This blog describes how you can add your own profile setting, for example an URL to a SOAP web service, to your mashup so that your profile setting can be delivered and deployed as part of your mashup.

In Lawson Smart Office we have two main different types of settings. We have settings in settings files; these are the user settings and applications settings that can be administrated via group policies. Examples of user settings are my M3 default option or the theme color of my Canvas. Examples of applications settings are if private deploy of mashups is allowed or if the user is allowed to change the theme. Those are set by the administrator and cannot be changed by the user.

We also have settings that are more releated to the environment, such as Server URLs, ports and what features should be enabled. This type of information is stored in the profile (profile.xml on the server).

Mashups can access both types of settings but only profile settings can be included in the Mashup application. If the application is then installed via LCM it is possible for the administrator to change the value in the advanced view of the Profile Editor tool within Lawson Smart Office.

If you need user settings you need to do some SDK development so that your application contains both c# code (a feature) and a Mashup. But for some simple key-values that are set for all users, using the profile is easy and I’ll show you how.

We will start with a mashup project with at least one XAML file.

1. Go to the project explorer and select the project name in the tree control. In the image below my project is WSExamples. Click it to select it.

2. As you click the Properties tab will be updated with the properties tab for the selected item. Now if the properties tab does not change simply click the XAML file and then the project node again.

3. Click on create to create a new profile xml file. You will be promted to enter a name and location for the file. Profile.xml is a good name. Make sure you place it in the same folder as your other project files. Add can only be added if you have already created a profile xml with the correct syntax.

4. Once you have created the file you click edit and you will see the window below.

5. Note that the WSExamples is used as a node so make sure your project name is unique (compared to other mashups with profiles) or use a better name than URL. Launch externally will open the xml file in the default program for XML files on your computer. For me that is Internet Explorer. So skip that! Click the open folder and open the Profile.xml (or profiles.xml) in your favorite xml editor.

6. I changed my XML to look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Profiles>
<Profile group="Mashup">
 <WSExamples>
    <CustomerWSUrl>https://myserver/Service.svc</CustomerWSUrl>
  </WSExamples>
</Profile>
</Profiles>

6. To access the value enter it as a binding. For example:

<TextBlock Text="{mashup:ProfileValue Path=Mashup/WSExamples/CustomerWSUrl}"/>

7. You can use the binding to access any value in the profile. The Path contains of groupName/ApplicationName/KeyName. For example use the path “M3/Companion/Url” to access the Url for Companion.