A screenshot with email for support

[swalter]

I am trying to make a button on all of our screens where you press a button and send an email with a screenshot to the development team to work on bugs. I was told that someone has already produced this on Profound and i was hoping for some help. Thank you in advance.

[Scott Klement]

There are HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files that are loaded for the entire session (as opposed to per-screen) where you can code this sort of thing. Lots of flexibility, here... but it will require that you create things with code rather than just drag and drop.

Here are some questions, the answers might help me better understand what you're looking for:

1) What environment are you using? Atrium calling Rich Display? Atrium calling Genie? Atrium calling Genie calling Rich Display? Genie calling RDF without Atrium? Rich Display directly (no Genie or Atrium)? Mobile?

2) You just one want button on each screen, right? Should it be a button or an image/icon?

3) what will said button/icon do? Open the user's e-mail software on their PC? Or invoke an IBM i program that sends an e-mail? Is there any information that you want to gather and send in the e-mail, or is it just a static message? Do you want to eliminate any user interaction when this happens, or is it okay to open the PC e-mail client and let the user do the rest?

[swalter]

Yeah, ive gotten pretty familiar with the background files while writing functions, css, and conversion themes to make our pages look the way we like them.

Let me try to answer everything here.

1) We plan on using Atrium calling Rich Display and Atrium calling genie. When we have all of our settings in place, we will be in atrium calling genie calling rich displays, but im not sure the time frame on that.

2) Its just going to be one button per screen.

3) As for what the button will do, thats up in the air. After some research and collaboration ive come to understand that a true "screenshot" isnt possible on the client side. The plan was, on button press, a window would appear with an option to add a message, and that message plus the "screenshot" would be sent off without opening a new email for the user on a confirmation button press. Unless there is a more screenshot-like solution, i was planning on gathering any required information from fields and sending that info along with the message.

[Scott Klement]

Okay, so the first decision to be made... do you want to put the button inside Atrium? Or inside each Genie/Rich Display session? The difference is that if you put it in Atrium, you will have one button with the potential for many applications running. So it might be hard to discern which application the user is having trouble with. If you put it inside your Genie skin, however, it'll be on each session (so a separate button in each Atrium tab) which might be a better choice. The Rich Display environment also has an HTML file, very similar to the one in the Genie skin, that you could add a button to if you wish to launch Rich Display sessions without going through Genie.

I'm a bit confused as to your answer to #1, however, since you say you're using Atrium to launch Rich Displays and to launch Genie, but later you want to launch the Rich Displays via Genie via Atrium. If the Rich Displays are working satisfactorily through Atrium directly, why would you want to add the extra overhead of a Genie session later? Ususally it works the other way around. People start launching everything via Genie because it's too hard to convert all the 5250 screens, and Genie lets you use both Rich and 5250 together. Once everything has been converted to Rich, they eliminate the Genie. For some reason you've suggested that you are going the other direction, working with some Rich Displays that aren't through Genie, but you want to convert them to use Genie later. Why would you do that?

With regards to screen shots... we have a variable inside both RDF and Genie sessions called pui.savedJSON. This contains all of the data sent from the IBM i to the JavaScript library (before Genie customizations were added.) You can use this to "re-play" the screen... so you can put Profound UI through the paces of re-drawing what the user had on their screen.

So my suggestion to you is this:

1) Edit the start.html file in your Genie skin, and maybe also in your Rich Display environment to add a small button. When you add it to this HTML file, it will be on all screens, so no need to code it into each program.

2) Have the button run a JavaScript function of your creation.

3) The JavaScript function can use an AJAX call to pass any relevant details that you've provided, as well as our pui.savedJSON variable, to a program running on IBM i. This can be written in any language... RPG works well, but it could also be PHP, Node.js, Java, whatever. It should be a web program, though... not a traditional RPG program. If you use RPG, our Univeral Display File tool should make this pretty easy to code.

4) The RPG program can generate an e-mail to send to your support staff including the information from the display. The savedJSON file should be sent as a text file attachment in the e-mail.

5) The support staff can save the JSON data to a web-accessible IFS file, and re-play it with a URL like http://yoursystem/profoundui/genie?json ... o/jsonfile

This is just my opinion, of course. Please understand that I am not volunteering to write it for you.... just offering pointers to help you get on the right track. (I say this because the last person to ask something like this INSISTED that I write it for him.)

[swalter]

Sorry for the confusion. The goal is to use atrium and genie, and call rich displays through genie. But at the moment that is not set up, so i am testing with rich displays called through atrium.

I have code written to add a button for support, open a window asking for additional details. I can add the pui.savedJSON to the information sent from there. Thank you for the clarifications and the pointer in the right direction.