Defining Generic Templates

You can call generic templates from any PeopleCode program. Use generic templates when a component template does not meet your requirements. For example, you might use generic templates when developing:

• Application Engine PeopleCode.

• Service Operation handler PeopleCode.

• Notifications being sent in the background in a component, for which the user is not prompted with the Send Notification page.

• Applications that need to have more control of the Send Notification page to set default To, CC, or BCC values, or to set default message text that is editable.

• Applications that need to send HTML email.

To access the Generic Template Definition page, select PeopleTools, Workflow, Notifications, Generic Templates, Generic Template Definition.

Image: Generic Template Definition page

This example illustrates the fields and controls on the Generic Template Definition page.

The pages and fields in the Generic Templates component are the same as those for defining the notification templates, except for two key differences:

• A generic template does not reference any information from the template variables component.

  Add template variables directly to the generic template explicitly by adding rows in the template variables grid.

• A generic template does not support Additional Recipients.

  This statement is true because the generic template is not used to launch the Send Notification page, which is where the additional recipients appear.

To use a generic template from a component, you do not select a Notify check box in the component properties dialog box. You must create a button and use PeopleCode to specify which generic template to use. Furthermore, you must pass in data that is needed by the template to populate template variables.

Template variables are placeholders in the template that can be populated with data passed in with PeopleCode. The order of the data being passed must match the order of the corresponding variables in the Template Variables grid. Thus, the suggested naming for these variables is %1, %2, and so on. This naming convention is consistent with the Message Catalog use of variables.

Generic templates other than SYSTEMDEFAULT are usually used only in PeopleCode calls. The following sample code shows how to use a generic template called MYTEMPLATE to send out a notification:

import PT_WF_NOTIFICATION:NotificationAddress;

import PT_WF_NOTIFICATION:Notification;

import PT_WF_NOTIFICATION:NotificationTemplate;

Local array of string &aryValues;

Local array of NotificationAddress &mynotifyto;

Local NotificationAddress &mynotifyaddress;

Local Notification &mynotification;

&mynotifyto = CreateArrayRept(&mynotifyaddress, 0);

&emailid = "targetperson@example.com";

&mynotifyaddress = create NotificationAddress("", "", "", &emailid, "Email");

&mynotifyto.Push(&mynotifyaddress);

&mynotifytemplate = create NotificationTemplate("","", "MYTEMPLATE", "G");

/* Populate an array to contain the values needed by the template */

&aryValues = CreateArrayRept("", 0);

&aryValues.Push("FIRST VALUE");

&aryValues.Push("SECOND VALUE");

&xmlVars = &mynotifytemplate.SetupGenericVars(&aryValues);

&mynotifytemplate.GetAndExpandTemplate(%Language, &xmlVars);

/* At this point, the &mynotifytemplate should have every value resolved */

&mynotification = create Notification("sourceperson@example.com", %Date + %PerfTime, %Language);

See %Date, %PerfTime.

&mynotification.NotifyTo = &mynotifyto;

&mynotification.Subject = &mynotifytemplate.Subject;

&mynotification.Message = &mynotifytemplate.Text;

&mynotification.Send();

&mynotifytemplate = create NotificationTemplate(%Component, %Market, "MYCOMPONENTTEMPLATE", "C");

&xmlVars = &mynotifytemplate.SetupCompVarsAndRcpts(GetLevel0());
&mynotifytemplate.GetAndExpandTemplate(%Language, &xmlVars);