Blog
How to make a field required using a conditional expression
This entry is part of the Conditional Expressions HowTo. In this post I will show how to make the Remarks field required in the Receiving application when returning items. This is just an example and the same configuration can be used to hide or show any field based on a particular condition. A similar post describes how to achieve the same functionality using Data Restrictions. Define conditional expression Open Administration - Conditional Expression Manager application. Create the following conditional expression.
May 21, 2012
Maximo Data Types
Here is the complete list of available data types in TPAE/Maximo. The most used are marked in bold. ALN - Alphanumeric characters, mixed case AMOUNT - Decimal number, used for currency BLOB - Binary large object CLOB - Character large object CRYPTO - Encrypted binary CRYPTOX - Encrypted binary (one-way) DATE - Date only, no time DATETIME - Date and time DECIMAL - Decimal number DURATION - Duration, 1:30 is displayed to mean one and one-half hours FLOAT - Floating number GL - General Ledger account INTEGER - Integer number LONGALN - Long Alphanumeric LOWER - Lowercase characters SMALLINT - Small integer TIME - Time only, no date UPPER - Uppercase characters YORN - Yes or No, the database contains 1 or 0
May 13, 2012
The Maximo specialist Swiss Army Knife
Have you ever felt at war during the roll-out of a complex customization or when you have to rush to debug and fix a complex problem? Sometimes being a Maximo specialist is like being a soldier. That’s why you need the best tool at hand to do your job. That’s why I have selected my personal set of portable apps that I have copied on my USB stick so I can plug in every computer in order to quickly become productive on every system. By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. Here is my selection of free (or almost free) tools.
May 9, 2012
Improving BIRT report style
I have always been an admirer of beautifully designed web sites. Today’s mobile and desktop application have beautiful and eye-catching UIs. To my eyes the current design of out of the box Maximo BIRT reports has an old-fashioned style that doesn’t sound pleasant to my eyes. That’s why I decided to tweak the Maximo out of the box styles in order to be able to quickly improve the look of any Maximo report. All the customer I have worked with have really liked this reporting style and asked me to apply it to all their custom reports.
May 8, 2012
Resource for upgrading multiple Maximo products
Having several Maximo products coexisting on the same installation basically requires that all the products depends on the same Maximo Base Services level. This IBM wiki describes in detail how to install and upgrade multiple Maximo products on the same TPAE server.
May 2, 2012
Maximo 7.5 scripting guide
Scripting is a powerful new feature that was introduced in Maximo 7.5. Checkout this hidden Scripting with Maximo guide from IBM lead developers. A very comprehensive list of examples is available here. My colleague Mathias has also a very interesting blog on scripting. Other articles and resources Launch report Automation scripting and email listener All scripting articles on Asset Management community
April 27, 2012
Maximo URLs
TPAE-based products like MAM, TAMIT, TSRM, CCMDB or SCCD provide a common way to open an application and perform some basic action like displaying a specific entry or performing a simple query. This can be very useful to integrate Maximo with other applications implementing navigation integration or launch in context. The base URL has this syntax: http://[hostname]/maximo/ui/maximo.jsp?[arguments] where: hostname - Server’s host name arguments - A set of name-value pairs, similar to the HTTP GET request In the arguments, you can define the following information:
April 26, 2012
Rotating and non-rotating assets in Maximo
In Maximo/TPAE applications assets can be either rotating or non-rotating. The difference between those two types of assets is sometimes not clear. Rotating assets are assets that are interchangeable, such as motors, pumps, fire extinguishers, or PC monitors. Rotating assets have both a unique asset number and an inventory item number. The item number lets you track assets as a group as they are moved in and out of inventory and other types of locations, while the asset number is useful to track individual instances of the asset as it is moved from one location to another and from one site to another. Non-rotating assets do not move in and out of storerooms. A non-rotating asset has a unique asset number, but does not have an item number because it is not tracked in inventory.
April 25, 2012
WebSphere plugin password expire April 26 2012
Remember that tomorrow your Maximo servers may face this critical issue: WebSphere plugin-key.kdb password to expire on April 26, 2012. This is the procedure to fix the problem.
April 24, 2012
How to schedule a CSV/XML file export through MIF
This entry is part of the Maximo Integration Framework series. In standard Maximo/TPAE there is no way to schedule the invocation of an outbound interface in order to periodically export a CSV or XML file at a specific interval. This can be accomplished with a little custom Java class. I have used the Java code described in this post as a starting point to develop my own generic procedure. In this example I will show how periodically export in a CSV file all the assets that contains the word ‘pump’ in the description. The procedure can be adapted to periodically invoke any Publish Channel you like.
April 18, 2012