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The Return Activity node in IP Designer is useful for running command line tools within a process.  You can run anything from the System Command node that could be ran in a Unix or DOS command prompt.

The first step to using a System Command Node is to configure the Sys Cmd tab in the appropriate configuration setting in Landmark.  In this case, we are using Rich Client to configure the setting.  This can also be configured via the Landmark administration web application.

To configure the System Command settings:

1. From Rich Client, open your Configuration Sets
2. Choose the Configuration Set for the server that you wish to run your commands
3. Click the Sys Cmd tab, and click Actions > Create (or if one exists, select it and click Actions > Update)
4. Fill in the parameters
   1. If the server you are accessing is remote (respective to the Landmark server), click the “Remote” checkbox
   2. The LSF Web/RMI root is the server web address
   3. The Web User is a user who has access to the Lawson Portal
   4. Password is the Web User’s password
   5. RMI timeout is the number of milliseconds to attempt the connection before timing out
   6. GENDIR and LAWDIR are the locations of those specified directories
   7. Run as user information is if you want to run your command as a different user from the user that runs the BPM process
      1. NOTE: Windows no longer allows a “Run As” user in command line activities. In typical installs, the local system user runs the BPM process on the LSF server, that is who will be running the commands in your System Command Node.  If you are using the System Command node to run Lawson tools such as importdb, you will need to make sure this local system user has access to the necessary roles in Lawson Security.

Now that your Sys Cmd settings are configured, you can use the System Command node in IPA.

1. In the node properties, select your Configuration name.
2. The default is the System (Landmark) configuration.
3. For Execution mode, you can leave it as automatic and it will use the server’s inherent command mode. Or, you can specify the mode.  Options are:
   1. run directly -> {command}
   2. run shell -> sh –c {command}
   3. run Korn shell -> ksh –c {command}
   4. run shell as System Command User (Unix only) -> su –p {password} {username} –c {command}
   5. run cmd.exe (Windows only) -> cmd.exe /C {command}
4. The Command property is the actual command script. Be sure to use the syntax appropriate for the Execution mode you chose.  You can use process variables in this window.
5. Command input is text that is sent to the command’s input stream. This is typically left blank.

Results of this example:

The Custom Activity node in IP Designer is useful for implementing functionality that is not available in the “canned” IPA nodes.

Infor delivers four Custom Activities with IPA. These are “Encoding”, “Assert”, “ComponentTest”, and “FlowRunner”. You can also create your own custom activities by creating Java Bean classes and adding them to the Grid.

Custom Activities are an advanced piece of IPA and should be configured by a developer.

To add a Custom Activity to the grid,

1. Create a jar file for the supporting classes
2. Place the jar file you created in the $LACFGDIR/LPS/jars folder
3. In the Infor Grid, click the gear icon 
4. Select Applications > Your Application
5. Click Edit Properties 
6. Under the LPA heading, find pfi.customActivity.beans and click the “value” link
7. Add the full classname of your Java Bean class
   1. Class names are separated by semi-colons
8. Restart the IPA node
9. Launch IP Designer
10. Add a Custom Activity node, and click to refresh the list. Your activity should be displayed now.

To use your Custom Activity, select the configuration name for email notification. Select the Activity from the list, then choose the action from within that activity. Then configure your input variables.

In Lawson version 10.0.8, you may encounter performance issues followed by the dreaded “error occurred outside of IOS” notification.  If you run into these issues, check your event viewer.  If you see an error like the one below, you may need to reinstall the Micro Focus license manager.  Here are the steps to do install it.

1. Go to ftp://asqcust:[email protected]/supportdownload/CES/lmsetupx64.msi and download the msi
2. Place the file on your Lawson application server
3. On the Lawson application server, stop the Sentinel RMS License Manager service
4. Double-click the installation file and follow the steps
5. The Sentinel RMS License Manager service should be restarted after the installation is complete

The Assignment node in IP Designer is pretty straightforward and simple to use, but it can also be very useful and flexible. The first step to using the assignment node is to create and initialize your variables in the start node properties.

The assignment node can be used to set simple variables. It can also be used for more complex assignments. Here is a simple assignment, created by clicking :

You can also use javascript and regular expressions in your assignment node to manipulate strings. This example uses a simple “if” statement to assign a variable (created by clicking ):

This example takes a line from a data iterator, splits it on the “,” , and removes unwanted characters using regular expressions. It assigns that string to the “impCompany” variable, which was created and initialized in the Start node.

Here are 2 simple ways to create ad-hoc reports:

Once you have your Alias create

• Click New Ad-hoc Report on the Office Plus section of the Ribbon

  or

• Double click the cube in the left side pane

Note: Each new ad-hoc report will open in a new window.