WorkItem List View

Used to view information about collections of work items in the repository and to perform operations on multiple work items at a time.

This view handler gathers information about:

• all work items assigned to a selected user

• users whose work items can be viewed

• users to whom the work items can be forwarded

The view is used in the Approvals page of the Identity Manager Administrator Interface. The default form used with this view is named Work Item List.

The following table lists the top-level WorkItem List view attributes.

authType

Specifies access to work items by type. For example, there is a built-in authorization type called EndUserRule. All end-users implicitly get access to all rules tagged with the EndUserRule authorization type.

userId

Specifies the name of the Identity Manager user whose work items are contained in the workItem list. Initially, this value is the name of the current session user. The value can be null to indicate that the work items for all controlled users with approver rights should be displayed. This is always the Identity Manager user name, never a display name.

The form must not be modify this value. To change users, set the user attribute.

user

Specifies the display name of the Identity Manager user whose work items are listed. This value is the same as userId if display names are not used. The form can modify this value, which causes the system to recalculate the work item list during refresh. A null value indicates that all work items are being displayed.

self

Set to true if the userId is the same as the current session user.

forwardedUser

When set, indicates that the user named by userId has elected to have work items forwarded to another user. The other user is identified by its display name.

users

Lists the display names of Identity Manager users that the current user controls and which have work item capabilities. This value is typically used to build an user select box. If a custom form wants to compute the user list in a different way, you can specify the view option CustomUserLists as either a view option or form property.

userIds

Typically null. If you are configured to use alternate display names, then the users list contains display names, and this list contains the true repository names.

forwardingUsers

Lists the display names of Identity Manager users to which the current user can forward work items. This value depends on the value of the ForwardingApproverStyle attribute, which defaults to peers.

itemType

When set, the work items in the list will be filtered to contain only those whose item type matches this value. This gives the WorkItemList view the ability to filter the item list based on the work item type.

forwardingUserIds

Typically null. If you are configured to use alternate display names, then the forwardingUsers list will have display names, and this list will have the true repository names.

workItems

Lists the objects that contain information about the work items for the selected user(s). The object names are the repository IDs of the work items.

workItems[].owner

Specifies the display name of the owner. Set only if user is null and all work items are displayed.

workItems[].request

Supplies a brief description of the object being requested. This value is computed by the WorkItemRequest expression of the manual action in the workflow process.

workItems[].requester

Identifies the display name of the user that made the request.

workItems[].description

Provides a more detailed description of the work item. The value is computed by the WorkItemDescription expression of the manual action in the workflow process. The description is typically displayed in tables that summarize the work items for a user, and is often displayed in a work item form.

workItems[].selected

Individual item selection flag. An alternative to selectedWorkItems.

selectedWorkItems

Lists the work item IDs that represent the items to be processed by the next action. An alternative to setting the selected attribute inside the work item object, which is easier for SortingTable components. If both this attribute and individual select flags are set, the value of this attribute takes precedence.

forwardTo

Identifies the name of an Identity Manager user to which all selected work items will be forwarded when the action attribute is set to Forward.

forwardToNow

Similar to forwardTo, but is also an action attribute. It copies its value to forwardTo, set action=Forward and process the refresh as if forwardTo and action were set independently. Use this attribute if you want to have the form process the forwarding immediately after a user is selected from a form component. If you would rather have forwarding controlled with a button, then have the form component set the forwardTo attribute and have the button post an action value of Forward.

action

(Boolean) When non-null, initiates an operation on the selected work items.

Valid values include:

• approve

• reject

• forward

• refresh

If the NoConfirm option is set, the action is processed immediately. Otherwise, Identity Manager waits for the confirm attribute to be set to true. The form is expected to define its own confirmation page rendering.

confirm

(Boolean) Indicates that the operation specified in the action attribute can be performed.

Using the variables Attribute

When editing an individual work item, the form can set work item variables, such as comments, to pass additional information about the approval or rejection into the workflow process for auditing.

You can also set arbitrary work item variables when performing actions in the WorkItemList view. The value of the attribute variables can be set to an object whose attributes will be copied into the work item when it is approved or rejected. For example, if the variables object contains an attribute named comments, the same comments will be saved with every selected work item.

<Form name=’variables.comments’>
   <Default>
<concat>
       <s>Approval performed on </s>
<invoke class=’com.waveset.util.Util’ name=’dateToString’>
         <new class=’java.util.Date’/>
         </invoke>
     </concat>
   </Default>
</Form>

Although in practice the work item form requires additional fields for buttons such as Approve and Reject, you may not want everything displayed by Default User Form displayed in the work item form. Typically, you can factor out the fields in the user form into a form library that can be referenced by both the user forms and the work item forms.

View Options

You can specify the following options when the view is created or refreshed to control the behavior of the WorkItemList viewer.

userId

Identifies the name of the initial user whose work items are to be displayed. Can be used to override the default, which is the current session user.

CustomUserLists

When set to true, indicates the form will generate both the users and forwardingUsers lists in a custom way and that the view handler should not generate them. Generating these lists can be time-consuming if there are many approvers in the system. If the form does not intend to use the default users and forwardingUsers lists, enable this option.

ForwardingApproverStyle

Specifies the types of administrators whose names will be available in the Forward to list. The value of this attribute defaults to peers. Can be set to one of these values:

You can set this and other view options as form properties:

<Form...>
   <Properties>
      <Property name=’ForwardingApproverStyle" value=’peers’/>
   </Properties>
 ...
</Form>

NoUserListCache

When true, indicates that the view handler should not cache the users and forwardingUsers lists but instead recalculate them every time the form is refreshed. Since calculating the user lists can be expensive, it is generally preferred to cache them and refresh only when explicitly instructed by setting the action attribute to Refresh.

UserDisplayName

Can be set to the name of an extended user attribute whose value is to be used instead of the repository name in the user lists. This can also be specified in the UserUIConfig object, but it may be more convenient to set in the form.

NoUserDisplayName

When true, indicates that display names should not be used even if one is specified in the UserUIConfig object. You can set this option in a form to selectively override the UserUIConfig setting.

NoConfirm

When true, indicates that the action specified with the action attribute should be executed immediately without confirmation.

Setting View Options in Forms

View options can be conveniently set in some forms. The following procedure uses the WorkItem List view as an example.

To Set View Options in a Form

1. Copy the form into the Identity Manager IDE or the XML editor of choice.

2. Change the form name.

3. Register it in the System Configuration object under the form.workItemList attribute.

   In the custom form, you can then specify view options as properties of the form as indicated in the following example.

Example

<Form>
 <Properties>
 <Property name=’CustomUserLists’ value=’true’/>
</Properties>
 ...
</Form>