Add an External Plug-In

An external plug-in is hosted elsewhere and communicates with Oracle Field Service through the Plugin API. You add only a link to the plug-in here.

1. Click Configuration > Forms & Plugins.
2. Click Add Plugin.
3. Click External Plugin and then click Next.
4. Complete these fields:

   Field Name	Description
   General Information section
   Label	A mandatory field defining a unique action or a label for the plug-in.
   Entity	Entity (activity, inventory, required inventory, resource, service request, user) to which the action or plug-in is to be related. For example, if you select Inventory, the action will appear only in the contexts related to inventory. Leave the field blank for the action to be available in all contexts of all the entities.
   Visibility rules similar to	The base action from which the plug-in is to be derived, if needed. When a base action is selected, the resulting plug-in functions per the same rules as the base action. The base action affects only the visibility of buttons and not the functioning of the plug-in. It appears only in the contexts in which the base action appears and is shown or hidden according to the same visibility conditions. For example, if start_activity is selected as the base action for a plug-in, the plug-in is only be shown in the context of a pending activity when there is no started activity in the same route, similar to the Start action. The list of available base actions is filtered according to the Entity that is selected.
   Name (English)	A mandatory field defining the plug-in name in the English language. The action or plug-in appears under this name in the actual context.
   Name (other languages)	Plug-in name translations to other languages, if used.
   Plugin settings section
   URL	The path to the URL of the external plug-in. This URL processes the HTML5 application and it runs the plug-in in the entire browser window. The URL must start with the protocol (https) and must point to the main file of the plug-in. Oracle Field Service adds the backUrl parameter to the URL automatically. This parameter contains the address of the current page of Oracle Field Service.
   Disable button in Offline	Determines whether you want to disable the plug-in when Oracle Field Service is offline. Clear this check box for the plug-in to work in offline mode.
   Authentication	The type of authentication used by the external server hosting the plug-in source to verify access to the plug-in. Select one of these options: Basic HTTP: The Basic Access Authentication method working over HTTP or HTTPS. The Basic HTTP authentication method requires a valid login and password. When the entered login and password are verified by the server, the server returns the plug-in content. HMAC: Hash-based message authentication code verifying that the data is received from an authorized source. HMAC authentication method requires a secret key configured for each plug-in. This field is hidden, if Hosted plugin is selected. Note: The best practice is to use HMAC authentication instead of basic HTTP authentication. This is because, Google Chrome doesn't support the use of Basic HTTP authentication in sub-resources starting from release 59.
   Login/Password	The user name and password to log in to the plug-in. These fields are displayed only when Basic HTTP is selected for Authentication.
   Plugin parameters	The section where sensitive information such as a user name and password that is used to access external sites is entered. Click plus to add the parameters. The Add new parameter dialog box appears with these fields: Name: Enter a name for the parameter that is used to access an external application. For example, Client ID. Value: Enter a value for the parameter. Secure parameter: Select this check box to mask this value. When you save this value, the Edit Plugin and View Parameters pages show 'dots' in this field. Click Add. The parameter is added to the plug-in. You can add a maximum of 20 key-value textbox pairs, after which the icon is hidden. The maximum size of the parameters allowed is 5 KB. This size includes the data structure overhead and doesn't correspond to the length of keys and values of strings. Changes to the secure data are sent to Oracle Field Service during the next synchronization. The data is sent to the plug-in when the next message is sent. If you open the values saved earlier, the application deletes them. You must add them again.
   Available properties	The properties that you want to be passed to the plug-in or updated by the plug-in. These properties are added as read-only and are available through the Plugin API. Click the field to select the properties. You need not define the visibility for the properties explicitly. These properties can't be updated through the Plug-in API: activity_capacity_categories auto_routed_to_date auto_routed_to_provider_id aworkzone date time_delivered You cannot add these properties to the list of Available properties: activity_alerts access_hours activity_compliance atravelarea travel_estimation_method service_window_end service_window_start eta_end_time pid (it's still available for the Resource entity)

5. Click Add.