Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Enhancing the Oracle eBusiness Suite 11i/12 Homepage Menu via Firefox, Greasemonkey, XPath, Javascript & DOM: aka Foxiness Menus

Update: 12-Nov-08 Extended script for Release 12

The Background

One of the most user-unfriendly and neglected aspects of the eBusiness Suite in my opinion is the homepage. No sooner than you arrive there you really just wanna get out, and get out fast! The majority of people I know, including myself, do one of the following:

  • Save one function from each of your primary responsibilities as a "Favorite" and thereafter only use the "Favorites" area of the homepage
  • After choosing the responsibility just blinding pick the first "Forms" based menu entry so that you get into the forms navigator menu. At least for any responsibility that still has a majority of forms.

One of the aspects that I've desired for a while is a tree based Responsibility menu structure. Now Oracle does provide this, but when I last checked, admitedly a few years ago, it required Oracle Portal integration. As a bit of a refresher, there is a profile option called "Self Service Personal Home Page mode" which used to be able to be set to "Personal Home Page" and then clicking on the responsibility went straight into forms for a Forms based application.

But from 11.5.10, "Self Service Personal Home Page mode" must be set to "Framework Only" and hence you now have an extra couple of mouse clicks to get to where you want to go. At least EBS Release 11i/12 has show/hide responsibilities.

Where is all this going you ask? Well, for a bit of late night entertainment ... sad I know ;-) plus a bit of experimentation, considering Firefox's 4th Birthday was just a couple of days ago, and since I'm now comfortable using Firefox with EBS, I've created a Greasemonkey script to give a smidgen of intelligence to the Framework homepage Responsibility menu.

Introducing the Virtuate Oracle EBS Homepage Menu enhancement Greasemonkey Script!

So, what does this do? Well it turns this:

Into this:

With a quick video here ... apologies if its a bit big:

How do I install it?

Assuming you have Firefox and Greasemonkey, just click on this UserScripts.org link and then click the install button! If you have any hassles, you're more than welcome to fix the code on UserScripts.org (or let me know)! Open Source rocks!

Requirements

References

Related Posts

 

13 comments:

Larry Baugh said...

This is great. Thanks for posting Gareth. I'm dealing with a variety of 11i/R12 instances with different JREs (& one w/Jinitiator still) and I've still be using IE to handle the different JREs (since Firefox doesn't support the dynamic JRE versioning that IE does). But due to this menu enhancement you developed, I decided its worth setting up different Firefox profiles for each JRE version so I can use this functionality.

Gareth said...

Hi Larry,

Keen to hear how it goes. Have just updated the code to allow the same for Release 12. All versions at http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/36822

PS. I think its probably a good idea to edit the "Include" urls to put your specific domain name or similar - so Firefox/Greasemonkey don't have to parse to much.

Regards,
Gareth

fhasweh said...

interesting gareth thanks for the efforts so this is only from the client site only. plz once you have it for IE could you please post again.
fadi

Gareth said...

Hi Fadi,

Thanks for the comments. Absolutely 100% client side - no "modifications". Will let u know if I get IE sorted, if you beat me to it just shout ;-)

Regards,
Gareth

Prasad said...

This is Great !! I installed Greasemonkey and also installed the script into firefox (3.0.3).. When i access my oracle 11i Application, i'm still not able to see the effect( I cannot see the Collapse All and Expand All links).

Also i get a window with Set R11i Message and i just see the normal homepage.

Am i missing some thing here.

Thanks,
Prasad

Gareth said...

Hi Prasad,

I've commented the alert 11i/12. Haven't tested this on Firefox 3 (as I don't think Apps is certified on Firefox 3 yet). But have FF3 here on another machine so will test.

Regards,
Gareth

Nitin Jain said...

Hi Gareth,

I am a regular follower of your blog, infact i put a link to your blog on my blog :)- This utility is simply great, works as shown. I love it.
One thing you said on your blog "..At least EBS Release 12 has show/hide responsibilities...", even R11i has the capabilities to show/hide responsibilities [Use Edit Navigator button on top]. I use it all time.

Once again thanks for this lovely utility.

Cheers,
Nitin
jainn.blogspot.com

Gareth said...

Hi Nitin,

Good to hear you like it! Thanks for the pointer on show/hide - have updated post.

Regards,
Gareth

Gareth said...

Hi Prasad,

I tested successfully on Firefox 3.0.3 on Vista SP1 on 11i based environment, but please note FF3 isn't yet certified.

If you are still having issues, please contact me with your versions (EBS, Windows, Browser) and if possible the HTML source of your homepage where you have selected a responsibility. It may be there are different DOMs for different EBS versions.

Regards,
Gareth

Prasad said...

Hi Gareth,

It is working now.. Thanks for your help !

Unknown said...

Hi
YOur bolg is very nice. I have really learnt a lot from this blog thanks

Unknown said...

Hi
YOur bolg is very nice. I have really learnt a lot from this blog thanks

Unknown said...

Hi, We are in R12 and we are facing out of memory error for huge volume data in XML. Sometimes for small volume as well. Is there any permanent solution for this?

Thanks,
Raji