7 Customizing Field Behavior and Functionality

This chapter describes how to customize the behavior of the various fields that appear within your Oracle Identity Manager Administrative and User Console. This includes the ability to:

Edit the system fields that appear on the Administrative and User Console pages.
Add new user-defined fields.
Control who has the ability to edit the values in various fields.

Modifying the FormMetaData.xml File

The FormMetaData.xml file is used to control the behavior and look and feel of the Administrative and User Console look.

It consists of sections where you can define attributes, and use them in other sections to determine the look and behavior of Web pages. To define a new value property for this file, you must define the attribute, and then you must reference it for a page. You can also edit how the default fields behave (for example, make them editable or required).

The field behavior that you can customize is:

Whether the field is viewable
Whether the field is editable

Whether the field is required

Note:

In addition, for the fields contained on the Administrative and User Console pages, the labels applied to these fields are set using the FormMetaData.xml file. For all other fields, any labels applied to the fields in the Administrative and User Console are set using xlWebAdmin.properties file.

For all entries in the FormMetaData.xml file, the attributes section defines the fields that are included in the pages. The attribute references sections define the fields that appear on a particular page or group of pages.

This section contains the following topics:

Defining a New Field
Files to Modify
Setting Field Configuration

Defining a New Field

To define a new field for the Administrative and User console:

Create the field definition using the Java Client. Note this information for use in editing the FormMetaData.xml file.
Define the attribute in the FormMetaData.xml file.

To define the attribute, add an entry for it (this is the same information you entered when you used the Java Client to create a field definition) where you specify the following information:
```
<Attribute name="identifier" label="field_label" displayComponentType="datatype"            map="identifier" />
```
where
- Attribute name is the identifier used to specify this field. This is the name used to specify this field on a page.
- label is the word displayed next to the field in the Administrative and User Console (what the user sees).
- displayComponentType is the data type of the field displayed in the Administrative and User Console.
- map is the database column name, specified when you created the field definition using the Java Client. User defined fields are prefixed with USR_UDF_, so if you typed in SSN in the Java Client, this value is USR_UDF_SSN.
  
  For example:
```
<Attribute name="social" label="SSN" displayComponentType="TextField"                map="USR_UDF_SSN" />
```

Reference the attribute in the FormMetaData.xml file in the section for the page on which you want the field to appear. The following table lists the forms.

FormMetaData.xml File Sections
`<!-- User Self Registration and User Profile Modification section -->`
User self-registration form	`<Form name="SelfRegistrationUserForm">`
Self-registration Approval form	`<Form name="SelfRegistrationApprovalForm">`
User profile modification form	`<Form name="ProfileModificationUserForm">`
User profile modification Approval form	`<Form name="ProfileModificationApprovalForm">`
`<!-- User Management section -->`
User form	`<Form name="3">`
Group form	`<Form name="6">`
`<!-- Organization Management section -->`
Organization form	`<Form name="2">`
`<!-- Resource Management section -->`
Resource form	`<Form name="5">`

The pages on which you can customize field behavior are listed here:

Page	How it is accessed
User Detail	Using the Manage link under Users, then execute a query and select a particular user account.
Create User	Using the Create link under Users.
User Self Registration	Using the Create Request link under Self-Registration.
Modify Account Profile	Using the Account Options link. Then click Modify Account Profile.
Edit User	Using the Manage link under Users, then execute a query and select a particular user account. Then, click the Edit button at the bottom of the User Detail page.
Create User Request	Using the Track link under Requests, then execute a query and select a particular request (of type Self-Registration). Expand the User Information branch and click Provide User Information.
Organization Detail	Using the Manage link under Organizations, then execute a query and select a particular organization.
Create Organization	Using the Create link under Organizations.
Group Detail	Using the Manage link under User Groups, then execute a query and select a particular user group.
Create User Group	Using the Create link under User Groups.
Resource Detail	Using the Manage link under Resource Management, then execute a query and select a particular resource.

For each of these pages, Oracle Identity Manager comes preconfigured with certain system fields. In addition, you can define user defined fields to be displayed on these forms as well. The behavior of either of these types of fields can be customized for the pages listed here. However, the procedure for customizing their behavior differs depending on whether the field is a system-defined field or user-defined field.

Note:

All User-defined fields must first be defined using the User Defined Field Definition form of the Oracle Identity Manager Java Client. For instructions on how to define a user-defined field, refer to the Oracle Identity Manager Design Console Guide.

Once you have created the user-defined field within the Oracle Identity Manager Java Client you then also add it to the list of attributes in <!-- User Self Registration and User Profile Modification section -- > section (but not the <! --User Management -- >) of the FormMetaData.xml file.

Ensure that your attribute entry provides values for each of the following parameters:

Name (must be same as column name for this field in the Java Client)
Label (does not need to conform to label specified for this field in the Java Client)
DisplayComponentType (must be same as the value of Field Type for this field in the Java Client)
DataLength (must be same as the value of Length for this field in the Java Client)
Map (must be same as column name for this field in the Java Client)

Make the entry for the user-defined field consistent with the definition of the field in the Oracle Identity Manager Java Client.

Files to Modify

FormMetaData.xml

Setting Field Configuration

The following sections describe how you can configure fields in various pages.

For Fields in the User Detail, Create User, and Edit User Pages

The list of fields that are available for use within your:

Create User
User Detail
Edit User

Pages are controlled by the attribute definition within the <!-- User Management section -- > of the FormMetaData.xml file. The fields that are displayed on each of these pages are controlled using the attribute references in the <!--Fields that will be displayed on the Users form section-- > of the FormMetaData.xml file

For each attribute reference, you may specify whether the field is:

Viewable (by adding the attribute reference to the relevant section)
Editable (by specifying a value of TRUE or FALSE for the editable parameter)
Optional (by specifying a value of TRUE or FALSE for the optional parameter)

Note:

You do not need to add an attribute definition or attribute references for user-defined fields associated with these pages.

For Fields in the User Self Registration, Create User Request, and Modify Account Profile Pages

The fields in the User Self Registration, Create User Request, and Modify Account Profile pages are controlled by the attribute definition within the <!-- User Self Registration and User Profile Modification section -- > of the FormMetaData.xml file. The fields that appear on each of these pages are controlled using the attribute references in the following sections of the FormMetaData.xml file

Section	Page Affected
`<Form name="SelfRegistrationUserForm">`	User Self Registration
`<Form name="SelfRegistrationApprovalForm">`	Create User Request
`<Form name="ProfileModificationUserForm">`	Modify Account Profile

For each attribute reference, you may specify whether the field is:

Viewable (by adding the attribute reference to the relevant section)
Editable (by specifying a value of TRUE or FALSE for the editable parameter)
Optional (by specifying a value of TRUE or FALSE for the optional parameter)

Examples

For example, to set the system field User ID field on the Create User Request page to be viewable, editable, and required.

Open the FormMetaData.xml file
Locate the section called <!-- Definition of the form that will be displayed to the approver(s) for self registration approvals -- >.
Add an attribute reference to this section of the file to represent behavior of this field on the Create User Request page:
```
<AttributeReference editable="true" optional="false"> 
Users.User ID
</AttributeReference>
```
This entry causes the User ID field to be visible, editable, and required on the Create User Request page.

Note:
To edit the label applied to a field, edit the value of the label parameter of the applicable attribute definition.