ERP Personalization – The trouble I have seen…

Many times when attempting to personalize ERP software, it’s complicated, time consuming, and worst of all the personalizations may not carry forward in version upgrades automatically. Fortunately, that’s not the case with SyteLine ERP.

Mongoose, the toolset used for SyteLine, ISM and soon to be used for other of Infor’s products is the easiest toolset to use for personalization and customization I have ever worked with. Often when a toolset is more difficult to use it takes a lot more planning to make changes and publish them.  With Mongoose it is point, click, drag, and save and you are done!  Because of this ease of use it benefits the user to have some specific steps to follow before making any changes.  First and foremost verify what scope level you are selected into.  This more than anything else has wreaked havoc with users from changes being made that cause issues with functionality to overwriting previous customizations that were needed.

The scope level or impersonation level in Mongoose allows for users, groups or the whole organization to have different versions of forms, sometimes referred to as screens, from that which is delivered by Infor.  Many changes and additions can be done from simply rearranging columns on a grid to adding new components, sometimes called fields, to the form to store additional data not supplied by Infor.

So how could a user cause an issue with another customization?  Well fairly simply.  When a user first logs in the default scope level is set to user login.  That means that any form the user opens checks first to see if there is a user level form available.  Next the system checks to see if there is a group level form for the user’s primary group and finally whether there is a site level version of the form.  If none of those level forms exist the default vendor form is opened.  Otherwise the first level form that is found is opened.

In order to ensure that you personalize at the level you intend to, I’d like to give a step by step list for you to follow. Make it a habit that if you are going to make a change to a form follow these steps:

1.  Close all open forms.
2.  Select Form, Definition, and Site Impersonation level.
   1. Pick the level you want to make the change to.
3. Type CTRL+U.
   1. Make sure your settings or user preferences are set to unload global objects with IDO metadata check box checked.
4. Open the form you want to make changes to (only).
5. Check Help, about this form and make sure you are in the version of form you expect.
6. Make your changes, saving regularly.
7. Close the form, CTRL+U and reopen the form and check your changes.
8. Check Help, about this form and make sure you are in the version of form you expect.

Of course it never hurts to back up the form(s) before you make changes by scripting the form(s) out using formsync – but that is a topic for another blog.