The procurement modules in large ERP systems are great for buying in bulk and keeping stock supplied for your larger purchasing needs.  Usually items are shipped to a receiving dock and are received into the ERP system by the receiving personnel.  This makes doing AP matching viable for these purchases.

What do you do with the items that your local store needs that are not shipped to a warehouse for distribution?  What about when the items are not part of a current contract or even needed on a contract? A store may need light bulbs for their light fixtures, for example, and the local manager has the authority to place an order for them without getting them in his regular warehouse deliveries.  This type of local purchase does not need approval beyond the store manager.  Waiting for a long process to establish a local supplier of light bulbs could leave the store in the dark before the process completes.

You still want these local store purchases to have an approval process that is tracked for audit compliance and a way to know what your commitments are.  How do you deal with these purchases now?  Wouldn’t it be great to have a local purchasing solution that doesn’t require a receiving department and still allows you to know:

Who approved the order

What your total corporate commitments are

Where you purchased something before for when you need to purchase them again

A solution is coming – stay tuned for more information soon!

 

 

 

 

Here is a list of known IPA errors and their solutions as provided by Infor.

  1. Email attachment does not existAttachment: Drive:/Path/To/File/filename.ext does not exist.Solution:
    When adding attachments to a IPA email node, you must first ensure the file you wish to attach resides on the Landmark Environment Server.• If the file exists in LASYSDIR/LPS/emailattachments, simply list the file by filename.ext
    • If the file exists in any other Landmark Server Directory, list the file by it’s full absolute directory path
    • If you are using Multi-tenant Cloud, the file needs to be added PfiFileStorage, list the file by its full name in PfiFileStorage 
  2. SSOCfgInfoServlet was not successful Login error: com.lawson.security.authen.httpclient.LawsonHttpClientException: Login: The call to SSOCfgInfoServlet was not successfulImportant to note that any failing path connecting from IPA to LSF server can throw an identical error as stated above. The solution below should only be applied if the following can be seen in WebSphere’s system.out log:REQUIRED SUBSEQUENT ERRORjava.net.UnknownHostException: <server>

    at java.net.InetAddress.getAllbyName0(InetAddress.java:1302)

    Solution: Try adjusting the java.security file to disable caching while troubleshooting the problem on the DNS server. In order to modify this value, open JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/security/java.security and change the networkaddress.cache.ttl line to:

    networkaddress.cache.ttl=0

  3. IPA Designer: Lawson Query Builder Error Generating Process Query String

This error can pop up upon pressing “Build” in IPA Designer LawsonQuery node.

Solution: This silly error may be caused by using a IPA variable (such as <!appProdline>) for your dataarea in the query string. Instead, just remove the variable and type in the dataarea manually instead.

Before: PROD=<!appProdline>&FILE=EMPLOYEE&INDEX=EMPSET1&KEY=<!Company>=<!Employee>&FIELD=ADD-ALLOW-AMT;AUTO-DEPOSIT;BIWEEKLY-RATE;COMPANY;EMPLOYEE&OUT=CSV&DELIM=

After:
PROD=lsapps&FILE=EMPLOYEE&INDEX=EMPSET1&KEY=<!Company>=<!Employee>&FIELD=ADD-ALLOW-AMT;AUTO-DEPOSIT;BIWEEKLY-RATE;COMPANY;EMPLOYEE&OUT=CSV&DELIM=

The Data Iterator node is commonly used to loop through records but it can also read a file into IPA. (For more on the Data Iterator Node, visit: https://www.nogalis.com/2017/05/04/ip-designer-series-the-data-iterator-node/)

Based on the responses of seasoned IPA developers on the Infor/Lawson forums, the best way to ‘load’ in a file to an IPA flow is to use a FileAccess node followed by a DataIterator node. This speeds up the flow considerably as the FileAccess node would read the file into memory and then the DataIterator node can use the data from the memory instead of reading and closing the file multiple times.

First ‘load’ or ‘read’ the file into IPA using the FileAccess node. Then set DataIterator to process the Data (and not File) and set the source to be the FileAccess_outputData. This should noticeably improve the performance of the flow as the data is just being loaded into memory once by the FileAccess.

 

If you run into this error, it likely means that many of your batch jobs in Lawson are going into recovery. The reason this may have occurred is due to a domain name change or possibly an accidental password reset.

 

To resolve, first login into LSA, then go to Manage Privileged Identities.

Once there, click the Environment named service ie. LSFPROD, LSFTEST or however yours is named. Select the BATCH key and find out what user is assigned under it.

 

This BATCH key may be named differently so check your lajs.cfg file under RUNUSERKEY as shown below in the system folder.

If you know the latest password login to LID with it first to confirm.

 

After confirming, type the password in the password field shown below and remember to click CHANGE after you confirm the password:

Go back to the job scheduler and attempt to recover your jobs.

Lawson makes it incredibly simple to add users to its reporting wing LBI.

 

First what you want to do is add the LBIUser GROUP to the user in LSA:

This group may be spelled differently but typically it’s called LBIUSER and is defined when Lawson is first setup for your organization.

 

Once you add this group to the Lawson user. Make sure you save and clear your server cache.

 

Log in to LBI, go to Tools, and under System Administration click “Synchronize Users and Roles”

LBI typically auto-synchronizes once a day but you can manually do it now and you’ll notice the users and roles will be the same after your sync them.

The user should be able to login into LBI but likely won’t be able to access much if reports, dashboards, and links are assigned additional Lawson groups as a means of restricting access. Again, these are called “roles” in LBI but “groups” in Lawson.

 

There is also a matter of bursting reports to the user which is another form of security that will be outlined in another article.

Infor Process Automation should be configured correctly to ensure proper functioning of other Lawson System Applications. Here are the official best practice IPA-LSF Server Configuration recommendations directly from Infor. (KB 1946828)

Recommended Configurations

  1. JT-973173

    This JT resolves a memory leak issue in the Event Manager Java Process. Not having this JT means the Event Manager Java Process will slowly grow in size and if left unchecked, can consume all RAM and even crash the LSF Server.

  2. Remove lpsMaxHeap=XXXXX and lpsMinHeap=XXXXX from LAWDIR/system/bpm.properties

    These settings are only required when using JNI.

  3. Set useLPSBridgeSocket=true in LAWDIR/system/bpm.properties

    NOTE: The use of the LPS Bridge Socket connection means LSF batch/online programs will no longer initialize a JVM, it will simply make a socket connection to the Event Manager process to make the request.

  4. Set Windows pagefile on LSF server to 32 GB

 

Additional Recommendations for Infor Cloud Clients

  • Verify and ensure that lpsHost=inforbclm01.inforbc.com
  • NOTE: If this setting is not pointed at the internal domain, a grid session memory leak can occur in Event Manager on the LSF server
  • NOTE: Changes to this file should be made by executing pfserv config lps and they require a restart of LSF Process Flow and LSF Web Application Servers.

Additional Recommendations for LSF on LINUX

  • Ensure LSF JT-875069 is applied to the LSF system
  • Add “useLPSLocalServices=true” to LAWDIR/system/bpm.properties
  • Follow KB 1936921 which has two process definitions files used for synchronizing services from IPA/Landmark to LSF
  • In the GEN data area of the Landmark Rich Client, navigate to ConfigurationParameter BusinessClass and add: Component=ipa, Name=useRMIWebServlet, Value=true
  • Configure LSF to look at IPA Services in the LOGAN database instead of connecting to IPA. This requires LSF JT-875069 which allows you to add “useLPSLocalServices=true” in bpm.properties. This also requires the use of a ServiceSyncFlow to move the services from IPA to LSF. To implement this procedure, please follow instructions on KB 1936921.

During a recent IFS install we encountered an install failure and the error message/return code was blank. The setup_log.log file said “Error: IFS -DoInstall failed with a return code of”.  We noticed that the setup_log.log claimed that it had created the new database successfully, but the database was not there. After much troubleshooting, we finally realized that we needed some inbound/outbound firewall rules for our IFS database instance. The interesting thing is that the install wizard made it past the database connection screen, but once we added those firewall rules, we were good to go.

Active Directory groups can be added in IFS to use for synchronization and automated role assignment. To add a group to IFS, navigate to Manage > Groups. Click the add button to add a group, or click on a group in the list to update it. Selecting the “Sync users” checkbox means that users from that AD group will bey synchronized with IFS each time a sync is done. You can also auto-assign roles to users in the AD group by going to Manage > Master Data. Select Security Role, then Details. On the left side, select the role you want to assign. On the right side, click the Groups tab, and select the add button. Choose the group(s) for which that role should be assigned. Select Apply and/or Ok, then click the save button at the top. The next time you have a scheduled sync, all users in that AD group will be assigned the role(s) you defined.

Troubleshooting Infor/Lawson issues can be tricky at times due to the scarcity of resources online. Finding an Infor specific solution through a standard Google search is usually fruitless. In these cases, the absolute best help usually comes from an Infor Knowledge Base (KB) article or actual Infor documentation as the instructions there are coming straight from the horse’s mouth.

Unfortunately, it can be quite tricky to use the search to find what you are looking for. Even when I know exactly what I’m looking for, I have seen the search results display wildly irrelevant articles. Even when I type the exact title of the KB article, the results sometimes do not show it.

Here are some tips and tricks to help you search through Infor’s Knowledge Base (Full article: KB 1182904)

  1. Do you know the ID Number?
    If you have the incident number, KB article ID, or Documentation topic ID on hand, there is no need to mess with search terms at all. Simply search the number and just the number itself to find your article.

    YES
    NO

  2. Try to favor Singular words over Plural in the Search Phrase
    Infor recommends using singular words in your search phrase for better search results.
  3. Using Wildcards in the Search Phrase
    There are two wildcard characters (* and ?) available to use in the search phrase to expand your results. Wildcard characters serve to complete a word when you are not sure of the entire word. Wildcard characters apply to single words and not the entire phrase.

    Asterisk (*): Adding this to a word will add zero or more characters to the word to look for all words that include the characters provided. For example, searching for term “account*” will return results that start with account but can end with any number of letters after account. Words such as accounts, accounting, accounted would all be included in the search results.

    Question mark (?): Adding this to a word will add one character to the word to look for all words that include the characters provided. For example, searching for term “?ate” will return results that end in ate but can start with any one letter. Words such as late, date, rate, gate would all be included in the search results. If it was an asterisk instead (*ate), words such as elucidate, satiate, plate would also be included.

    Note: if you use the * in a word in the search phrase and the search engine finds too many matches, you may get no results returned.

  4. Using Special Characters
    The only special characters that are considered by the search are:
    • slash (/)
    • dash (-)
    • underscore (_)

    All other special characters (such as !,@,#,$,&) will be replaced by a space when the search is performed. These are not searchable.

  5. Types of Searches
    If your search contains just one word, regardless of the setting of the Search Exact Phrase checkbox, an “Exact Phrase” search will be performed. Only those KB articles/Documentation topics that include the word, a form of the word, or a synonym for the word, will be included in the search result. If your search phrase is “execute”, you should expect to see KB articles/Documentation topics including: execute, executed, executing, run, runs, and running in the search result.

If your search contains more than one word and Search Exact Phrase = unchecked, an “All of the Words” search is performed. If there is at least one result that contains all of the words in the search phrase, then the results are displayed. If there are no results that contain all of the words in the search phrase, then an “Any of the Words” search will be performed and all of the KB articles/Documentation topics that contain at least one word in the search phrase will be displayed in the search result.

If your search contains more than one word and Search Exact Phrase = checked, an “Exact Phrase” search is performed. If there is at least one result that contains the exact phrase, then the results are displayed. If there are no results that contain the exact phrase, then an “All of the Words” search is performed. If there is at least one result that contains all of the words in the search phrase, then the results are displayed. If there are no results that contain all of the words in the search phrase, then an “Any of the Words” search will be performed and all of the KB articles/Documentation topics that contain at least one word in the search phrase will be displayed in the search result.

Refer to the Search Terms Match filter on the search result page to see what type of search was performed:

  1. Search Exact Phrase Checked vs Unchecked

    If Search Exact Phrase is selected:
• Automatic spell correction is not performed. The search terms are searched as-is.
• “Noise words” are not removed from the search phrase.

    If Search Exact Phrase is NOT selected:
• Automatic spell correction is performed. There will also be a “Search instead for” option to search the original phrase with no correction.
• “Noise words” are removed from the search phrase.

  • You can surround a word with double quotes (“”) to avoid auto spell correction and noise word removal.

    • The numbers zero through nine (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) are also considered noise words.
  • The individual letters of the English alphabet are also considered noise words.
  1. Infor General Recommendations
  • Use the Advanced Search options on the search criteria page only if you know for certain that the search result should include results with only those criteria.
  • On the search criteria page, select multiple product lines if you are unsure where an issue might originate.
  • When conducting a search, start with a simple search phrase and if too many results are returned, try adding more words to constrain the search result.
  • On the search result page, only use the filters on the right if you are certain that the search result should be filtered by those selections. If you are uncertain, you might consider modifying your search phrase.

When working with Infor Process Automation (IPA), code or programs can be executed remotely on the Lawson System Foundation Server through these four nodes:

  1. System Command Node
  2. File Access Node
  3. Resource Query Node
  4. Resource Update Node

These nodes work by making a connection (via RMI call) to a java.exe process running on the Lawson System Foundation Server. Therefore, it is vital that the process owner has the proper access to run these commands.

Follow the instructions below to configure your LSF system so these processes will be owned by a user that has the necessary access:

  1. Create two files (pfrmi.cfg and pfem.cfg) in %LAWDIR%/system directory. The next time the process flow is restarted, the java.exe process will refer to these files to specify which user will start the java.
  2. Both files should be identical and have just two lines each:
    line 1: LAWSONUID DOMAIN\accountname
    line 2: 

LAWSONUID DOMAIN should be replaced with your own domain and accountname should be replaced with your own account name. This is the user you are designating to run the java command. This user needs to have the proper access to run those commands. This domain/accountname combo needs to be a valid user defined in the LSF Environment Service Identity.

The second line needs to be a blank line. (Only if LSF system is running on Windows. No blank second line needed for UNIX)

line 1/line 2 are there to show you the line numbers. The actual words “line 1” and “line 2” should not be in the files.