Wednesday, December 01, 2021

Campus Solutions: Which Navigation Collection?

When Campus Solutions built their business process-based navigation, they did something interesting: they wrapped Navigation Collections in the Master/Detail Framework. Rather than hard-code a list of links (like the original HCM Personal Details), Campus Solutions chose Navigation Collections. The flexibility is incredible. This design decision allows you and I to add new links to Campus business processes without modifying delivered code (unlike the original HCM solution).

Personal Details Master/Detail component

That's fantastic! But here is the problem: which navigation collection should you update? Some of them are easy to find because they have the same label as the tile itself. But others don't. Fortunately, the navigation collection name is in the URL:

&scname=CS_SSR_ACADEMIC_RECORDS_FL

Wait... did I say the Navigation Collection name? I apologize. There seems to be some confusion about the "name." When creating a Navigation Collection, the Navigation Collection tool asks for a name. The "name" we supply is actually a label. PeopleSoft dynamically generates the name from our label. Since a Navigation Collection is a Portal Registry folder, the real "name" is the CREF Folder ID. So in the example listed above, the CREF ID is CS_SSR_ACADEMIC_RECORDS_FL, but we don't know the label. To maintain the Navigation Collection, we must know the Content Reference's label. The good news is we can find the label with a simple query. The SQL to find the label for the example above would be:

SELECT PORTAL_LABEL
  FROM PSPRSMDEFN
 WHERE PORTAL_PRNTOBJNAME = 'CO_NAVIGATION_COLLECTIONS'
   AND PORTAL_NAME = 'EMPLOYEE'
   AND PORTAL_OBJNAME = 'CS_SSR_ACADEMIC_RECORDS_FL'

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