Epicor Prophet 21 Portals - by David Bostick, dbostick@mindharbor.com
P21 DynaChange Portals – One Alternative to Prompting (more articles and content coming soon to this section)
A common portal request is prompting.
Prophet/21 DynaChange Portals is a robust inquiry/reporting tool and offers many integrated features that work well with the P21 software. But when it comes to prompting the user for input, any methods of validating the user’s entry is lacking. When prompted, the user may enter a value, however DynaChange Portals itself does not provide for a list of allowed values, validate the user’s entry in any way, or allow for the user to prompt for a valid value in the same manner as most screens in the P21 system.
Prompting by a customer number, a supplier id, a sales rep id, or an item id are common occurrences where you might have to leave the portal view screen. Extra steps may have to be taken to look up the appropriate value, only to return to the portal view screen in order to type in the number in the prompt.
The alternative to prompting presented below uses a Header Pane/Detail Pane portal layout.
Using a Header Pane / Detail Pane portal layout (Layout #3) offers a method for the user to select from valid information in the header while displaying detail information in the detail pane based on the selection.
How it works
As an example, the portal elements below will list all the customers associated to a Sales Rep without requiring any prompting from the user.
Setup
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Step one, create a portal that lists the active Sales Reps in your system. This can be all the sales reps or the selection can be conditioned in a meaningful manner for the user.
This portal will be the header pane in your portal and has no user prompting. The selection criteria will control the records returned to the screen for the user.
Example Code – Header Pane
Step two, create a portal that lists the active Customers in your system conditioned with a Sales Rep prompt. Yes, it is a user prompt. But we will get the system to automatically fill it in for us further down. This portal will be the detail pane.
Step three, within Prophet/21, install the two portals elements. Then select the layout format #3.
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By dragging and dropping the portal elements, assign the “Header portal” to the upper pane and the “Detail portal” to the lower pane.
Step four, within Prophet/21, you only need to assign the “Header portal” to a user or role.
Step five, display the portal for the first time, the upper pane (the header) will display properly. The lower pane ( the detail) will display the retrieval prompt created for portal.
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In the lower pane, Right-Click to open the (RMB) Right-Mouse-Button Menu. Select DynaChange - DynaChange Portals - Subscribe to changes in other portals. On the Field Selector tab, drag and drop the retrieval prompt argument to align with the appropriate retrieval parameter.
Now that the retrieval argument assignment is made, when the portal is displayed the lower pane (the detail) will display customer records associated to the selected sales rep record in the upper pane (the header).
Step six, the portal setup and configuration is complete. You re now ready to assign the portal to users as needed.
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For help with Prophet 21 Portals, Please contact David Bostick at: dbostick@mindharbor.com