can see, there is a new Color Picker on the Theme Macro Set page which is a nice productivity enhancing feature! This Color Picker is based on HTML5 'color' input type element.

Icon Changes:

A notable change that we have already seen in demos prior to the release is the new 'Action Menu' icon. This has changed from the old 'hamburger' menu to a 'pea' (?) menu. Graham Smith thinks this is a healthy dietary change! We cannot argue with that. :)

Using Theme Macro Sets:

Since the framework has not changed, it was pretty much the same set of steps to use Theme Macro Sets to override Branding elements. One thing to note is that we definitely want to clone the 8.56 objects (style sheets, headers, themes, etc.) instead of moving objects from an 8.55 environment. This will make sure that we have the most current versions of the object in question.

We can follow the steps detailed in my previous posts describing how to use Theme Macro Sets to override Branding Elements:
PeopleTools 8.55 Branding - Theme Macro Sets - Part 1
PeopleTools 8.55 Branding - Theme Macro Sets - Part 2

One of the issues I noticed was the position of the 'Pea' icon was a little off after applying the Theme Macro Set overrides. This issue occurred only on the Classic Pages. For example:

I fixed this by adding the following a top property to the #pthdr2ActionList:after style selector which is part of the Classic Theme Style Sheet.

Using Oracle JET:

I noticed that Oracle JET version 2.1.0 is available with PeopleTools 8.56. I found that the JavaScript Injection Framework that I built using Oracle JET in 8.55, works without any issues in 8.56 as well. Only thing to note is that, due to the version change, we may need to review the requireJS configuration to make sure the javascript library paths are pointing to the correct version.

Resources:

JavaScript Injection Framework
Framework is based on my experience with Oracle JET - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4
GitHub Project: https://github.com/SasankVemana/PeopleTools-JavaScript-Injection-Framework

Using Classic Plus:

I wanted to test the delivered Classic Plus pages that were available in this PUM image. But when I navigated to the Process Monitor page - which is in the list of PeopleTools Components delivered as Classic Plus - I was still seeing the good old Classic.

To activate Classic Plus, we must update the Branding System Options to use "Fluid like theme for Classic" as the "Theme Style Type". This is the system level setting that enables "Classic Plus".

Process Monitor after setting 'Theme Style Type'.

More information on Classic Plus:
PeopleBooks - Classic Plus

Related Branding Posts:

Fluid UI - New Window Feature - Workaround
Using Different Branding Themes for Different Portals
Using the Logo as a Hyperlink
Fluid Global Search - Setting Focus on the Search Box
Adding Userid to 'Sign out' Action Menu Item Label 

PeopleTools Branding - Adding Userid to Sign out Label

In this post, I want to share how we can add the current userid to the 'Sign out' action menu item which is part of the branding.

Fluid:

Classic:

What is the benefit?

The reason I find this useful is because we can quickly hover over the action menu on any page and find out who we are logged in as (particularly when we are testing with multiple userids). Further, in the past we had a lot more real estate in the Branding header and we could add a greeting message to provide some flavor of personalization/user identification. But with the New User Interface (NUI) navigation and branding, it is not ideal to use up the Branding header to display a lengthy (space consuming) greeting. This 'Sign out' customization will provide a user specific label.

Implementation Details:

Environment:
- CS 9.2 PUM Image 4
- PeopleTools 8.54.12

Project on GitHub:
https://github.com/SasankVemana/Branding-Signout-Label-Customization

'Sign out' label customization in Fluid:

Record: PT_WORK
Field: PT_BUTTON_LOGOUT
Event: RowInit

Note: Add the peoplecode to PT_WORK.PT_BUTTON_LOGOUT.RowInit

'Sign out' label in Classic:

In Classic, we can update the 'Sign out' label without any customization using the Branding Framework.

App Package Implementation for Custom Sign out:

Note: This App Class was cloned from PTBR_BRANDING.SystemElement.SignOutLink and updated to include the %operatorid on the label.

App Package:

Create New Branding Element Type:
PeopleTools > Branding > System Data > Define Element Types

Remove delivered 'Sign out' from the Custom Branding Header:

Note: This is assuming we used a custom branding header to define our Branding Theme. In my case, I used the following approach: PeopleTools 8.55 Branding

- Delete 'pthdr2signout' element from the custom header (CSK_HEADER_FLUID).
- Save the custom header (CSK_HEADER_FLUID).

Add Custom 'Sign out' element to the Branding Header:

PeopleTools 8.55+ Branding: Using the Logo as a Hyperlink

It is a common practice in most social media and big brand websites to use the webpage logo as a hyperlink for navigation. This usually provides a mechanism for the users to 'return to home' in most cases. Here is a very interesting discussion on how this standard/convention originated:
https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/81727/why-is-it-standard-for-a-website-logo-to-navigate-to-the-home-page

In the past, I have worked on requirements where we wanted the logo of a PeopleSoft application to hyperlink to the enterprise portal (which may or may not be PeopleSoft based). To generalize this requirement, let us assume that we want to hyperlink the PeopleSoft Logo to a configured URL (which could be any URL of our choice).

This post assumes that:

• We are on PeopleTools 8.55+ and that we are using the Branding Theme Macro Sets.
  Refer (For more information on Theme Macro Sets): https://pe0ples0ft.blogspot.com/2016/03/peopletools-855x-branding-part-i-what.html
• We have a mechanism to inject a javascript object globally across the application (system wide). In my case, I am using a framework of sorts that I built and described in the following post: https://pe0ples0ft.blogspot.com/p/javascript-injection-framework.html

My environment details:
- CS 9.2 PUM Image 4
- PeopleTools 8.55.12

Adding a Hyperlink to the Logo on the Fluid Homepage:

The first step we need to do is to identify the HTML elements (divs, images, etc.) that are involved in generating the logo. It is very easy to identify this using the browser's developer tools (inspect element option).

As we can see, the logo image is added to the div (with the style class nuihdr_logo) as a pseudo-element using CSS. Here is a javascript object that selects this div (using the class selector) and adds a click event which redirects to a URL defined in a URL definition (CSK_LOGO_URL). This works well because the div element is completely enclosed within the image (psuedo-element) in terms of position on the webpage and as a result does not have any overflow issues. We will see how this can be an issue as we extent this functionality to the Classic Homepage (next section).

JavaScript Object: CSK_LOGO_URL_JS


I used the javascript injection framework to load this javascript object.

URL Definition Configuration:

Results:

Here is a demo of the Fluid Homepage Logo hyperlink.

Adding a Hyperlink to the Logo on the Classic Homepage:

In this section, we will extent the functionality discussed above to the logo on the Classic Homepage. Let us use the same approach and try to identify the HTML elements (divs, images, etc.) that are involved in generating the logo.

As we can see, the div element (with id pthdr2logofluid) spans the entire width of the page whereas the logo image which is added as a pseudo-element using css obviously does not. So, if we were to use the previous approach and add a click event function for this div (id pthdr2logofluid), then the entire div (which spans the width of the page) would become a hyperlink.

It is not very easy to selectively fire the click event function only on the pseudo element because pseudo elements are not part of the DOM and therefore cannot be manipulated using javascript. After a long search where I almost gave up, I found the following discussion where there was a solution for a similar requirement.

Refer: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7478336/only-detect-click-event-on-pseudo-element
JSFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/ZWw3Z/70/

We can take this idea and apply it to the Classic Homepage Logo by updating the javascript as follows:

Updated JavaScript Object: CSK_LOGO_URL_JS


The updated javascript code selects the div element (with id pthdr2logofluid) and sets all pointer-events to none using css. The javascript also has the click event function to redirect users to the URL configured in the URL definition (CSK_LOGO_URL).

Finally, the Classic stylesheet (CSK_BRAND_CLASSIC_TEMPLTE_FL) which is part of the Branding Theme in my environment which uses Theme Macro Set (click here for more details), was updated to set the cursor and pointer-events properties for the pseudo-element.

Results:

Here is a demo of the Classic Homepage Logo hyperlink.

LinkedIn-style Smart Notifications in PeopleSoft: Integrating FavIcon and Page Title with Push Notifications

As part of the latest wave of changes that were done to the LinkedIn UI, I noticed that they also made a change to their FavIcon. The FavIcon alerts us if there is a new notification. Of course, the Page Title also shows us the number of new notifications similar to most modern websites (Twitter, Facebook, etc.). This is great feature especially when we are off "working" on other browser tabs to grab our attention.

Push Notification Framework has been part of PeopleSoft since PeopleTools 8.54 release. So, why not integrate the FavIcon and the Page Title with Push Notifications? This will help the users to return to their work if they receive a notification. Perhaps a UX/UI productivity feature?

Demo:

Here is a demo of how we can subscribe to the Push Notification events and dynamically update the FavIcon and the Page Title.

Environment Details:
- CS 9.2
- PUM Image 4
- PeopleTools 8.55.12

Step 1: Create a Custom FavIcon in Classic and Fluid

I wrote about this topic in the past (as part of my Branding articles). Currently, there is no delivered option to use a custom FavIcon in Classic and Fluid consistently.

Refer: Overriding FavIcon

Related Posts and Reference Documents:
PeopleTools 8.55+ - Using Oracle JET Series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4
Global JavaScript Injection Framework
My Oracle Support > E-PIA: Does PeopleSoft Use Favicon ? (Doc ID 1226503.1)
My Oracle Support > E:FLUID- How To Access Favicon On Fluid Landing Pages? (Doc ID 2004996.1)

Step 2: Create a custom JavasScript to Subscribe to Push Notifications

JavaScript Object: CSK_SUB_PN_JS


Notes:

The script contains three main parts
- cskSmartFavIcon function takes care of replacing the custom FavIcon with an alternative custom alert FavIcon. It also takes care of pre-pending the Page Title with the notification counter in (n) format.
- The Push Notifications - Subscribe function is used to subscribe to the desired Push Notifications events.
- Finally, cskFavIconPNJS function (called from PTPN_NOTIFICATION_MSG_JS > DoNotify function) takes care of toggling the FavIcon and the Page Title when the user has clicked on the Notification Icon.

Step 3: Inject CSK_SUB_PN_JS globally across the application

As mentioned in reference documents in Step 1, I used my custom framework to inject CSK_SUB_PN_JS globally.

Step 4: Update delivered JS - PTPN_NOTIFICATION_MSG_JS

This will take care of toggling the FavIcon and resetting the Page Title when the user clicks on the Notification Icon.

Using Different Branding Themes for Different Portals

Most of the posts on my blog are mainly based on or inspired by questions/comments/ideas on my blog, OTN, HEUG and other PeopleSoft forums. This post is no different. Someone raised an interesting query on one of my Branding posts:
What would it take to have a different logo for the different portals (Employee, Supplier, ...)?

We already know how to use 'Branding Themes' to configure Branding requirements like logo, icon, color changes, etc.
PeopleTools 8.54 - Branding - Part 1
PeopleTools 8.55 - Branding - What's new?

For the purposes of this demonstration I created two very simple but different Branding Themes (SV_RED_THEME_FLUID and SV_BLUE_THEME_FLUID). And as we can see below, I am using SV_RED_THEME_FLUID in my 'Branding System Options' as the 'Default Branding Theme'.

SV_RED_THEME_FLUID:

 SV_BLUE_THEME_FLUID:

Branding System Options:

But the changes that are part of a Branding Theme which are applied using the 'Branding System Options' would propagate across the application to all portals (EMPLOYEE, SUPPLIER, CUSTOMER, etc.).

How do we override the 'Default Branding Theme' for specific portals?

Let us say, we want to use a different theme (SV_BLUE_THEME_FLUID) for our CUSTOMER portal.

The solution is very simple. We just need to use the 'Assign Themes' page to configure the override. But the caveat is that we must log in to the portal in question (CUSTOMER in this case) while performing the 'Assign Themes' step.

PeopleBooks: Assign Branding Themes

Trick/Shortcut to switch between portals:

Simply edit the URL to replace the portal portion with the desired value (assuming we have security access to the portal concerned).
E.g.:
http://pi004.cs92.com:8000/psp/ps/EMPLOYEE/SA/c/PTBR_MENU.PTBR_ASSIGN_THEME.GBL
http://pi004.cs92.com:8000/psp/ps/CUSTOMER/SA/c/PTBR_MENU.PTBR_ASSIGN_THEME.GBL

Assign Theme Override for a specific Portal (CUSTOMER):

Results:

Sign out, clear browser cache and sign back in to see the results.

Environment Details:
CS 9.2 - PUM Image 4 - PeopleTools 8.55.12

Related Post:
Role Based Branding Theme Assignments

PeopleTools 8.55 - Oracle JET - Using ACE Editor for Online Branding Objects (HTML, JavaScript, Style Sheets)

Have you ever wondered if there is a better way to edit the "Branding Objects" that are available online (PeopleTools > Portal > Branding > Branding Objects)?

If you have managed Branding Objects (JavaScript, HTML and CSS) online, you would have noticed that the editor is a simple 'textarea'. It is not a great UI and it makes it really difficult to manage/write anything more than a few lines.

E.g.:

Although it is great that, starting with PeopleTools 8.53, we now have the ability to manipulate javascript, html and css objects online (instead of using App Designer), the major part of reading/understanding/writing the code probably needs to be done outside on a text editor which has better support for the markup/syntax.

Why not a code editor for the web?

If you attended Jim Marion's popular session 'PeopleTools Tips and Techniques' either at Oracle OpenWorld 2015 conference or HEUG - Alliance 2016 conference, you might have seen him show us how he created a custom page to manage javascript content using ACE Editor. When I asked him how he built something like that, he mentioned that he used AJAX to marshal the content and the page itself is fronted by a component for searching, but is really an iScript for display and an iScript for saving. It was a brilliant idea to use a high performance code editor to manage such objects (some features/benefits include auto complete, syntax highlighter for over 100 languages, better maintenance/display of indending/outdending, folding function/code modules and overall better readability).

Jim's approach involved storing the javascript contents in a custom table and then referencing them as needed. I wanted to take the same idea and create a mechanism to integrate ACE Editor with any page field (textarea). At the same time, I did not want to customize anything. So, I want my approach to be very similar to creating/enabling Rich Text page fields but instead of using App Designer, I want to simply inject a custom javascript to the page and enable the ACE Editor. Another difference with my approach is that I want to use JavaScript and the component processor to take care of marshaling and saving the data instead of using the AJAX/IScripts option.

Do any challenges come to mind?

- How do we replace the existing 'textarea' on the page with the ACE Editor?
- Next, how do we transfer the contents of the ACE Editor to the page field 'textarea'?
- Next, how do we make the component processor accept and honor this change made to the buffer via JavaScript (especially because we are not customizing the page and the page field may not have the 'Modifiable by JavaScript' setting enabled)?

Here are steps I went through to integrate ACE Editor with the PeopleTools - Branding Objects Page. If you like this idea and implementation, then please click here to vote for it on My Oracle Support Community.

Note:

1. A similar approach could be used to extend the ACE Editor functionality to any other page field - textarea.
2. I used the latest version of my 'Global JavaScript/Style Sheet Injection Bootstrap' (using Oracle JET and more importantly requireJS) to inject a custom javascript into the 'Branding Objects' page. If you choose not to use this approach, then you will need to find an alternative way to inject the custom javascript but the core functionality of the js code should work as described. (Refer: 'Using Oracle JET' series - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4).

Step 1: Download the ACE Editor library and store it locally on the web server

I downloaded the ACE Editor library from the following github URL and placed it on my web server:
https://github.com/ajaxorg/ace-builds/archive/master.zip

Web Server:

Just to show the library folder structure, here is a screenshot highlighting the path to the ace.js file.

Step 2: Add new function cskGetFormName() to our JS Bootstrap (CSK_FL_BOOTSTRAP_JS)

Function Name: cskGetFormName


This function helps us resolve the %FormName meta-html which is not available currently for client side javascript. So, we cannot use it, for example, as submitAction_%FormName in a client side javascript. The expectation is that it would resolve itself to submitAction_win0, submitAction_win1 or submitAction_winN depending on the current window. So, I wrote this function to determine the %FormName portion as a string, which I will be using in the next step as part of FSU_ACE_CFG_JS javascript code.

Step 3: Create Custom JavaScript Object (CSK_ACE_CFG_JS) to configure the ACE Editor on the desired page

JavaScript Object: CSK_ACE_CFG_JS


Explaining the Script:

• First, you will notice that I am adding the ACE Editor library path to the requireJS configuration locally instead of using the requireJS configuration script object (CSK_REQUIIRE_CFG_JS). The reason I am appending to the requireJS paths locally is because, we don't want this library to get loaded for the entire application, rather just conditionally to a specific page. In step 4, I will detail how to achieve that using the Global Injection Bootstrap (CSK_FL_BOOTSTRAP_JS).
• Next, I am defining jquery, ace.js and jqueryui as dependencies for the function execution using requireJS.
• Inside the function execution, I included BOOTSTRAP 3.0.0 (which was downloaded from this link and stored in a custom object) and JQUERY 1.8.17 (delivered object) CSS. I am using the custom function cskLoadCSS to take care of the CSS loading.
• Next, I search for the textarea (id="PTBR_MGOBJ_WRK_PTBR_HTMLAREA1"), hide it and replace it with the ACE Editor div.

• Now the delivered textarea is hidden and our custom ACE Editor is in the DOM. Further, I used a basic set of configuration options for the Editor which we can certainly expand depending on our use case (ACE Editor is highly configurable). Also, I am dynamically setting the mode of the Editor to either html, javascript or css depending on the object type that we are updating. As part of the Editor configuration, I also initialized the contents of the ACE Editor with the contents of textarea.
• Lastly and most importantly, we update the textarea (now hidden) with the latest contents of the ACE Editor any time there is a change in the editor contents. 
• addchg_%FormName Function: The trick to make the component buffer accept and honor the changes made to the textarea (PTBR_MGOBJ_WRK_PTBR_HTMLAREA1) - via client side javascript - is to use the addchg_%FormName function. I had no idea about the existence of such a function and its significance. I learned about this gem from Chris Malek while discussing and troubleshooting an unrelated issue with Fluid!

Step 4: Conditionally Load ACE Editor Config JavaScript (CSK_ACE_CFG_JS) using the Global JavaScript Injection Bootstrap

The conditional logic to only load CSK_ACE_CFG_JS on the Secondary Page PTBR_ADDHTML_SEC, can be found in the cskInjectJS function which is part of CSK_FL_BOOTSTRAP_JS object. An updated version of CSK_FL_BOOTSTRAP_JS source code can be found here.

Results:

HTML:

JavaScript:

CSS:

Now we are ready to enjoy the ACE Editor for writing code! Once again, if you like this idea and implementation, then please click here to vote for it on My Oracle Support Community.