Configure WebSphere profile to use a different version of Java

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There may be a time where you need to update your WebSphere profile to use a later version of Java.  One indication of this would be if you are installing an app in WebSphere, and you come across the error “The major.minor version ‘51.0’ is too recent for this tool to understand.”  This means that your application expects a newer Java SDK.

To determine which SDK your application is currently using,

  1. Open <WAS_HOME>/profiles/<profile>/logs/startServer.log
  2. Find the last server start entry
  3. Make not of the Java version

To update the SDK used by your WebSphere profile,

  1. Open a command prompt as administrator
  2. Navigate to <WAS_HOME>/profiles/<profile>/bin
  3. Type bat –listAvailable (managesdk.sh for Unix) to list the Java SDKs that are available for this profile (note the name of the SDK that you want to use)
  4. Type bat –enableProfileAll –sdkname <the name you noted earlier> -enableServers
  5. Syncrhonize the WebSphere nodes
  6. Restart the WebSphere application server
  7. Check the startServer.log to see that the java version has changed

For example:

WebSphere Application Server, update java sdk version, The major.minor version ‘51.0’ is too recent for this tool to understand

Increase Security Employee Search Limit in Lawson Portal

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While using Previous/Next on a record in Lawson portal, you may eventually stumble upon a pesky error message of:

“Security search limit of X employees exceeded” (X being anywhere from 1-100+)

 Commonly this could happen when restricting user access via process level, department, etc.

What happens when you click next or previous while inquiring on employees is that Lawson is searching in blocks of records based on your specified search limit.

For example:

If the Employee Security Search limit is set to 10 and we click next to inquire on the next employee record in HR11.

Lawson searches the next 10 employee records to see if the user has access to them.  If they do not, you will get the error message: “Security search limit of 10 employees exceeded”.

When we get the error, we should be on employee record number 10 – meaning if we click next again, we will be on employee number 20 if we do not have access the next 10 records again.

 

Ideally we’d like to reduce clicking next 10+ times by increasing the search limit.

Solution:

HR00.1

Don’t forget to click CHANGE after adjusting Employee Search Limit

As seen above, changing the search limit to something higher like 100 or more can dramatically reduce the amount of clicks to get to the next record that the user has access to.

If we change it to 100 and the next employee record is #200, it will only take 2 NEXT clicks to get to that record.

Ciber hands over the keys to Infor. What does it mean for customers?

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Ciber and Infor announced an agreement on March 20, 2017 to sell Ciber’s Infor practice to Infor. This is the most significant event in recent years within Infor’s Lawson client base as Ciber been serving the lion’s share of the Lawson customer base for nearly 17 years. The decision comes on the heels of Ciber’s financial troubles in recent years, most notably the repayment of a $28.2 million loan to Wells Fargo due by the end of March 2017.

According to the Form 8-K filed with the SEC on March 20, 2017, the terms include a cash payment of $15M. In addition, Infor will assume certain liabilities associated with the purchase. Ciber CEO Michael Boustridge commented that the sale of the Infor practice “reflects a fundamental decision to hone our business to a focused IT staffing foundation with complementary integrated business consulting and application development management capabilities in a synergistic digital transformation offering” but in light of the financial troubles Ciber has been in and the fast approaching due date of the loan, it’s hard to see this as anything other than a financial necessity.

Boustridge also said in his statement that Ciber is “working to provide a seamless transition and great continuity and service to our affected customers and our employees.” As it stands today, the arrangement seems to be that all Ciber employees within the Infor practice will be absorbed by Infor within the next few months. When it comes to clients however no significant plan has been announced. As with any merger, there will be some transition pains and bumpiness to be expected but it’s hard to imagine how mid-flight projects and managed service customers are going to be transitioned. According to the SEC filling, a key component of the deal is the transition of Ciber’s top 25 customers (by 2016 revenue) and “at least 90% of all specified Business Employees (as defined in the Asset Purchase Agreement), and 100% of certain identified key Business Employees, accepting offers of employment with Infor.”

The March 20th press release presents more questions than it answers at this early stage, such as:

– How will clients who have active projects mid-flight be transitioned from one organization to another?

– How will Ciber and Infor transition their Managed Service Clients?

– Will such a transition be done by customer consent or as part of an automatic consent built into the agreement with the customers?

Only time will tell.

IP Designer Series – The System Command Node

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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:

IP Designer Series – The Return Activity Node

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The Return Activity node in IP Designer is useful for stopping the flow when specified conditions are met, and returning information to the calling process, such as a trigger.

In this example, we have an error connection between the file access node and the Return Activity Node.  In this case, if there is an error in the File Access Node, information will be returned to the calling process by the Return Activity Node.

The Return Activity node can return four fields: Error Code (integer), Information Code (integer), Return Message (string), Output Data (string or binary).  These four fields can be populated with variables or with hard-coded information.  In the example, we chose to populate them with the codes and messages generated by the File Access node.

As you can see, the Return Activity Node is a very efficient method of stopping a process and returning the results to the calling application.

IP Designer Series – The Custom Activity Node

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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.

IP Designer Series – The Branch Node

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The Branch node in IP Designer is useful for an “if-then-else” type of logical statement.

After adding a branch node to your process, make sure the node is connected (using the connection tool) to previous nodes. That way, all your variables will be available. Then, click on the branch node and add conditions. You can add many conditions, and you can use variables and/or javascript code to create the comparisons.

In this example, we have very simple conditions:

When you create a connection from a branch to another node, you will be prompted to select the condition that should lead to that node:

NOTE: If you need to connect your branch node to a different node, DO NOT DELETE the connection. That will delete your entire condition!!! Simply grab the end of the arrow and move it to the correct node, or right click on the connection to unlink it and create another connection to the correct node.

Update the Micro Focus License Manager

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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:AbaEsdu7Rf@amerftp.microfocus.com/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

Don’t forget to check your Event Viewer

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Sometimes Lawson errors can be very cryptic and difficult to troubleshoot.  Sometimes you will have a very specific error in the ios.log or other system logs, and a search on InforXtreme produces ZERO results.  It can be quite frustrating!  Don’t forget that you have another place to check for errors.  Always remember to check your Windows Event Viewer for another “perspective” on the error.  Sometimes a Google search or even InforXtreme search on the error text in Event Viewer will actually produce results where the log search didn’t.  Some examples I have found are an error in the importdb script, which provided more information for an Infor ticket I had open, and a MicroFocus license manager error that led me to a KB and a download that solved some performance issues for us.  So, the bottom line is, don’t forget to check server logs in addition to Lawson and WebSphere logs!

IP Designer Series – The Assignment Node

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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.