The curious case of the MIA work orders?

Working in IT, we deal with strange issues all the time. However, every once in a while, something would come up that leaves us scratching our heads for days. One such issue happened to us a few years back. It came back to me recently and this time, I thought to myself I should note it down.

The issue was first reported to us when users raised a ticket about missing work orders in TechnologyOne, the Finance Management System used by our client. Without work orders created in TechOne, the users won't be able to report actual labor time or other costs. Thus, this is considered a high priority issue.

Implement "Sleep" or "Wait" in WebMethods flow

I needed to send an external system a file import request. The external system would take some time to process the file before the import result can be queried. Making a status query immediately after the import request would always return an "import process is still running". It's best to wait for a few seconds before making the first attempt to query the import status.

It took quite a bit of time to look up the web for a "wait" or "sleep" function. Some posts suggested using Java flow, some recommended complex processes or involved an external library.

The easiest method I finally settled with is to use Repeat as follows:

Essentially, the flow would repeat 1 time in 5 seconds before getting to the next step (Main Mapping). The repeat loop does nothing other than just writing a line in the server log to make troubleshooting a bit easier.

The fun (and pain) of Kronos Integration

One of our clients undertook a massive IT transformation program which involved switching to a new financial management system, upgrading and rebuilding a plethora of interfaces among several systems, both internal and external to the business. Kronos was chosen to replace an old timesheet software and there was the need to integrate it with other systems such as Maximo and TechnologyOne. WebMethods was used as the integration tool for this IT ecosystem. This is my first experience with Kronos. The project took almost two years to finish. As always, when dealing with something new, I had quite a bit of fun (and pain) during this project. As it is approaching the final stage now, I think I should write down what I’ve learnt. Hopefully, it will be useful for people out there who’re doing a similar task.

REST API: Kronos provides a pretty good reference source for the REST API at this Link. REST API theoretically offers the advantage of supporting real-time integration and enables seamless workflow. However, we don’t have such a requirement in this project. On the other hand, this has two major limitations.

WebMethods: Evaluate String IN and CONTAINS operator

In WebMethods, the most basic way to write a string “IN” operator is to use Branch as follows:

Another way to reduce the number of lines of code is by combining the conditions using “OR”:

Setting up alarms for integration

 When writing a piece of software, we are in total control of the quality of the product. With integration, many elements are not under our control. Network and firewall are usually managed by IT. With external systems, we usually don’t know how they work, or many times, not given access. Yet, any changes to these elements can cause our interfaces to fail.

For synchronous interfaces, the user would receive instant feedback after each action is taken (e.g. Maximo - GIS integration), thus, we don’t usually need to setup alarms. For asynchronous interfaces, which usually run in the background, and don’t give instant feedback, when failure occurs, it usually goes unnoticed. In many cases, we only find out about failures after it has caused some major damage.

A good interface must provide adequate mechanism to handle failures, and in the case of async integration, proper alarms and reports should be setup so that failures are captured and handled proactively by IT and application administrators.

String Concatenation in WebMethods

Manipulating string is probably the most frequent operation we need to do when transforming data. Thus, I’d like to talk a bit about string concatenation in WebMethods. The most basic way to add two strings is to use the pub.string.concat service in the WmPublic package as shown below:

Image 01. pub.string.concat service

Implement If-Then-Else Logic in WebMethods

Conditional Logic is the most important building block of any software development tool. WebMethods is not a programming language, but since we use it to build integration interface, which is also software, it means we are also programming with it. Writing a simple “If-Then-Else” condition in WebMethod is way too verbose to me though. The official tutorial on SoftwareAG teaches us to implement an if-then-else logic using the Branch, Sequence, and Map nodes as depicted in the sample below: