Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host

Hello,

We have set up a management stage preview viewer host for our editors to access cms. By default, the email notifications from the workflow generates a link to the task that is the vcm cluster address rather than the preview viewer address. Because our editors cannot access the cms cluster url, we need for this email to set up the preview viewer host url. Is there a quick and easy way to set this url to the preview viewer host rather than the cluster Address?

I know that the option provided was to create a custom version or modify the assignmentEmail.jsp to get the desired url prefix. Even if we were to create a homegrown custom version of assignmentEmail.jsp, I am not sure how we would go about generating the preview viewer url programmatically (not hard-coded). I know we can retrieve the viewer.host & viewer.port settings via generic resources properties. My question is, how do I find the correct generic resources property file via API?

Thanks,
Christine

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Marcelo_Rodrigues_Costa

Christine,

What if you forget about the OOTB tools and create your own program tasks with javamail API code?

Kind regards,

Marcelo R.

Christine_Howell

I thought I could try to use the custom email automated activity but I am stuck on writing the program task to try to extract the taskId of the activity. Somehow, in the workflow process definition I need to get the taskId to include in the url to place into the body of the email. However, I cannot find any documentation or examples that is not jsp dependent. How do I go about getting data about the workflow itself beyond ConfigUtil.getWfOps()? I've seen a couple of functions that take the taskId as an argument, but is that automatic? Where is it coming from?

Clay Johnson

Forgive me for joining late, but what exactly are you trying to do?

The title of your post suggests you may be trying to change the behavior of the manual activity assignment email. But you seem to be engaged in writing an automated program activity. Please explain.

Thanks,

Clay

From: eLink Entry: Discussion Group - Web Experience Management [mailto:v7webcontentmanagement@elinkkc.opentext.com]
Sent: Monday, March 12, 2012 3:31 PM
To: eLink Recipient
Subject: Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host

Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host

Posted byhowellc@franklin.edu (Howell, Christine) On 03-12-2012 16:25

[To post a comment, use the normal reply function]
Topic:	Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host
Forum:	Discussion Group - Web Experience Management
Content Server:	Knowledge Center

Christine_Howell

Rather than use the OOTB assignmentEmail.jsp for email notifications to manual task recipients, I am using the email automated activity to create custom email notifications based on the task assignment (review, reject, approve). While I have that part working, what I'd LIKE to include in the emails is a URL link to the task editor itself (like what assignmentEmail.jsp has). The problem I am having is finding the actual taskId that I need to pass along in the url. I can't find how to get the taskId via an automated activity so that I can populate the url with the taskId.

I understand that wfAssignment api lists things like

${taskId} The WfId of the task
${taskName} The name of the task
${taskDescription} The description of the task

but it doesn't describe how to access these values in a java program task.

Basically, what I am trying to figure out is, what does the program task know at what point in the workflow? How do I get the taskId in my program task?

Does this help?

DougForrest

The program task can find anything it needs, including the id of a manual task, but I'm concerned with your approach here. Why are you sending a manual task email notification using an automated task. There is absolutely no reason to do this and you are making this email issue 20 times more complex than it needs to be. Especially considering the fact that customizing the email notifications is already a documented extensibility point. You simply need to create your own war file and copy the OOB assignmentEmail.jsp as a starting point. You customize your new jsp to your liking and then change the ASSIGNMENT_EMAIL_URI variable in the config space you point to your new jsp.

Trying to do this with an automated task is fraught with peril. If you have the automated activity first, the manual activity may not exist yet and even if it did, the assignments would not be populated yet. If you have the manual task first, your automated task will not even execute until after the manual task is finished. If you have a split and try to make the manual and automated tasks asynchronous, you are still susceptible to the fact that the automated task might execute before the assignments have been created for the manual task.

If your goal really is just to change the link in the assignment email to point to preview instead of the vcm, you're making it much harder on yourself than it needs to be.

-Doug

From: eLink Entry: Discussion Group - Web Experience Management [mailto:v7webcontentmanagement@elinkkc.opentext.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2012 10:39 AM
To: eLink Recipient
Subject: RE Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host

RE Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host

Posted byhowellc@franklin.edu (Howell, Christine) On 03-15-2012 11:32

I understand that wfAssignment api lists things like

${taskId} The WfId of the task
${taskName} The name of the task
${taskDescription} The description of the task

but it doesn't describe how to access these values in a java program task.

Basically, what I am trying to figure out is, what does t! he program task know at what point in the workflow? How do I get the taskId in my program task?

Does this help?

[To post a comment, use the normal reply function]
Topic:	Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host
Forum:	Discussion Group - Web Experience Management
Content Server:	Knowledge Center

Clay Johnson

I’m not sure I understand.

It sounds like you want to change the nature of the automatic assignment emails in such a way that the OOTB (ASSIGNMENT_EMAIL_URI) customization mechanism doesn’t support. So, you intend to replace the automatically generated assignment emails with explicit program activities within the workflow model to send emails. My first question would be, how do you know who are the assignees? Second, how do you disable the automatic assignment emails?

In any event, the convention for program activities is that they receive an input parameter, vgnPayloadId, automatically assigned by the system at runtime, which can be used to obtain the process instance within which they are running:

WfPayload payload = ConfigUtil.getWfOps().getPayload(payloadId);

WfPayloadBundleFlags flags = new WfPayloadBundleFlags();

flags.setProcessId();

WfPayloadBundle bundle = (WfPayloadBundle) payload.getBundle(flags);

WfId processed = bundle.getProcessId();

Then, WfOps may be used to navigate the process instance (WfProcess) to obtain its activities (WfActivitiy) and for those which are manual and OPEN_NOT_RUNNING_NOT_STARTED, you can obtain their assignments (WfAssignment). The “taskId” in the automated assignment emails is the id of the activity (WfActivity#getId()). See the javadoc for WfOps for details.

But if a program activity is to determine an id for another manual activity within the process, that other manual activity needs to exist. So, would the program activity run in parallel? And if so, how does it know which manual activity? I suppose you could inject the manual activity name into the program activity as an initial runtime value in the model...

But I suspect I may not understand what you’re trying to do.

RE Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host

Posted byhowellc@franklin.edu (Howell, Christine) On 03-15-2012 11:32

I understand that wfAssignment api lists things like

${taskId} The WfId of the task
${taskName} The name of the task
${taskDescription} The description of the task

but it doesn't describe how to access these values in a java program task.

Basically, what I am trying to figure out is, what does t! he program task know at what point in the workflow? How do I get the taskId in my program task?

Does this help?

[To post a comment, use the normal reply function]
Topic:	Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host
Forum:	Discussion Group - Web Experience Management
Content Server:	Knowledge Center

Christine_Howell

Does the assignmentEmail.jsp have the flexibility to determine what kind of content to output based on whether the task was approved or rejected? We have three kinds of notifications - item ready for review, item rejected, item approved and ready for publish and it goes through two approval levels. Can the jsp determine the transition condition and generate the desired body content (rejection or further review)? How about the email subject?

I may be picking nits, but I am quite annoyed that OpenText makes the assumption to automatically base the url on the vcm host, and not the preview server which is where we log in to cms from and do all our cms work. THAT should have been configurable because even the documentation talks about setting up a preview server. Due to this, I would have to extract the war, then the jsp, make the modifications (new ones), then build the war file then redeploy via configp, then update configuration console, all to change a lousy url. I can try this, but I'm not so sure...

Quoted dforrest@opentext.com on 2012-03-15 14:04:

If your goal really is just to change the link in the assignment email to point to preview instead of the vcm, you're making it much harder on yourself than it needs to be.

-Doug

RE Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host

Posted by howellc@franklin.edu (Howell, Christine) On 03-15-2012 11:32

I understand that wfAssignment api lists things like

${taskId} The WfId of the task
${taskName} The name of the task
${taskDescription} The description of the task

but it doesn't describe how to access these values in a java program task.

Basically, what I am trying to figure out is, what does t! he program task know at what point in the workflow? How do I get the taskId in my program task?

Does this help?

[To post a comment, use the normal reply function]
Topic:	Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host
Forum:	Discussion Group - Web Experience Management
Content Server:	Knowledge Center

Christine_Howell

We have our CMS set up in groups so we can determine who gets what emails. We already have this part working. Basically, I would use a split which would go to the manual task for review and also to automated email activity which would send a notification email to the reviewer.

As for disabling the automatic assignment emails, you can set assignment_email_enable to false in the config console (same place where you can set the assignmentEmail,jsp.

Christine_Howell

If I were to follow OT's custom email procedure, would I have to re-create the vgn-appsvcs-wfemail.war to include the jsp_servlet output? If so, I have never done this before. I've built many a war for applications but nothing like this. How do I rebuild the .java files based on the .jsp files?

DougForrest

No, you don't put your custom jsp inside our war file. You create your own war file and put your custom jsp inside your war file and then deploy your custom war file to the VCM Server using configp.

If you are on 8.1, your custom war file does not need to contain any OT specific jar files. It will be deployed inside our EAR file, so it will get all of the OT classes from the EAR.

If you are on a version prior to 8.1, your custom war file will need to contain vgn-appsvcs-cma.jar and thirdparty-combined.jar.

-Doug

From: eLink Entry: Discussion Group - Web Experience Management [mailto:v7webcontentmanagement@elinkkc.opentext.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2012 1:45 PM
To: eLink Recipient
Subject: RE RE Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host 2

RE RE Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host 2

Posted byhowellc@franklin.edu (Howell, Christine) On 03-15-2012 14:38

[To post a comment, use the normal reply function]
Topic:	Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host
Forum:	Discussion Group - Web Experience Management
Content Server:	Knowledge Center

DougForrest

>Does the assignmentEmail.jsp have the flexibility to determine what kind of content to output based on whether the task was approved or rejected?

An assignment email is an email that is sent to a user when a new task is offered to them. At that point, the task is neither accepted nor rejected. If you are referring to checking the status of previous manual tasks, then yes, you have access to everything you could ever want to know. You are writing java code and you have the API available to you. You can see the status of every previous task, manual or automatic.

>Can the jsp determine the transition condition and generate the desired body content (rejection or further review)?

Again, you will be writing the java code that generates the email body. You can access anything you want about previous activity in the workflow process.

>How about the email subject?

The email subject comes from a message bundle. You can customize the message bundle as well.

You are correct. It would be nice if the out of the box url could be customized without having to customize the entire email message. I will enter an enhancement request.

-Doug

From: eLink Entry: Discussion Group - Web Experience Management [mailto:v7webcontentmanagement@elinkkc.opentext.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2012 1:07 PM
To: eLink Recipient
Subject: RE RE Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host

RE RE Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host

Posted byhowellc@franklin.edu (Howell, Christine) On 03-15-2012 14:04

Does the assignmentEmail.jsp have the flexibility to determine what kind of content to output based on whether the task was approved or rejected? We have three kinds of notifications - item ready for review, item rejected, item approved and ready for publish and it goes through two approval levels. Can the jsp determine the transition condition and generate the desired body content (rejection or further review)? How about the email subject?

I may be picking nits, but I am quite annoyed that OpenText makes the assumption to automatically base the url on the vcm host, and not the preview server which is where we log in to cms from and do all our cms work. THAT should have been configurable because even the documentation talks about setting up a preview server. Due to this, I would have to extract the war, then the jsp, make the modifications (new ones), then build the war file then redeploy via config! p, then update configuration console, all to change a lousy url. I can try this, but I'm not so sure...

Quoted dforrest@opentext.com on 2012-03-15 14:04:

The program task can find anything it needs, including the id of a manual task, but I'm concerned with your approach here. Why are you sending a manual task email notification using an automated task. There is absolutely no reason to do this and you are making this email issue 20 times more complex than it needs to be. Especially considering the fact that customizing the email notifications is already a documented extensibility point. You simply need to create your own war file and copy the OOB assignmentEmail.jsp as a starting point. You cus! tomize your new jsp to your liking and then change the ASSIGNMENT_EMAIL_URI variable in the config space you point to your new jsp.

If your goal really is just to change the link in the assignment email to point to preview instead of the vcm, you're making it much harder on yourself than it needs to be.

-Doug

From:eLink Entry: Discussion Group - Web Experience Management [mailto:v7webcontentmanagement@elinkkc.opentext.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2012 10:39 AM
To: eLink Recipient
Subject: RE Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host

RE Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host

Posted by howellc@franklin.edu (Howell, Christine) On 03-15-2012 11:32

I understand that wfAssignment api lists things like

${taskId} The WfId of the task
${taskName} The name of the task
${taskDescription} The description of the task

but it doesn't describe how to access these values in a java program task.

Basically, what I am trying to figure out is, what does t! he program task know at what point in the workflow? How do I get the taskId in my ! program task?

Does this help?

[To post a comment, use the normal reply function]
Topic:	Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host
Forum:	Discussion Group - Web Experience Management
Content Server:	Knowledge Center

[To post a comment, use the normal reply function]
Topic:	Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host
Forum:	Discussion Group - Web Experience Management
Content Server:	Knowledge Center

Christine_Howell

Hmm, very interesting...I followed the directions from the admin guide and kept the original email jsp files, and created a copy of the assignementEmail.jsp and gave it a different name and changed the url in the jsp to point to the preview server. Then I made the war file, deployed via configp. Changed the configuration from /wfemail/assignmentEmail.jsp to /wfemail/franklinTaskEmail.jsp and pushed and restarted VCM. What did I get?

Failed to build email body using URI: /wfemail/franklinTaskEmail.jsp. [[ACTIVE] ExecuteThread: '0' for queue: 'weblogic.kernel.Default (self-tuning)'] [com.vignette.cms.server.wf.URISourcedEmailNotifier]
java.io.FileNotFoundException: Response: '404: Not Found' for url: 'http://dc1dvlx105.dev.franklin.edu:27110/wfemail/franklinTaskEmail.jsp'

Can someone explain to me what is happening here? Why didn't it keep the relative path like the rest of them?

Christine_Howell

In this case, how do I know what the relative path is? When I change the assignment_email_uri, what value do I give it?

DougForrest

Okay, you are on 8.1. The instructions in the 8.1 Admin guide are for a previous version of the RTS console, which we haven't been using since 7.5. So the Admin guide needs to be corrected.

So how did you redeploy the changed war file? Did you go to the RTS console and update the VgnContentSvcs deployment?

The error message indicates that it didn't find your new jsp. This just means that the new war file didn't get deployed. If you followed those instructions and modified the OOB war file, you don't need to worry about the absolute url. You set the path in the config space correctly. You just need to make sure to update the VgnContentSvcs application.

When you do this, you aren't changing anything with the deployment, so you don't need to step through the entire deployment wizard. Simply click the lock and edit button, then check the box next to VgnContentSvcs, then click the update button, then click the finish button, (wait), then click the activate changes button, (wait) then restart the VCM Server.

-Doug

PS. Although the Admin Guide tells you to modify the OOB war file, I would still recommend making your own war file. It will save you the trouble of redoing this every time you apply a fix of any kind.

From: eLink Entry: Discussion Group - Web Experience Management [mailto:v7webcontentmanagement@elinkkc.opentext.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2012 3:03 PM
To: eLink Recipient
Subject: RE RE Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host 3

RE RE Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host 3

Posted byhowellc@franklin.edu (Howell, Christine) On 03-15-2012 15:59

Can someone explain to me what is happening here? Why didn't it keep the relative path like the rest of them?

[To post a comment, use the normal reply function]
Topic:	Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host
Forum:	Discussion Group - Web Experience Management
Content Server:	Knowledge Center

DougForrest

Your URI is right. See my previous message.

From: eLink Entry: Discussion Group - Web Experience Management [mailto:v7webcontentmanagement@elinkkc.opentext.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2012 3:15 PM
To: eLink Recipient
Subject: RE RE RE Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host 2

RE RE RE Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host 2

Posted byhowellc@franklin.edu (Howell, Christine) On 03-15-2012 16:04

In this case, how do I know what the relative path is? When I change the assignment_email_uri, what value do I give it?

[To post a comment, use the normal reply function]
Topic:	Need workflow task url to link to preview server, not host
Forum:	Discussion Group - Web Experience Management
Content Server:	Knowledge Center