Oracle JD Edwards recently announced the availability of EnterpriseOne Tools Release 9.2.5.4, which supports EnterpriseOne Applications Release 9.2. JD Edwards continues to invest in digital transformation, user experience, system automation, security, and open platforms by delivering Tools Release 9.2.5.4. Combined, these JD Edwards Tools and Applications enhancements empower companies on their business transformation journey.

JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools Release 9.2.5.4

User Experience

User experience enhancements enable you to optimize the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne user interface and align it with the requirements of your user community and their business processes without further technical development and future debt associated with traditional application customizations. Empowered with a platform for extending and personalizing the application forms and the data they act upon, your technical staff, business analysts, and end users can collaborate to streamline the user interface for simple and optimized business processes.

Enhanced Browser Support for Grid Import and Export

Customers have built business processes that include the ability to import and export data easily from the JD Edwards application to Microsoft Excel leveraging Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) and ActiveX. This enhancement provides customers import and export capabilities for EnterpriseOne grid data across all JD Edwards-supported browsers: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Microsoft Edge based on Chromium. Customers are now able to:

• Export grid data to Microsoft Excel.
• Export grid data to an existing workbook.
  • Customers can export data to a renamed worksheet.
  • Customers can also specify the starting cell address from where they want to render the grid data from a specific cell address
• Export grid data to Microsoft Word.
• Import data from Microsoft Excel to the JD Edwards application in an editable format.

While this enhancement provides import and export capabilities for all supported browsers, customers can continue to leverage existing functionality with IE 11 and ActiveX to ensures the continuity of current business processes. Therefore, customers can use any of the JD Edwards-supported browsers (Edge Chromium, Safari, Chrome, and Firefox) for all business processes.

For the latest versions of supported browsers and future direction, please refer to My Oracle Support Certifications and Platform Statement of Direction. For Frequently asked questions, please refer to the FAQ document. Additionally, in Tools Release 9.2.5.3, Media Objects were enhanced to remove the need for ActiveX. For more information, see Enhanced Browser Support for Media Objects.

Enhanced User Experience Using JavaScript Applications in External Forms

This feature provides enhancements that improve the user experience when customers use JavaScript applications that are hosted in external forms.

A major benefit of the modern EnterpriseOne user experience platform—UX One—is the ability to augment the traditional EnterpriseOne form-based applications with rich, interactive web applications written in JavaScript using development frameworks such as Oracle JavaScript Extension Toolkit (JET) and Oracle Visual Builder Cloud Service (VBCS). Not only can these JavaScript applications be designed to interact with EnterpriseOne data, but they can also be hosted within an EnterpriseOne object called an “external form,” which integrates the JavaScript application into the EnterpriseOne user interface for a fluid, seamless user experience. This feature provides two enhancements that further improve that user experience.

1. Similar to EnterpriseOne forms, external forms are part of an EnterpriseOne application, and similar to all applications, they might have versions and processing options that determine how they behave or which data they act upon. This enhancement enables the JavaScript application developer to reference the application version and processing options of the external form that is hosting the JavaScript application. Therefore, the developer can design the JavaScript application to read the application version and processing options and adapt its behavior based on that input. For example, if a JavaScript application is designed to build a chart using a set of data, the version or processing options might control the scope or range of this data set to be charted. In this way, similar to native EnterpriseOne applications, a single JavaScript application can adapt its behavior based on the application version or the processing options passed to it at runtime. Additionally, the developer can pass processing option information to applications that are written and hosted in Oracle VBCS by using the soft coding record that references the VBCS application from the external form.
2. This enhancement provides new APIs for saving, modifying, and clearing the user’s session state in the browser session storage. With this capability, when the user navigates away from the page or launches another EnterpriseOne application and then returns to that page, the system restores the state as it was before the user left the page rather than reloading the page to an initial state. In this way, the user can freely navigate between external forms that host JavaScript applications and native forms that run EnterpriseOne applications.

Learning Path: Getting Started with Visual Builder and Orchestrator for JD Edwards

The learning path, Getting Started with Visual Builder and Orchestrator for JD Edwards, is designed to help developers become familiar with using VBCS along with Orchestrator. After a developer completes the learning path, they should have the basic level of knowledge necessary to create a mobile application using other available documentation and collateral.

Digital Transformation

A digital transformation platform enables you to participate in the digital economy, transform business processes, and adopt new technologies. It greatly simplifies how you integrate with third-party systems and cloud services, receive real-time accurate data from the Internet of Things devices, and build alternative user interfaces such as mobile applications. JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools features that drive digital transformation ultimately transform how you use your EnterpriseOne system and enhance its value to your business.

The following enhancements support customers on their continuous path to digital transformation.

User-Defined Orchestration Response Message

This enhancement enables the orchestration designer to create custom messages for orchestrations that complete successfully, with warnings, or with errors.

Effectively functioning as EnterpriseOne REST APIs, orchestrations are the backbone of EnterpriseOne process automation, alternative user interfaces, and integrations. As orchestrations are used for more critical business processes, the response messages from orchestrations are becoming equally critical to confirm success or indicate exceptions. When orchestrations invoke EnterpriseOne applications, the response messages from those applications are inherently included as part of the orchestration output. This enhancement enables the orchestration designer to craft custom messages for success, warning, and error conditions.

For example, if the goal is to create a mobile application to create sales orders in EnterpriseOne, the orchestration designer can create a simple success message: “Sales Order 123123 successfully created.” The mobile application accesses this message from the orchestration response and displays it to the user. Similarly, messages can be written for warning and error conditions.

Extensible Scripting Framework

This feature adds support for the JRuby and Jython scripting languages, in addition to the existing support for Java and Groovy, for custom scripting in orchestrations.

Orchestrator has the powerful capability to include a step with a custom code. Using this capability, an orchestration designer can insert logic within an orchestration, and what that step accomplishes is determined entirely by the skill and creativity of the designer; for example, the step can perform string manipulation, calculations, or input/output to an external database.

This enhancement extends the scripting framework to include other scripting languages. In addition to Java, Groovy, and EnterpriseOne business functions, you can now plug in other Java-compatible scripting frameworks, including JRuby or Jython, and use those scripting languages to create custom logic.

With this enhancement, Orchestrator gives designers more freedom to use the language that best aligns with the business requirements and their skills.

Orchestrator: Allow Continuation for Steps that Produce Warnings

This enhancement enables the orchestration designer to control the processing on certain EnterpriseOne applications for steps that produce warnings that require a double acknowledgment for the step to proceed.

Having complete knowledge of the business process, the orchestration designer knows the cases when despite a warning, it is permissible to proceed with the step and when on generation of a warning, the process must be stopped. The Orchestrator form request step enables the orchestration designer to make that choice at the form level using the Stop on Warning switch.

Certain EnterpriseOne applications, and possibly some customer-developed applications, are developed such that a double action is required to dismiss the warning, for example, clicking OK twice. In these cases, the Stop on Warning switch is incapable of detecting the need for a double action, and the form request step is halted, although the designer intends it to proceed. This enhancement provides the designer a way to specify that a step should proceed on a warning.

Create and Orchestration with a Single Check

This enhancement enables an orchestration designer to create an orchestration for a single orchestration component simply by clicking from a drop-down menu.

Oftentimes during the development of orchestrations, the orchestration designer creates an individual component, such as a form request, a data request, or a rule, and wants to immediately run that component, perhaps for testing. Because individual components cannot be run directly, it is first necessary to create an orchestration that contains the component, and then run that orchestration. The process is not difficult, but it is unnecessarily tedious.

This enhancement provides an option in the drop-down menu in Orchestrator Studio that automatically creates a new orchestration that includes the component being edited. The name, description, product code, and category fields are populated with the same values as the component. The UDO component’s input is automatically created and mapped as orchestration input, and the component’s output is selected to be included as the orchestration output. The new orchestration opens in the orchestration editor, and the user has the option to make changes before clicking Save. At this stage, the orchestration is ready to run.

End User Authentication via JSON Web Token

This enhancement enables secure authentication of a user to the EnterpriseOne web client and Orchestrator Studio via a JSON web token (JWT).

As the digital economy expands, so does the need for systems to interconnect with one another simply and securely. Industry standards, such as OAuth 2.0 and JSON Web Tokens (JWT), address the need for secure, standards-based authentication among systems. The EnterpriseOne Application Interface Services (AIS) server and Orchestrator already support inbound and outbound authentication via JWT tokens. This feature extends that capability to the EnterpriseOne web client for interactive users.

The net effect is that third-party systems and cloud services are able to present to the user a URL (a link) that launches the EnterpriseOne web client, either to the normal menu interface or directly to an application through a parameterized URL, without the user having to provide authentication on a sign-on screen. The user’s authentication has already been established and encoded in a secure JWT token, which is passed as part of the URL. This results in a seamless experience for the user, as if single sign-on middleware were used, but without the cost, complexity, and overhead of additional middleware.

This feature is yet another step toward the goal of enabling JD Edwards EnterpriseOne to integrate easily and securely in an expanding digital economy. Learn more about Orchestrator on the Orchestrator Overview page on LearnJDE.

System Automation

System automation provides your technical team with the tools they need to automate manual and repetitive administrative processes such as object management, troubleshooting, and batch management. This frees up your IT resources to partner with the other departments of your organization to improve processes and drive innovation.

Security

Security is ensured through secure authentication, access, and monitoring at every layer of the architecture while adhering to ever-changing industry security standards.

Open Platform

An open platform offers you the choice and control over the underlying computing architecture on which you run your EnterpriseOne system. General industry trends are constantly changing and specific releases of hardware, operating systems, databases, middleware, and browsers are frequently updated. JD Edwards continually certifies the latest platforms to ensure that customers have a stable, modern platform for adopting future innovation.

Important Reminder on Platforms: Beginning with EnterpriseOne Tools Release 9.2.5, JD Edwards is transitioning the Tools Foundation compatibility for 32-bit into the Sustaining Support lifecycle phase. Please refer to the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 64-bit Statement of Direction published on My Oracle Support (Document ID 2724367.1) for more details.

To learn more about EnterpriseOne Tools Release 9.2.5.4, go to www.learnjde.com.