The Fast(path) and The Furious – Part 3. Oh No, There’s No Fast Path!
Jonnel Tenorio, Sr. Techno – Functional Consultant
Hello again from sunny Southern California! Good movies have sequels and of course a twist. This article started with the JDE fast path as good reliable and handy shortcut feature that is as old as JDE (and sometimes we take for granted). Then we just published the sequel where we provided the key to creating our own fast path or shortcut command by adding to the UDC (00/FP) values.
But what if the fast path is not available? Most JDE shops have disabled this feature specially the heavily audited and strict, secured companies. We should not take this fast path lockdown negatively, because:
- It can help organize the company’s menu and task structure.
- It can accurately guide users to applications that they use or their department’s responsibility within JDE.
- It can promote segregation of duties and better governance.
- It can protect organizations from unauthorized use of application or intentional/unintentional misuse.
- It may also slow us down but overall, the positive greatly outweigh the negative of not having the shortcut commands.
- It protects users as well from not exposing them to applications/reports that could get them in trouble.
There’s life without the JDE fast path and if you are on Enterprise 9.2 (hint, hint, to JDE shops who are still on older release…), the user interfaces are easier to use and remember. Here are most used web application user interfaces:
Home Page
When we log into the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne application, we will see the EnterpriseOne home page. If we are deep inside the application, we can always click on the "house" icon to get us back to the starting point.
The Home Page may also contain EnterpriseOne Pages that can be assigned to your user ID or role.
We will see EnterpriseOne Pages display as tabs located across the top of the interface (shown in the example below). More on E1 Pages in future article(s):
The Navigator
The Navigator task or menu is the web-based application we click or run to access JD Edwards EnterpriseOne applications and reports.
The Navigator task and menu we see are limited to and based on specific security access or roles granted to us.
At the very top of the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Menu bar, we should see a drop-down menu that we can click to navigate to the specific application or report we want to launch. The drop-down menu can be objects other than applications (it may contain other objects like reports or links to further drill down); all objects in the drop-down menu are called tasks. Applications, reports, and links in the drop-down menu are all tasks.
The Carousel
From Oracle: “The carousel is to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne as the taskbar is to Microsoft Windows.”
The carousel, like a taskbar dragged down at the bottom of the screen would look like this:
JDE aptly call this user interface because of its rotating object like capability, just like a merry-go-round.
A JDE carousel is a generalized container that holds objects which can be launched. These objects are displayed on tiles arranged from top to bottom, left to right, and you can flip through these tiles. The carousel container provides quick access to the open applications, batch versions, and favorite JD Edwards EnterpriseOne applications and UBE/batch jobs. The carousel positioned on the left side of the screen would like this:
Simply, the carousel container contains the following three tabs (as shown above):
- Favorites
- Open Applications
- Recent Reports
Favorites
It's the little "star" icon sitting on top of the user interface. The favorite tasks and folders are also displayed in the Favorites tab in the carousel container. The Favorites menu displays all the tasks and folders that we added. Unless provided and migrated from an upgrade, we will have to add Favorites based on how we want to speed up task navigations. JD Edwards Enterprise One installations do not deliver this feature with pre-populated task.
Tasks, applications, reports can all be added as favorites. To add a favorite:
1. Right-click the task that you want to add as favorite and select Add to Favorites from the context menu.
2. In the Add to Favorites dialog box, use the default name or enter your own label for your favorite (I normally use the default). then click "Create Favorite".
You can add a favorite from any form of an open application instead of from a task view. Navigate to an application either through the Navigator menu. Just a reminder that our ability to add a favorite from an open application form depends on whether the system administrator has enabled it for us.
Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs (E1 Tools Release 9.2) allows us to keep track of the menus we have used to navigate to our current application. When clicked, each breadcrumb displays the associated menu and its submenus at the location of the breadcrumb. If we use breadcrumbs to navigate in EnterpriseOne, the breadcrumb string changes to reflect the new navigational path we have chosen. Breadcrumbs do not appear if we use Fast Path or EnterpriseOne Pages to launch an application.
The breadcrumb history is saved by default whenever we open any application using the Navigator drop-down menu and can be clicked and launched just like a shortcut without typing (simply click on the drop-down):
So, life without the JDE fast path is great and I barely scratched the surface. We still have all the other icons and options to explore and a whole lot of UDO’s and UX One features to see! No fast path, no problem - the functions we need are there. Let’s end the article with a quote, “It’s On the House” – Agent Luke Hobbs.
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Meet the Author
Jonnel Tenorio, Sr. Techno – Functional Consultant
