Generating Activity Guide URLs

Creating Activity Guide navigation is challenging for two reasons:

1. Simple Fluid Activity Guides all use the same component. This means we can't use a simple content reference. To use security to show or hide an Activity Guide content reference, we must use the URL type of PeopleSoft Generic URL. We must type a PeopleSoft URL fragment rather than leverage the traditional Content Reference fields (menu, component, market).
2. Activity Guides with Runtime Context require dynamically generated URLs. These Activity Guides cannot leverage simple content references.

My PeopleCode for launching Activity Guides with Runtime Context usually starts with a GenerateComponentPortalURL to generate the base Activity Guide framework URL and then a bit of URL concatenation to assemble the Runtime context attributes. Here is an App Class I put together to make this easier.

Here is how you would use it:

import JSM_URL_UTIL:ActivityGuideURL;   
   
Local JSM_URL_UTIL:ActivityGuideURL &urlBuilder = create JSM_URL_UTIL:ActivityGuideURL("JSM_AWE_AG");
Local string &url;

&urlBuilder.addContextItem(Field.EOAWPRCS_ID, "FacilityAccessRequest");
&urlBuilder.addContextItem(Field.DESCR, "Facility Access Request");

&url = &urlBuilder.generateFluidURL();

The addContextItem method takes a key/value pair, both of which are strings (they will become part of the URL string). Since context IDs (keys) are fields, then using Field.FIELDNAME syntax is preferred so Edit | Find Definition References will locate your field usage.

We added one more convenience method: generateGenericPeopleSoftFluidURL(). Use this method to help you craft a PeopleSoft Generic URL to a static Activity Guide. This is a one-time-use method you would call at design time to create that static URL fragment required by a Content Reference. If you have a simple, static Activity Guide with no context, then you may want to create a Content Reference. However, typing all of the parameters correctly can be a challenge. Use this helper method to generate the full Generic PeopleSoft URL for you. We invoke this method from a design-time App Engine, but you may want to create a page for it instead.

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