Category Archives: Tips

Establishing Mutual Trust

The Smart Office client is signed with a code-signing certificate for safety, that certificate needs to be renewed every few years like an Id-card. We just did this for the upcoming release (HF55) and due to some changed business related values in the new certificate you may experience an inconvenient Microsoft Defender SmartScreen dialog for a short period of time.

Microsoft has a SmartScreen feature that keeps track of a signed applications reputation for establishing a rapport. The new certificate categorize Smart Office as a brand new application not trusted by Microsoft Defender SmartScreen. Until Smart Office has earned its reputation you will see the following dialog when an install or update of the client is started.

In order to continue with the install or update you must click the link More info and proceed to the following dialog. Ensure that the publisher is Infor and that the App file is MangoClient.exe (Smart Office), then press the button Run anyway.

When Microsoft Defender SmartScreen has registered a certain amount of likes in form of users pressing the Run anyway button it will be accepted as a known application once more.

A New Year in the Calendar

Is the week number 52, 53 or 1 not where you expect it to be in the calendar view?

When you’re in the transition between the old and the new year it may be relevant for some Smart Office users to talk about the visible week number in the date picker or the calendar control.

The weeks in the Gregorian calendar are numbered from week 1 to 52 but some years week 53 will appear. If the year starts on a Thursday or is a leap year that starts on a Wednesday (2020) it will have 53 weeks. This is the case in some European and Asian countries following the ISO-8601 standard but not for the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The ISO-8601 week 1 of the year 2021 will correspond to week 2 in the United States for example.

The week number is calculated based on the first day of the week and the cultural calendar week rule. In Smart Office this information is either fetched from the Windows Region settings or Smart Office itself depending on the Smart Office settings.

The relevant settings are found in the Smart Office Settings Editor (administration tool) under the Mango.UI section:

First day of week setting

The option ‘Use client settings‘ will determine the first day of the week by Windows cultural and regional setting.

The option ‘Monday‘ will set the first day of the week by the ISO-8601 standard (Monday) and use the ‘First four day week‘ Calendar Week rule. The Windows cultural settings are ignored when calculating the week.

UI element language setting

The option ‘Windows region setting‘ will determine the Calendar Week rule by the Windows regional format setting, unless the ISO standard option ‘Monday‘ is selected as ‘First day of week‘ and then the ‘First four day week’ rule is used.

The option ‘Smart Office language‘ will derive the Calendar Week rule from the current user language set in Smart Office.

ClickOnce Uninstall Script

There’s a previous post Sound of a Silent Install how to perform a silent install in virtual desktop environments using the Windows installer (MSI) version.

The conventional way to install Infor Smart Office on client machines is to use Microsoft ClickOnce network deployment to get an isolated, secure, self-updating application that can be installed and run with minimal user interaction.

To Uninstall a ClickOnce application require the launch of the uninstall dialog and some user interaction. To perform uninstall on many client machines can become tedious so here is a Powershell script example that performs the task.

The script use the application display name from Windows Start menu to find the ClickOnce uninstall string in the Windows Registry. It launches the ClickOnce uninstall dialog, selects the “Remove the application from this computer” option and press the OK button. This example has been tested on Windows v10.0.17763 and there’s no guarantee it will work on every Windows version.

<# Set $ISODisplayName to the visible name of the application in the Windows Start menu #>
$ISODisplayName = "Infor Smart Office - DEV"

<# Get uninstallable ClickOnce applications #>
$InstalledApplicationNotMSI = Get-ChildItem HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall | foreach-object {Get-ItemProperty $_.PsPath}

<# Find uninstall string for named ClickOnce application #>
<# The name is the display name visible in the Windows Start Menu #>
$UninstallString = $InstalledApplicationNotMSI | ? { $_.displayname -match $ISODisplayName } | select UninstallString 
$selectedUninstallString = $UninstallString.UninstallString

<# Launch ClickOnce uninstall command #>
$wshell.run("cmd /c $selectedUninstallString")

<# Wait 7 seconds for uninstall dialog to appear #>
Start-Sleep 7

<# Move focus and Select option "Remove the Application from this computer" #>
<# Key specifications: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.windows.forms.sendkeys?view=netframework-4.7.2 #>
$wshell.sendkeys("{TAB}")
$wshell.sendkeys("{DOWN}")

<# Press the OK button #>
$wshell.sendkeys("`"OK`"~")

 

 

 

 

Microsoft Edge Chromium and ClickOnce

The new Microsoft Edge Chromium browser doesn’t provide native support for ClickOnce as of version 81.0.416.6.

It will by default NOT work to launch a Smart Office ClickOnce install point link in Edge Chromium.

To enable ClickOnce support in Edge Chromium:

  1. Enter edge://flags link in Edge Chromium browser.
  2. Scroll down to ClickOnce Support setting and select ‘Enable’ from the dropdown list.
  3. Restart the browser.
Note: This setting will be overridden if your organization configures the 
"Allow users to open files using the ClickOnce protocol" policy. – Windows

The Edge Chromium will always prompt the user before launch of a 
ClickOnce link because Chromium doesn't rely on the Windows Security Zones.

Smart Office commands cheat sheet

Smart Office has a number of commands, or in fact they are all links that will perform an action like opening a tool or clearing a cache. A special thanks to Jarda Dedek at EYELEVEL for sending me the original list. I took it and added a few tips of my own. In Smart Office every application is launched by an Uri. The Uri consists of a schema, like http and https, but we use mforms, sforms etc to identify different applications. As it turns out the short form links: is also a valid Uri, it’s just that it has no path, just the schema.

Download PDF version

Command Description
mforms://cmp600 Company switch
mforms://cmp100200 Division switch
mforms://lngcz Language switch
mforms://mitest MI Test
mforms://_command?value=clear cache Clear language and view definition cache. (No other caches) The reply from the command will show what caches have been cleared.
mforms://_command?value=clear view Clear view
mforms://_command?value=clear view all Clear all views
mforms://_command?value=clear lngcache Clear language cache
mforms://_command/?value=clear custcache Clear customization cashes in UI Adapter
mforms://jscript Script Tool
mforms://jscript/clear Clearing jScript cache with confirmation
mforms://jscript/clear&silent Clearing jScript cache without confirmation
mforms://_automation?template=<TEMPLATE NAME>&<NAME1>=<VALUE2>&<NAMEn>=<VALUEn> Automation links crated in Automation builder
mforms://_automation/?data=<AUTOMATION XML>  Automation link with automation file uploaded to server
admin://file/category Category File Administration
admin://importexportmanager Import/Export Manger
admin://installpointmnanager Install Point Manager
admin://predefinedwidgets Predefined Widgets
admin://profileeditor Profile Editor
admin://settingseditor Settings Editor
admin://userhistory User Logon History
admin://videosmanager Videos Manager
startpad://manager StartPad Manager
admin://file/category?category=StartPad StartPad File Administration – Start pad
admin://file/category?category=Mashup StartPad File Administration – Mashup
links: Link Manager
dev:help List of development commands
dev:icons Show icons
dev:local Show local folder
dev:localscriptpath Show local script path
dev:log Shows log
dev:supportzip Creates a zip with the log file and some other files like settings
dev:roaming Shows roaming folder
dev:root Shows root folder
dev:bin Shows bin folder
dev:user Shows local folder with user profile. All U** in S0 folder then can be deleted to refresh views/starting_values/user_data.
C:\Users\jarded\AppData\Local\Apps\2.0\
dev:server Show server folder
dev:shared Shows share folder
dev:resetlang Resets language
internal://log Smart office Log viewer
internal://log?search=idledetect Add a free-text search parameter to start with all entries matching the search criteria, in this example all entries related to user idle detection.
internal://log?search=idledetect&session=2

internal://log?search=idledetect&session=last

internal://log?search=idledetect&session=prev

 This can be extended with the session parameter to specify the initial session to select in the log. It can be a value [1..n], last will select the current session, prev will select the previous session and full selects the whole log file. Previous is useful if you examine something that happens during shutdown and you examine the log after a restart.
internal://log?cat=service unavailable
internal://log?cat=service%20unavailable
internal://log?cat=service unavailable&session=full		 You can specify the category you defined as initial selection.

 
internal://log?search=idledetect&sessiontime=13:10 The session time parameter that may be useful in some special cases and if the session time parameter is present the session parameter is ignored.
internal://themeulator Canvas theme Emulator
tool://wstest Web services test tool
widget: Opens the widget library
widget://add/?scheme=Mango.Widgets.MenuWidget Adds a widget to the canvas, use the widget ID to specify which widget to add.

 

 

 

M3 TechEd – Reporting capabilities

I took the opportunity to leave the hands-on lab and watched Mike Fletcher’s session on Reporting capabilities within Infor M3. He started off showing Homepages, and how to use it to present operational metrics, analyzing current data from M3. The session presented a number of other techniques as well.

F4DC1C6C-3C17-4C94-9622-9FC8E14252E5

An example is to show a monitor, with the count of stopped orders, and then being able to go to the list from the Monitor Widget.

Another example was to show items under development without prices by using search. The query was built by selecting “add to search” from the context menu on the column header. The search query can then be added to a menu in Homepages so that you have a link to the tasks that you work with on a regular basis.

In business context and context applications are also a form of reporting that can provide context information to M3 data, including Birst reports, Infor Document Management documents, as well as H5 Mashup applications as Context Applications.

A great session that give business context to the development that I’ve been working on. It is always nice to see how powerful the different widgets, SDKs and H5 are from a business perspective.

I also got some good feedback from customers and partners which is really what TechEd is all about, learning from each other.

M3 TechEd – Day 2

Today is day 2 at M3 TechEd. We started with Infor OS and Heath on the main stage. Infor OS is great and will give you a lot of value. If you want to learn all about Infor OS don’t miss the coming TechEd in Las Vegas in February.

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Heath started with Infor OS and a quick overview.

CE542FE8-0EE1-4B96-A396-219DB68E5E1D

Infor Document Management is a living repository for collaborating around documents.

Next on stage was Torbjörn on User Experience starting with Homepages the application that is built for role based, highly configurable widgets presenting a process based view, highlighting those items you need to take action on.

94DA5E14-864C-41D2-9475-CF5658E83FF7.jpeg

Then there was a great session on organization change management by Carol Tyler and how we at Infor is transforming the industry and cultivating our culture of innovation.

Yesterday I arrived early, in the dark, and I left, in the dark. That’s just how it is in December in Stockholm. Today I was half an hour later, just in time to catch the sunrise.

 

Beautiful sunrise facing Gröna Lund and Djurgården, on the other side.

Moving to H5 and Infor OS from Smart Office

My last session of the day was  Smart Office compared to H5 and how to move from Smart Office to H5 and Infor OS. I was assisting Magnus as a subject expert. Not that he needed my help.

B06ED645-9BBD-4AC2-98A6-84E59A9AFD75

This session will be held tomorrow as well, so if you missed it, there is another chance.

There are a few tools that will help you make the move. For example moving links and favorites. But please note that not all links will work. H5 will handle mforms:// links, but there might be some links that will not work, for example anything that is accessing the file system or other schemas than mforms and https.

The clients are of course different but the M3 UI Adapter is still the same and both client talk to the MUA server when it runs M3 programs. With H5 comes Infor Ming.le and the complete Infor OS. Below is a comparison between the featureset in H5 and Smart Office.

SmartOfficevsH5

We spent some time on Ming.le Homepages which is the product I’ve been working on lately. It is a great starting point for all types of users and with the M3 widgets you can monitor and take actions and have standard pages for different roles.

The M3 Implementation Accelerator (IA) solutions from July 2018 incorporate a small number of role-based Ming.le homepages designed to complement the preconfigured solutions. Depending on the industry, there are typically six roles containing these templates:

  • General Ledger Controller
  • Accounts Payable Controller
  • Accounts Receivable Controller
  • Customer Services
  • Production Manager
  • Purchase Manager

They are all available for download, fee, in KB 2008101.

M3 TechEd

I’m at M3 TechEd in Stockholm. If you are attending don’t miss checking out the hands-on open lab. There are a lot of experts available to help you and show you what we are working on and how we can help you be successful.

50D4E859-514E-4A66-A44B-D7676036A32B

Ole Rasmussen presenting M3 product strategy.

Great location at Elite Hotel at Nacka stand. I came in early.

 

I’ll be on two tracks, Extensibility and User Experience, see you there 😀.

The Sound of a Silent Install

The conventional way to install Infor Smart Office on client machines is to use Microsoft ClickOnce network deployment to get an isolated, secure, self-updating application that can be installed and run with minimal user interaction.

However, if you want to run Infor Smart Office client in a virtualized desktop environment, the Microsoft ClickOnce deployment is not recommended. Instead, install the Infor Smart Office client using the Windows installer (InforSmartOffice.msi) bundled in the software package.

The Windows installer launch a sequence of user interface screens that lead the user through the installation process and gather necessary information. In this case the user needs to enter the Smart Office server URL and the location of the Smart Office features.

For mass deployment it’s more convenient to have a silent scripted install without user interaction and this is possible if you know the name of the public properties for the Smart Office Windows installer and apply the appropriate MSI Command-Line Options.

The public properties for the Smart Office installation are SERVERURL and FEATURELOCATION as described in the Infor Smart Office Installation Guide [ISOIG].

Here is an example of a silent install using msiexec on the command-line run as administrator.

msiexec.exe /I InforSmartOffice.msi /QN /L*V iso_msi_install.log SERVERURL=httpsUrl_to_isoserver FEATURELOCATION=httpsUrl_to_features 

Explanation of options and parameters:
/I 				Install option
InforSmartOffice.msi 		Set the location path to the InforSmartOffice.msi file
/QN 				No user interface option
/L*V 				Log all information with Verbose output option
iso_msi_install.log 		EXISTING location path to the log file
SERVERURL=https... 		Smart Office server URL
FEATURELOCATION=https...	Smart Office feature URL

If you don’t have sufficient administrative privileges to do the installation for all users on the machine you will get a failed installation error code [1925] in the log file.

Important information!
Read the Infor Smart Office Installation Guide [ISOIG] for ISO feature limitations and the Virtualization & Hardware Support Statement regarding Smart Office client support for virtualized environments.

 

Snooping my Mashup for Missing Data

Sometimes when you’re developing a Mashup it happens that the data you’re expecting to appear in a databound control is not showing up. There’s a small developer tool named Snoop that will help you examine the runtime visual tree of a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) user interface.

Snoop WPF Spy utility

Download

Launch Smart Office and open the Mashup Designer. In this post we use an example from the Help menu named Document found in the Infor Document Management category.

ISOIDMMashupEx

Run the example, save it and search for any Document Type e g CLM_Document. Depending on the available data, it will look something like this in the running Mashup.

ISOIDMMashupExRunning

Now it’s time to launch the Snoop utlitity tool. It has a slim and narrow window. ISOSnoop

Drag the Snoop hair-cross (marked yellow) and drop it on your Mashup window. A new window will open and present the visual tree representation of the user interface in the left-hand panel and the details of the selected UI element in the right-hand panel. Below the details panel there’s a preview panel to render and show the selected UI element (if actived with the power button).

Press down the CTRL- and SHIFT- key simultaneously while you drag the mouse over the Mashup window. The control beneath the mouse will be selected and decorated with a red border and the corresponding element in the Snoop visual tree view will be highlighted and selected. Navigation can also be done directly in the tree-view by selecting UI element nodes.

ISO IDM Snoop

ISOIDMMashupExAttrSelected

Let’s examine the bound data for the document attribute panel. Use the mouse or locate and select the LangAttrList (ListBox) in the visual tree. Scroll down in the Properties list until you find ItemsSource property for the ListBox control.

ISO IDM Snoop ItemsSource

It’s now possible to drill-down into the data collection with a double-click on the value of ItemsSource, in this example [System.Windows.Data.CompositeCollection]. Now you see that the collection contains 1 item: this[0]. You can continue to drill-down with a double-click on the value this[0] to see the details of the item or navigate back up by clicking the up-arrow button (marked yellow).

ISO IDM Snoop Drill-down and up

In this case the ListBox will apply a template for each document attribute found in a collection item. Select the attrTemplate under the ListBoxItem to show its properties. In most template cases the data will be in the DataContext property of the element. Select the Data Context tab for a dedicated view of the property, in this case the DataContext is a piece of XML.
Note that there’s a Binding Errors column in the properties list that will show an error message if the data binding declaration for a UI element property is wrong and the data source can’t be found.

ISO IDM Snoop Data Context

We’ve only scratched the surface of the Snoop tool functionality but it’s the basics needed to investige why your data is not showing up.

New Log Viewer – Part V

Part I – Overview of the Improved UI
Part II – How to Find Your Way
Part III – Getting the Facts and Categories
Part IV – ClickOnce Installation Log

M3 Transaction Time Measurements

When the Smart Office log (debug mode) contains M3 (MForms) time measurements, a tool area will open up beneath the content area with an overview of where the time is spent for the selected time log entry. The purpose of the overview is to put the time values in context and give a better understanding where to look further for perceived performance issues. Note that the chart values don’t always add up exactly due to rounding errors and measurement precision.

Click on the category Timer under the M3 section to focus on the time measurements. Select the first log line and use the up-/down- arrow keyboard keys to scroll through the list and see how the values change in the overview chart.

ISOLogViewerMFormsTimer

Depicted here is the standalone version of the Log Viewer, where Smart Office client dependent functionality have been hidden, therefore a few buttons are missing.

In the Tools context menu (found on any log line) you have export options for the measured times. Selecting an export option extracts all measurements and formats them as comma separated values that can be copied into the Clipboard, exported to Microsoft Excel or opened in the Windows associated text viewer.

Exporting the measurements to Microsoft Excel makes it easy to generate a line chart over the measured times for selected function calls.

ISOLogViewerExcelM3

How do I turn on the M3 time measurement on the server side?

In the Smart Office client you control the time measurement by launching:

mforms://timer/on
mforms://timer/off

The Smart Office log level setting must also be set to Debug.

New Log Viewer – Part IV

Part I – Overview of the Improved UI
Part II – How to Find Your Way
Part III – Getting the Facts and Categories
Part V – M3 Transaction Time Measurements

Smart Office ClickOnce Installation Log

Smart Office is using Microsoft ClickOnce Technology to achieve a self-updating client that can be installed and launched with minimal user interaction from a central location. Once in a while it can happen that the ClickOnce installation fails and the brief details provided in the error dialog can be hard to interpret. In verbose log mode you can follow the installation step-by-step.

In ISO 10.2.1.0.223 HF23 and beyond the Log Viewer can enable the verbose Microsoft ClickOnce log from the tool menu. The ClickOnce log file setting is active for the current Windows user on the local machine until deactivated.
The verbose log can be activated manually, from another tool or other Smart Office installation by setting Windows Registry values.

ClickOnce Log Tool Options

ISOLogViewerClickOnceToolMenu

Enable Log

Toggle the activation of the verbose ClickOnce log with the Enable Log menu item. A log will be created at the next launch of Smart Office or by any other application using ClickOnce technology. If ClickOnce log is deactivated with an Enable Log uncheck and the activation was not made by this tool, a warning will be presented to inform and verify the deactivation. The ClickOnce.log file is stored in the temporary path defined in the Windows environment.

Copy Log to Clipboard

If a ClickOnce.log file exists, the log content is copied into the Windows Clipboard.

Open Log in External Viewer

If a ClickOnce.log file exists, the log is opened in the Windows associated text viewer.

Open Log File Location

If a ClickOnce.log file exists, the folder location will open in Windows File Explorer.

Analyze ClickOnce Log

Runs an analysis of the current ClickOnce log and displays a summary overview  highlighting the sessions containing errors.

ISOLogViewerClickOnceToolMenu

The Clipboard button copies the selected session to the Windows Clipboard and the View External button opens the selected session in the Windows associated text viewer.

Create Verbose Mode Setup File

As a Smart Office administrator you have the option to generate a file that modify the Windows Registry to enable/disable the ClickOnce verbose log when targeting another Windows client where the Smart Office installation fails. Windows security applies to the launch of registry files.

Enable ClickOnce Log

Select Enable ClickOnce Log to create the EnableClickOnceVerboseLog.reg file. After the file has been created the Windows File Explorer will open to its location. Verify that the named log file location matches the target client, otherwise change it. The default location is the temporary folder of the Windows environment.

Disable ClickOnce Log

Select Enable ClickOnce Log to create the DisableClickOnceVerboseLog.reg file. After the file has been created the Windows File Explorer will open to its location.

Open a Log from Another Computer

If you have a log file sent to you or copied from another machine, set the Enable Log toggle menu as checked and click on the menu Open Log File Location to get a Windows File Explorer showing the target folder. Ensure that the log file is named ClickOnce.log  and copy it to the target folder. Now you can select Analyze ClickOnce Log and see the overview in the tool view.

 

Moving Smart Office Favorites into H5

If you’re moving from the Smart Office client to the H5 client for M3, there are two utility tools that will help you to export and transform the compatible favorites of the Smart Office users. You can find the tools in the latest Smart Office delivery package (v10.2.1.0) under the Additional Files Folder; MangoAdminTool.zip and ISOtoH5FavoritesExportTool.zip. Get the zip archives and extract the tools.

For older Smart Office versions read the chapter Importing User Files in Smart Office 10.2 using the MangoAdminTool in the Infor Smart Office Administration Guide (ISOAG_10.2.1 page 254).

Export the User Favorites from Smart Office

Launch the MangoAdminTool.exe, select and login to the Smart Office server.

MangoAdminTool

  • Select the Export tab in the Mango Admin Tool
  • Check the Roaming files checkbox and type Favorites.lfv as filter in the field
  • Press the Export button to create the MangoData.zip file
  • Extract the MangoData.zip archive into a temporary folder

Transform the Favorites and Prepare for H5 Import

Launch the FavoritesMigrationTool.exe, browse and select the UserFiles in the temporary folder with the extracted content from MangoData.zip. The favorites for the selected users will be filtered, excluding all links but the ones with http, https and mforms as scheme.

ISOFavoritesExportH5

  • Select the users to be exported among the ones listed
  • Press the Export button to create the ISOtoH5FavoritesExport.zip

Windows File Explorer will open and show the location of the created ISOtoH5FavoritesExport.zip. In the same folder there is a transformation report named ISOtoH5FavoritesExportReport.txt as a receipt of what has been done during the operation.

Import the Favorites into H5

Launch the H5 client and select Administration Tools and Import of Favorites.

H5ImportFavorites

  • Press the Upload button and select the ISOtoH5FavoritesExport.zip file
  • Press the Import button and then restart the server

Done!

Moving Smart Office Links into H5

In case you’re thinking about moving from the Smart Office rich client to the browser based H5 client there’s a small tool that will help you bring along H5 applicable Smart Office Links v10.1.0 and onward. The tool is a local Smart Office application to be installed and run by a Smart Office administrator. It will create a zip file intended to be imported with the H5 administration tool.

You can find the tool named INFOR.ISOH5LETool.lawsonapp in the Smart Office delivery package under the Additional Files folder.

Preparing to do the export of the Smart Office links

H5 links are only global unlike Smart Office that also support private user links, so ensure that all users share the links to be part of the export before performing the operation. The H5 links also requires a specific source to be defined e g MMS001/MMS001BC. The links with ./. as source will be excluded from export.

Install the tool Smart Office

Launch Smart Office and select My Local Applications menu item on the Smart Office Canvas. Press the Install button, navigate and select the INFOR.ISOH5LETool.lawsonapp in the file browser dialog. Restart the Smart Office client.
Note that it’s also here you uninstall the tool when the export is finished.

ISOInstallLocalApp

Perform the export of the H5 compatible links

Launch Smart Office and launch any M3 transaction e g MMS001 to ensure everything is running and to get the MUA version number. Launch the tool by pressing CTRL+R on the keyboard and type in the focused Start field:

isoh5://linkexport

ISOLinkExport2H5

The tool will appear and show the links compatible with H5. Now you select the links to convert and export. Finish by pressing the Export button and select a location to store the created zip file. Close the tool and Smart Office.

Import the zip file with links into H5

Launch the H5 client and select Administration Tools and Import of Document Links. Press Upload and select the zip file containing the links. Press Import and then restart the server. Done!

H5ImportLinks

New Log Viewer – Part II

Part I – Overview of the Improved UI
Part III – Getting the Facts and Categories
Part IV – ClickOnce Installation Log
Part V – M3 Transaction Time Measurements

How can I become more efficient working with the new Log Viewer?

Assume that you encounter an issue running Smart Office or have a log file sent to you. To view the content of the log file you can open it in any text reader and perform a free-text search, but even if you know what to look for it’s time consuming.

Open the improved Smart Office log viewer instead and it will show the log entries related to the current session of the running Smart Office. In the session selector you will see when you started this Smart Office session, number of issues found and the time for the latest log entry. The content in the viewer is only refreshed when you launch the viewer, press the Current button or import a previously saved log file.

ISOLogViewerStart

In the right side-panel, the Smart Office version and Windows related versions are extracted and presented among other interesting facts.

Start the investigation by expanding the left side-panel and under the General header, click and go through in order; Fatal, Errors, Exceptions and Warnings to make a quick examination and see if there are any relevant log entries in each category.

If you encounter a log entry of interest, select it, open the context menu and click the View Selection in Session Context. The full session will now be visible and you can see what has occurred before and after the selected log entry.

Highlight and mark lines in the log

To keep track of log entries you can mark lines with a color or do a strikeout to make them stand out when scrolling through the content. Select the lines to mark and use the context Mark menu to perform the action. To retrieve the marked lines click on the categories under Markers in the left side-panel. The markers will disappear when the log viewer is closed and restarted.

Errors and exception log entries can automatically be marked in the left margin with a colored line, if the Enable Color Markers option is set in the context menu.

ISOLogViewerMarkers

Yesterday I encountered an issue that’s no longer in the current log

The Smart Office log file is renewed every calendar day and the previous one is renamed with the date added as a suffix on the filename. The log files from the last week are stored beside the current log in the client data area.

Open a previous log file by pressing the Import button while holding down the SHIFT- or CTRL- key to add the necessary filter option and set the target directory to the client data area. In the dialog that appears you select the Old Log Files filter and the existing logs from the last week appears.

ISOLogViewerOpenOldLogFile

Where do I Find the S3 Excel Add-in log file?

The S3 Excel add-in has a separate log file that is also located in the client data area. Perform the same operation as when looking for older log files but look for files whose name starts with S3.ExcelAddin.log.

I need help to resolve the issue

There are a couple of ways for you to share the log content with support or another helpful person.

ISOLogViewerButtons

Copy Image

Takes a snapshot of the Log Viewer window and put it in the Clipboard. This is intended for documentation and communication, but not useful to send in a support request.

Copy Session

Copy the full log of the selected session into the Windows Clipboard.

View External

Open the log file in the Windows associated text viewer.

Mail Support Zip

Create a new mail in Microsoft Outlook with Smart Office support related files zipped in an attachment.

Mail Log

Create a new mail in Microsoft Outlook with the full log file as an attachment.

I’m the recipient of a log file

If you received a help request or a support ticket with a log file attached, you can view it in the Log Viewer to make a quick review of the content and get the basic facts extracted about versions and runtime environment. You can open the log from the Windows Clipboard or the filesystem. Press the Current button to reload the active Smart Office log file.

ISOLogViewerButtons2

Current

Reload and show the current Smart Office log file.

Paste

Show the log file found in the Windows Clipboard.

Import

Open a log file stored in the file system. Press SHIFT- or CTRL- when the button is pressed to set the client data area as initial directory.

 

Canvas Theme Emulator

Smart Office enables the user to adjust the overall appearance of its canvas and windows in terms of theme color, wallpaper and color saturation from a pre-defined set of options.
The boundaries for what the user is allowed to adjust is set by the Smart Office administrator in the system profile, application- and user- settings. The final appearance is the combined result of the settings and internal rules.

Once in a while  it happens that the appearance is not matching the expectation after an upgrade or settings change. It can be difficult to pin-point and determine what is causing the new appearance.

The Theme Emulator tool will assisst you to sort things out. It will hook into the theme service and regard it as a black box, apply your settings and visualize the result unaware of the internal rules.

The Theme Emulator is launched with the Smart Office link internal://themeulator or via the improved Log Viewer content-area context-menu under Tools.

themeulator

When the Theme Emulator tool is launched it will show the current applied Smart Office settings in the Preview Settings- and Preview- area. The current values in the system profile, application- and user- settings are listed under Theme Setting Sources.

Changing the Preview Settings is harmless and will only affect the look of the Preview area. Click on the ‘Reset’ button to return to the current settings. The padlock icon next to each user setting show if the setting can be changed by the user or has been locked by the administrator.

A click on a preview icon (document/looking-glass) beside the theme source header will apply the current settings for that source on the Preview.

The Settings… and Profile… button will launch the corresponding administration tool if the current user is a Smart Office administrator.

The Clipboard button captures a snapshot image of the tool window and puts it in the Windows Clipboard. It can be useful for documentation and communication purposes.

The User Theme Disabled checkbox is always read-only in the ‘Preview Settings’ area. It’s not intended to be changed, just show the current property value.

Elaborate with the preview values and compare with the setting sources and you will soon figure out the source and what setting to change to get the wanted appearance.

Smart Office User Id is not always the same as User Name – information to SDK developers

If you have implemented a feature or SDK application that retrieves the user id from the user context, you should ensure that you use:

 ApplicationServices.UserContext.UserId

and NOT the property

ApplicationServices.UserContext.UserName

The UserId and UserName property returned the same value in many system configurations until a few years ago when additional security configuration options were introduced. To be on the safe side and be future proof, the UserName property should be used for display purposes in the user interface and the UserId property used for REST calls and business functions.

New Log Viewer – Part I

Part II – How to Find Your Way
Part III – Getting the Facts and Categories
Part IV – ClickOnce Installation Log
Part V – M3 Transaction Time Measurements

Overview of the Improved UI

An improved user interface for Smart Office Log Viewer was introduced in 10.2.1.0.189 (HF18) to make it easier and more efficient to resolve issues and find relevant information. The benefits and features of the improved user interface will be covered in a series of blog posts.

The main new features are:

  • Smart Office log session selector
  • Extraction of relevant facts from the log
  • User customizable content categories
  • Improved sharing of log content

ISOLogViewerAreas

The improved user interface consists of:

  1. Session Selector where you choose whether to see the entire log, a specific session or a time span. By default the latest session is selected.
  2. Category selector where you choose the category related log entries.
  3. Content area where you see the log entries based on the current session- or category- selection.
  4. Extracted facts that is often relevant for support issues. The area can be expanded or collapsed.

At the bottom you have the quick access buttons to import- and share- the log file.

On the very first launch after installation the (2) Category- and (4) Facts- areas will be collapsed. You can expand/collapse the areas by dragging the window splitters or click the Verbose toggle button.

Where do I find the Log Viewer?

• Open the Smart Office About dialog and click on the link.
• Open the Administration Tools folder in the Navigator Widget and launch Log Viewer.
• Launch the Smart Office link internal://log using a Canvas Shortcut or using the Canvas Start field (CTRL+R).
• As a Standalone Windows Application found in LogViewer.zip under Additional Files in the Smart Office installation package.

What if I prefer the original user interface?

You can switch to the original user interface by clicking on the Classic button, create a Canvas Shortcut or Navigator Widget Favorites link with the URL internal://log/classic.

What’s in it for me as a SDK Developer?

You can create one or more categories specific for your feature and define a launch link that will open the Log Viewer with your category selected. How to do this will be covered in an upcoming blog post.

Ming.le Homepages

It’s been quite some time since I published on this Blog. I’ll see if I can get the Smart Office Developers to write some more posts. Don’t forget to check out the Infor Technology blog where you can find Lawson Smart Office related posts.

There are a few new features in Smart Office related to the Ming.le feature and the Ming.le integration.

I currently work on Ming.le Homepages so there is not that much time to write posts but we all help out trying to answer your comments and questions. If you like to know more about Homepages, please read Infor Homepages: Your hub across Infor OS.

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