Six New Logic Extensions Features

With Release 22 and 23, there are six new logic extensions features that redefine development.

Logic Extensions is a powerful, on the glass, graphical development tool using the familiar syntax of the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne event rules. There’s no need for programming knowledge. It doesn’t require building and deploying a package. It runs on the same server, using the same Logic engine as the application event rules.

Logic extensions targets three groups of users: developers, business analysts, and database administrators.

• JD Edwards developers – You’re already a champion in Logic Extensions because you’ve been working with it for a long time. Developers can do this in their sleep.
• Business analysts ­– With a bit of learning to get familiar with the user interface, Business Analysts can transform your business process without relying on a developer or programmer. For example, if you want to convert data between Standard and Metric systems or find out the profit margin for your products, you can.
• Database Administrators – You know your tables. You know what you want to do with the data in the tables. With Logic Extensions, you can do it yourself. However, you’ll want to make sure not to do this in the production environment.

Logic Extensions simply takes logical reasoning to be advantageous to you. The image above shows how it can be used. Logic Extensions helps you to meet business requirements and perform day-to-day tasks. Plus, it removes the costly need for customizations.

Logic Extensions can also significantly reduce the number of UDOs you have in orchestrations. If you’re relying on orchestrations with JRuby, Groovy, or custom scripts to do data manipulation, take another look. You may be able to do it in Logic Extensions.

The conditions in Logic Extensions are much more powerful than the rules or iterations you can see in orchestrations. This is another way Logic Extensions can help to improve your business efficiency.

Previous Logic Extensions Uses

Logic Extensions was introduced in Release 22. At that time, you could manipulate numeric strings and days, as well as reading and writing into tables. Then, business functions and report interconnects were added. Another update added the ability to kick off a workflow process from Logic Extensions. In Release 23, data set processing and aggregations were added. Logic Extensions continues to receive enhancements as it’s a powerful tool for now and the future.

Named Event Rules vs. Logic Extensions

Below is a side-by-side comparison of named event rules and logic extensions:

Logic Extensions offers much more. How important is the ability to kick off a workflow? You can’t do that in Named Event Rules.

In addition to all of the functionalities listed above, Logic Extensions also provides a better user experience. If you want to add some statements into your logic, you can either drag and drop or click the plus icon to point and click. You get a comprehensive view of the logic in the designer, itself. If you don’t know what data item to use ahead of time, that’s not a problem. If you’re working with an E1 structure, you can add those to your Logic Extension definition on the fly. Lastly, you can test, run, and troubleshoot your logic on the glass. None of this was available with Named Event Rules.

New Logic Extensions Features

There are six new significant features powered by Logic Extensions:

1. Start a workflow process
2. Dataset processing
3. Aggregations
4. Call Logic Extensions directly from Form Extensions
5. Form Control Extensions
6. Nested Logic Extensions

New Logic Extensions Feature 1: Start a Workflow Process

In Release 22, another very important component was delivered in E1 products: Workflow Studio. Workflow Studio streamlined the process of refining and managing a workflow. Workflow Studio, itself, is awesome. However, starting a workflow was difficult.

With Logic Extensions creating the option to start a workflow, all of the functionality of Workflow Studio is at your fingertips. There are endless possibilities. You can call notifications or orchestrations from workflows if you combine them together. This makes more effective, efficient, and potentially comprehensive business processes. It’s a key component in the digital platform to facilitate automation.

New Logic Extensions Feature 2: Data Set Processing

Data set processing with Logic Extensions enhances the capabilities of logic extensions with the ability to accept arrays as inputs and return arrays as outputs for efficient iterative processing of multiple rows of data within the logic extension.

New Logic Extensions Feature 3: Aggregation Support

Logic Extensions empowers you to leverage the built-in data analytics capabilities within EnterpriseOne. This simplifies cases in which data needs to be summed, averaged, or otherwise aggregated. You can accomplish a level of data analysis and manipulation without programming skills.

New Logic Extensions Feature 4: Form Control Extensions

Form control extensions are a low code/no code way to dynamically change EnterpriseOne application forms.

Forms are the fundamental components of E1 interaction applications, and those forms are made up of various form controls such as input fields, buttons, and grids. Traditionally, customers have customized forms to simplify and optimize the user experience, but customizations can be difficult and costly.

The solution is Form Control Extensions. This feature enhances logic extensions with the ability to act on the properties of controls on the form. For example, you can show, hide, enable, disable, or change the color of a field. Based on a value the user has entered into a field, you can conditionally enable or disable other controls.

The benefits include a dynamically controlled EnterpriseOne application forms and fast, easy, low code/ no code development and deployment.

New Logic Extensions Feature 5: Pass the Application Version from a Form Extension

Customers have repeatedly requested form extensions be supported at the version level. Unfortunately, that’s against the E1 architecture so it cannot be promised.

However, the product has been enhanced so that you can work with versions using Form Extension. The latest tools release gives you the ability to retrieve the application version at runtime and pass it as a string input into your notifications, orchestrations, or logic extensions. Further utilize the rules in notifications and orchestrations or use conditions in logic extensions to perform complicated tasks based on a decision tree.

This solution allows the designer to map the application version as input into an orchestration or a logic extension when it is launched from a form extension, thereby allowing alternative processing depending on the runtime value of the version. The benefits include controlling the behavior of an orchestration or logic extension based on application version and using the version security to control how forms behave for different users and roles.

New Logic Extensions Feature 6: Nested Logic Extensions

Use Nested Logic Extensions for reusable or recursive logic. Even though your logic extensions function like a module of programming code, the intuitive user interface allows users without programming knowledge to create effective logic. Like other modules of programming code, this is often useful to create logic that can be reused in other contexts. For example, you might create a logic extension that performs some arithmetic, adds a certain number of days to a given date, or converts a numeric value to a string.

The Nested Logic Extensions feature enables you to create logic extensions that call other logic extensions, thus enabling a common pattern in programming in which code “snippets” are designed as reusable objects. The benefits include building a library of reusable logic extensions and iterating recursively within a logic extension.

Key Takeaways

Logic Extensions gives you control over your EnterpriseOne user interface. It doesn’t require traditional development tools, deployment tools, or developer skills. You can reduce the number of UDOs in orchestrations and capitalize on the ability to move beyond traditional customizations. With Logic Extensions, you can do more, easier.

For more information, watch the following session recording from Quest’s BLUEPRINT Conference: The Cumulative Value of Logic Extensions: Six New Enhancements that Redefine Development.

For more JD Edwards learning, check out the JD Edwards content available in the Quest Learn Library.