Webpage in Outlook

[BanyanAir]

We currently use Lotus Notes client. Inside on of the notes frame we have a direct http://www.... link to a ProfoundUI program. It works great in notes and you can copy/paste the link to any browser and the page shows.

We are switching to Outlook. We created a new folder and can setup webpages to show when clicked (cnn.com for example). When we use the exact same link for our custom page, instead of showing the page the main profound logic user name / password program is processed.

Has anyone tried embedding Profound programs/pages inside the new 2013 Outlook client?

Thanks,

Larry

Additional info: When looking at active jobs instead of seeing the BA2570AS program it is going to PUI001202.

[Scott Klement]

It sounds like you're launching a session instead of calling an anonymous program. Is it possible that you forgot the pgm parameter in the URL? To launch an anonymous program, the syntax would be something like:

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http://your-ibm-i:8080/profoundui/start?pgm=YOURLIB/YOURPGM

If you left off the ?pgm=YOURLIB/YOURPGM, then you'd have the problem that you're describing.

I can't see why it'd matter which E-mail software you ran the link from.

[BanyanAir]

Scott:

Here is the link that works in Notes and from any browser inside the network.

http://i5.banyanair.com:8080/profoundui ... M/BA2570AS

Inside outlook, it is seeing the profoundui server because it shows the base signon screen - it just won't execute this page.

[Scott Klement]

Hmm.. I just sent a link like that to myself in Outlook, and I was able to have it work (opened the page with the program name, etc.)

But, maybe you're doing something more sophisticated than I am?

What I'm doing is just putting the link into an e-mail. When I click that link, Outlook then opens up my default web browser and passes the link to the browser. When it does this, it retains the lib/program so the program runs normally. There's not too much of Outlook involved here, since it's just passing the URL to the same browser I normally use, as long as the URL has the parameters, it's good to go.

But, maybe you're not talking about clicking a link and opening it in a browser... maybe you're embedding an iframe into the e-mail or something like that? Can you explain how that works?

[BanyanAir]

Scott,

This is what we started with for setting up outlook.

http://www.attorneyatwork.com/read-your ... g-outlook/

I'm not sure if its iFrames or not, test with www.cnn.com, then try with a profound program.

Larry

[Scott Klement]

HI Larry,

Sorry for the slow response, here.

I looked into this, and conferred with a colleague, and what we discovered is that Outlook is stripping the "query string parameters" from the URL. If you're not familiar with query string parameters, it refers to the "variables in the URL". In your example, the "?pgm=MISPGM/BA2570AS" is the query string parameter. Naturally, there's not much we can do to change the way Outlook works. Also, we don't "officially" support Outlook as a web browser, but I suspect under the covers, it's calling code inside Internet Explorer, so our tool SHOULD work just fine if we work around the query string problem.

Since the only query string parameter in this case is the name of the program to launch, we can work around the problem by creating a custom HTML file, and inserting some JavaScript code to call the pui.run() API. pui.run() is a Profound UI API for launching sessions, and it has the ability to take the program name as a parameter, so we can use it to start anonymous programs instead of using the query string.

To try this, use the following steps. Anywhere I say "/www/profoundui/htdocs", please replace it with "/www/[your-instance-name]/htdocs" if you've changed the installation location when you installed Profound UI... the name "profoundui" is the default, but a different name can be specified during installation.

1) Go to the /www/profoundui/htdocs/profoundui/userdata/html directory in the IFS.

2) Make a copy of the 'start.html' file. Maybe call it something like ba2570as.html? (Or calendar.html? whatever sounds good to you.) This new copy should be in the same directory as the start.html.

3) Edit the new copy of the file in a text editor. (You can use Windows Notepad, the text editor in RDi, or even other tools like Notepad++. Even the green screen EDTF command will work.)

4) Find the following code in the new copy of the file:

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  <script type="text/javascript">
    window.onload = function() { pui.start() };
  </script>

5) Change the preceding code so that it now looks like this:

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  <script type="text/javascript">
    window.onload = function() { pui.run({
        program: "MISPGM/BA2570AS"
      });
    };
  </script>

6) Save your changes.

7) Try the following URL: http://i5.banyanair.com:8080/profoundui ... 570as.html (change that last part to whatever you called your copy of the html file)

This should now launch the program directly (in an anonymous session, just as your earlier URL did.) Since there's no longer a query string parameter, it should work in Outlook.

Using this method, Profound UI will not automatically load any custom JavaScript or CSS files that you have placed in the /www/profoundui/htdocs/profoundui/userdata/custom (or subdirectories). But if you need custom JavaScript or CSS, you can enable them by editing your new HTML file and adding the appropriate <link> or <script> tags to the HTML code.

Let me know if this helps, or if there's anything I can explain better.

[BanyanAir]

That worked!!! Thanks.