Manage actions that are exposed to users in the Action Bar

You can now control which actions are available to users in the Action Bar.  Within the Action Bar there are two types of actions:

  • "Smart Actions" which are actions that a user can perform such as Add (related object such as contact or team member), Compose email or Start internal conversations.
  • "Suggested Actions" (also known as meta-actions) such as Search Knowledge, Filter the activity stream and Update fields.

Using Visual Builder Studio, you can now provide access to some actions to users while disabling other actions.

In your implementation, controlling which actions are available to users allows you to better enforce your specific business rules and ensure compliance to your organizational processes. This will allow you a greater level of flexibility in the Redwood user experience to meet your specific business needs.

Steps to Enable

Leverage the Visual Builder Studio to expose your applications. To learn more about extending your application using Visual Builder, visit Oracle Help Center > your apps service area of interest > Books > Configuration and Extension.

To control and manage available actions, a new page level variable has been introduced: $page.variable.ext_actionBarProps

You will want to invoke this page variable from the Service Request Edit page - which contains the full action bar.

(Please note that there are a few pages within the application that have a limited Action Bar such as the Service Contact Page and the Interaction Page. These pages have a limited set of available actions by design, so this enhancement is not applicable for those pages.)

Using the $page.variable.ext_actionBarProps variable, Smart Actions and Suggestions are controlled differently. 

For the three Suggested Actions (Search Knowledge, Update Fields, Filter Activity Stream) - there are Boolean values that can be set to turn on and off the access. The default out of box setting for these values is True (on).  If you want to disable one or more of these values, you will want to set that variable to False (off):

  • "updateFields" -- Enable/Disable updating a record's fields from ActionBar
  • "kmSearch" -- Enable/Disable Knowledge Searching from ActionBar
  • "activityStreamFiltering" -- Enable/Disable the filtering of the Activity Stream from ActionBar

Example of disabling Update Fields:

- Disable 'Update <field>', everything else enabled

{

"updateFields": false,

"kmSearch": true,

"activityStreamFiltering": true

}

Example of Disabling all Suggested Actions:

- Disable 'Update <field', 'Filter <x>' and 'Search Knowledge'

{

"updateFields": false,

"kmSearch": false,

"activityStreamFiltering": false,

}

Very Important Note: If you decide to disable one of the Suggested Actions, you will need to specify the state (True or False) for all three.  Once the out of box value for one variable has been changed, the system will need instructions on what to do with the other two variables.

Controlling Smart Actions:

To control out of box Smart Actions, you will use the same page variable ($page.variable.ext_actionBarProps).  For these actions there are two different control options:

  • "excludeActionsList" -- Disable specific SmartActions from being presented by ActionBar
  • "limitedActionsList" -- Only present specific SmartActions within ActionBar

For both the Exclude and Limit functions, you will need to have the user action name as defined in the system.  To get a list of all user action names, use this API: crmRestApi/resources/latest/smartActionsMetadata?q=IncludedIn='ServiceRequestVO'

Important Note: If you are going to use the Exclude or Limit functions, you will also need to specify the Boolean values for the Suggested Actions.

Let's look at an example.  In this example, we are going to exclude the "Add Internal Note" Smart Action:

- Enable 'Update <field', 'Filter <x>' and 'Search Knowledge'; exclude "Compose Internal Note"

{ "updateFields": true,

"kmSearch": true,

"activityStreamFiltering": true,

"excludeActionsList": ["SDA-AddInternalNote-serviceRequests"] }

The excludeActionsList and limitedActionsList are either/or options -- excludeActionsList takes precedence over limitedActionsList if both are set.

Tips And Considerations

Remember the following:

  • If you change the out of box value for a Suggested Action (Boolean Value) you need to specify the value for all three options.  If you only specify one, the system won't understand how it should process the other two.
  • If you are using the exclude or limited options for Smart Actions - you must also specify the Boolean values for the Suggested Actions as well; even if you want to keep the out of box Boolean value of True, it must still be specified.

Access Requirements

To perform these configuration updates, you will need to be logged into the system as a user with access to Visual Builder Studio.