Blog
MxLoader file is untrusted
Microsoft has recently added a security feature to protect unsafe content downloaded from the web to execute malicious code. If you have recently downloaded MxLoader from my web site you may have seen the error: Microsoft has blocked macros from running because the source of this file is untrusted To unblock MxLoader you must right-click on the file and select Properties. Then you have to select the Unblock checkbox and click OK.
September 21, 2022
Display custom message from automation script
There is a well known technique to display a custom error message from an automation script. It requires to create the custom message in the Messages dialog of Database Configuration application and then to trigger the display of it throwing an exception by setting errorgroup/errorkey or using the service.error method. This technique is well described in several blog post so I’m not going to repeat it: Maximo Scripting, My Geek Daddy. Having defined a message mxdev.msgid, it just requires one line of code to display it from an automation script.
June 29, 2022
MxLoader wizard
Do you know there is a wizard into MxLoader? You can invoke him clicking on the MxSheet Wizard button on the toolbar. Joking apart, the MxSheet Wizard button can help you in creating your own MxLoader sheet choosing an available Object Structure and picking up all the attributes that you want to manage. This is actually based on an idea of John Green from Peacock Engineering who shown me their own improved version MxLoader with a built-in designer.
January 21, 2022
SQL skills
One of the first thing I always say to the new hires that are going to learn Maximo is how much important is to have a good knowledge of SQL language. It is really important to build application queries, Birt reports, database relationships, complex table domains, conditional expressions and many other Maximo configurations. The important thing to understand is that SQL is more declarative than procedural like C or Java so it may require a mind shift for common developers. It is hard to explain in a short post like how to develop a good SQL query but well written SQL code can solve many Maximo performances issues.
January 21, 2022
Script to check if current user is in a Security Group
A typical business case is to prevent editing of some specific fields to a set of organizational roles in Maximo. This is typically achieved by implementing attribute data restriction or conditional UI. However, if you need more control over what field should be readonly and when, you can use an automation script on the INIT event of the object and implement the business rules in the code. In the following script you will find the userInGroup function that can be reused whenever needed.
December 4, 2021
Maximo bulk update from List view
In some cases Maximo allows to perform bulk updates using actions on the List View. For example, you can set the timezone of multiple assets by selecting the Associate Time Zone on the List View of the Assets application and then a dialog will appear to perform a massive update on all the selected records. In many cases we need to provide the same feature for some other fields. In this post I will demonstrate how to implement a bulk update feature to set the value of an attribute for a set of selected records in any Maximo application. The implementation is based on the technique described in this post and uses:
October 31, 2021
Adjust field size in application
Maximo sometimes does not display all the characters in a field, because the text box is too small. Of course, you can solve this. First you need to understand how Maximo determines the display size of the text box. Then you can change these setting and control how large the text box should be. Setting default field size globally Maximo stores the default field sizes in the file SMPDIR/maximo/applications/maximo/properties/field-size-config.xml
October 24, 2021
It's now time to upgrade to MxLoader 8
I’m happy to announce that I have just released version 8.2 of MxLoader. It includes few small bug fixes and few important features. If you haven’t already upgraded to MxLoader it’s time to do it! Time Zones You may not be aware that while most time zones differ from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) by a number of full hours, there are also a few time zones with both 30-minute and 45-minute offsets.
October 10, 2021
Using API authentication with MxLoader
Here is a quick guide about how to use API authentication with MxLoader. Generate API Key Follow these steps to generate an API Key for your user. Login to Maximo with administrative account. Go to Administration > Work Center > Integration. Click on the API Keys and click on the Add API Keys button Search for user for which API Key needs to be generated and click on the Add button. This will generate API Key for the user and the key will be visible on the work center. Now this API Key can be used withMxLoader. More details are available here.
October 9, 2021
How to improve View Workflow History dialog
One of the frequent complaints from Maximo clients is the scarce user-friendliness of the View Workflow History dialog. Here is the same dialog after few changes. Clutter information is removed and is now clear the sequence of actions taken by the user. Before you start you have to open the Application Designer and click on Export System XML action. Then export your LIBRARY.xml file and create a backup copy of it. Search for id=“historywf” to find the definition of the View Workflow History dialog and make the following changes.
October 2, 2021