Demo of Eddie the JD Edwards bot

I wrote a blog entry about this earlier, but there have been some great advancements since my initial post.  One of the main ones is that the google assistant has been released for generic android, as opposed to only being available on the pixel.  This is really neat, as we want to use the power of contexts, which was only really available when using the google assistant.

You can see from the above that I’m able to chat with the google assistant by simply saying “hello google” to my phone.

Previously I’d get the following interface

So, now we can ask google to talk to our bot and then begin to give it commands that we’ve defined with api.ai.

api.ai is then able to turn those commands, contexts and intentions into JD Edwards AIS calls using #LAMBDA

From there we are able to then instruct api.ai to give us verbal responses.

Note also that we are able to natively activate this chat in a number of other integration points, one-click.  So you want to activate chat with JDE using twitter, facebook messenger, slack?  Easy!

Imagine being able to open up some limited customer service “bot” actions for any of your JD Edwards users.  You could so simple things like:

• enter timesheets with voice
• check on order status’
• approve PO’s (of course)
• enter meter readings (we are doing this).

See a little video below of approving PO’s

Continuous delivery–the journey-some neat tools to assist you

The continuous delivery journey is pretty exciting, but we need to all embrace it to get the most out of it.

Planning your adoption of continuous delivery is really important too, making sure firstly that you are on 9.2 and then setting an update cadence that you are happy with and a schedule that you are going to stick to (schedule of applying ESU’s and tools releases).

You need new tools and new thinking to enable this journey, here are a couple that I’m recommending:

ERP analytics

• understand your ERP usage better.   Understand the programs that you are using and more importantly the modifications that you are making.  subscribe to ERPAnalytics from Fusion5 to really understand your users and modifications.  Use this data regularly to understand the retrofit and impact analysis of the new round of continuous delivery.

Screenshot above from ERP analytics showing you what applications are being used.

We can see the applications that are being used, we can download this to excel and cross reference this information with the JD Edwards manifests from the ESU’s.  Note that we can use something like powerBI to read this “realtime”, actually read in the ESU release notes or farm the JDE tables for what objects are affected and then produce a really nice neat powerBI dashboard of ACTUAL IMPACT – which allows you to streamline your continuous deployment!

• Seeing the differences in the code.  Wow, have I got something cool for you.  Imagine that you wanted to see the actual form control differences in your code between environments?  We’ve written some pretty nifty code to allow you to do this VERY easily. 
• So, you can see that the output from the above is all of the programs in JDE that you use – simple – export a spreadsheet
• Now extract all of the changed objects in the ESUs that you want to apply (from impact analysis) – easy!
• cross reference the above so you know what has changed and what has not
• Now – run our code to give you all of the changes between the objects in DV920 vs. PY920

What does this magic do?

JDEFormCompare

Basically you can provide a number of AIS end points and his code will spit out ALL of the differences in the objects that you select in a CSV (or JSON) format.

For example:  two different AIS sites were compared and for this form W1701A (control number 571) we can see that it exists in site 2 and not in site 1.  We can see that this is parent number, data type 9, visible etc.  Cool?  Yes – this is very cool!

form	id	property	equal	value0	value1	Different
P1701_W1701A	571	title	FALSE	Null	Parent Number	DIFF
P1701_W1701A	571	presence	FALSE	FALSE	TRUE	DIFF
P1701_W1701A	571	dataType	FALSE	Null	9	DIFF
P1701_W1701A	571	editable	FALSE	Null	TRUE	DIFF
P1701_W1701A	571	longName	FALSE	Null	txtParentNumber_571	DIFF
P1701_W1701A	571	visible	FALSE	Null	TRUE	DIFF

· Think of a comparison for users security and evaluating whether they can see forms or not. (editable).  so really – think about this.  You could run this program as a series of different roles and users and actually determine what the users would see on the forms!

· Think of identifying modifications a little better. 

· Think of comparing environments that have had ESU’s applied

· Different DD’s, vocab overrides and MORE!

We can feed this software (command line executable) the results of ERP analytics to only look at the objects that have changed for a client – honing in on exactly what they need to know to support CD.

I’m sure you might be able to think of other uses, but if you want a copy of a demo – please reach out.

All clients need is an AIS server and we are away.  We can bring one in [AIS server] (as a VM) if needed and run it off that too.

restore the package from the zip file

install node - from here https://nodejs.org/en/download/

goto restore dir with command prompt

npm i  --This will install dependancies

C:\temp\compareStuff>node app --help

  Usage: app [options] [command]

  Commands:

    compare <formName> [additionalFormNames...]  Compare two different forms.

    Example compare P4210_W4210A --format csv --out P4210_W4210A.csv

  Options:

    -h, --help         output usage information

    -V, --version      output the version number

    --format <format>  Specify the output format. Allowed: "csv,json" (default: json)

    --out <file>       Write to a file instead of the command line.

Config is in

.\config\default.yaml

Sample csv output is above.

So that is a couple of pretty neat  productivity ideas that will get you closer to continuous deployment of Oracle’s continuous delivery.

myTagThat

Do you every find yourself wishing that there was a cool mobile application out there that you could plug into JD Edwards that are useful and free?  Wait no more, your time is here!

myTagThat is a mobile application that hooks into JD Edwards via AIS 

This is andriod ready and shows how cool the Fusion5 applications are – interactive and useful

You can search for assets from the main screen

See myTagThat in the top right

See that we also allow for scanning bar codes – making finding your assets easy

Note that is a book I’m reading – but it still scans!

This will use P1701 through AIS to find an asset with that equipment number.

You have some basic search criteria on the screen below

Note that you have the ability to map all of the results returned!

Nice!

In JDE, this is how things start to look:

It authenticates with JDE authentication and allows you to search for any of your fixed assets (are you using CAM?) 

In JDE, P1701

Find your asset as above and then goto row –>locations->Address Book->Inquiry

You can see that the mobile application creates a new current record and makes the older ones historical

JD Edwards web forms–data entry made easy

Some things in JDE could be made easier.  Some things in JDE should be made easier.

What if you were entering  requisitions?  What if you were only entering HS&E issues – JD Edwards can be something that is hard to configure and get working for these simple use cases.

You can take a look at our java script, AWS hosted solution that synchronizes data with JD Edwards using AIS. We cache all of the data locally in AWS and refresh this on a schedule.  We host the website with AWS and when the submit button is clicked, this goes to a queue for entry into JD Edwards.  We reserve some next numbers so that you can fid your transaction in JDE.

https://hsedemo.mye1.com/

Now that is a good looking form, compared with:

http://e92demo.myriad-it.com:80/jde/ShortcutLauncher?OID=P54HS30_W54HS30C_ZJDE0001

With this technology we can open up this easy conduit into JD Edwards quickly and easily.  This is hosted too, so you don’t need to worry about “punching a hole in the firewall”.  We can ensure that the backend code connects to your AIS with a VPN and enters the transaction into JDE.