by Dave Harrison

Oracle has been busy lately; working on the release of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools v9.2.2, plus the announcement of JDE Notifications and some enhancements to the Orchestrator.

JDE Mobile Apps

At the same time, Oracle announced support for Mobile Application Framework (MAF) 2.4.0 for use with JDE mobile apps.  Although not a major feature of the Oracle announcements, it certainly piqued my interest, because one of the mobile applications that I had developed for a client makes use of the Cordova Barcode Scanner Plugin.

What makes this announcement significant is that previous versions of MAF could only support older versions of Cordova. This limited the ability to install the latest Plugins and restricted user access to new features. With the arrival of MAF 2.4, I could upgrade the Barcode Scanner Plugin to version 6.0.5, which provides some additional benefits:

• The ability to swap between the forward and rear-facing camera
• Access to the torch/LED functionality
• Improved handling of the device orientation

MAF 2.4 also provides support for later versions of Android and iOS; helping to future-proof the application.  My client had recently taken delivery of a new batch of Android tablets which came installed with Android 7 (Nougat), instead of Android 6 (Marshmallow) which had been installed on the previous batch.  As this version is now supported in this latest version of MAF, the client was also able to continue using the mobile application on the new tablets without any problems.

I was also pleased to see that builds are now using Gradle instead of the older Apache Ant.  Although this means the builds now take slightly longer, Gradle is more widely adopted and several Cordova Plugins require it.  Again, this helps to future-proof the application as well as offering the potential to interact with the device in more ways; such as the ability to use the fingerprint scanner.

What If You Don’t Want EULA Prompt

I was surprised that the new version of the JDE Login.jar forces the user through the EULA page the first time they log into the app.  That’s probably okay in some situations, but in my case, it wasn’t necessary.

I know I would have become frustrated with it over time and I suspect I wouldn’t be alone. I started out with the assumption that there must be a way to turn this function off, but it wasn’t immediately obvious as it isn’t documented anywhere.  Eventually I found the answer and it turned out to be very simple, so I thought I’d share the solution with you.

Just put the following line in the about.properties file.

It’s always good to check out the latest Oracle JDE announcements and ESUs, as you might find some hidden gems.

Are you interested in customizing or extending your instance of JD Edwards, including the development or integration of JDE mobile apps? If so, check out our development services page, call us directly on UK: +44 (0) 1494 896 600 US: +1 888 769 3248 ANZ: +64 (0) 9427 99 56; or email sales@dws-global.com