Oracle CRM On Demand
How to mashup folders and Excel
Rob Attard
Version 1.1 5/3/09
www.synergility.com.au
Table of Contents
Overview.....................................................................................................................3 Step 1 – Create the folders for the object you intend to use..................................6 Step 2 – Place a photo, named correctly for each contact.....................................6 Step 3 – Create a webapplet for your photo.............................................................6 Step 4 – Add the webapplet to your layout and test................................................7 Step 5 – How about the folders and Excel spreadsheet.........................................7 Additional Information...............................................................................................9
1.1 Overview
Users often want to mashup different objects in CRM OnDemand. Sometimes they want to mashup photos, eg for products or contacts, Folders to store many large files for relevant to the account/oppty, or even have a spreadsheet as part of the mashup, eg a quoting spreadsheet against each opportunity Example – Photo against a Contact
Eg Folder for Contact
Eg Excel spreadsheet
As you can start to see we can mash-up quite a few things in our web applet. All of these examples are accessing files on my local D drive, now obviously in a production world I’d expect that a network file server would be used.
Its very easy to set up and the approach is pretty much the same for each file type.
Thanks also to Alex Neill for helping make this work.
1.2 Step 1 – Create the folders for the object you intend to use
By this we mean to create sub-folders to store the documents related to each contact (for example). This just keeps things tidy and easier to demo. In my example I created folders for each contact under a parent structure.
NB the syntax of the folder name needs to be exactly the same as held in CRM OD, as the web applet will dynamically build the folder name.
1.3 Step 2 – Place a photo, named correctly for each contact
Place a photo for your contacts in each of their folders, for ease of maintenance use a common naming convention, in my case I used .jpg. For example Jamesadams.jpg
1.4 Step 3 – Create a webapplet for your photo
Now you just need to create a webapplet for the photo against contact. The webapplet is very simple and uses the variables of the name to point to the correct folder, then looks for a photo following the naming convention of .jpg
The Web Applet HTML is Note here it is referring to my local machine (127.0.0.1), but could be accessing any network accessible machine, and the share name ‘d$’. The folder structure is dynamically created using the firstname and lastname variables. Eg … \docs\%%%First_Name%%%%20%%%Last_Name%%%\... The ‘%20’ in the middle is a code for a space. The file name is created the same with the variables. The Width and Height parameters define the size of the webapplet, and should obviously be sensitive to your photo size.
1.5 Step 4 – Add the webapplet to your layout and test
Update your layout to include the webapplet and see if it works.
1.6 Step 5 – How about the folders and Excel spreadsheet
To do those it’s just modifications of the same technique, you should be able to work it out from here. But to help you along here is the web applet HTML I was using for each of them.
Folder web applet Excel Spreadsheet Web Applet HTML
1.7 Additional Information
1. Drag and Drop across folder applet to desktop Try dragging and dropping to your folder web applet and back again. 2. Spreadsheet saves The only way I have found to save a spreadsheet used in this way is to go to the menu and use File/Save as. 3. Error about running commands
You may get this error, particuarly when right clicking in the ‘folder’ web applet. I have found by changing the parameter ‘Launching programs and files in an iFrame’ in my internet settings to ‘enable’ this problem goes away