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LOTUSSCRIPT AGENTS
LotusScript agents and the Web
By Chris Stoner
LotusScript Agents are powerful tools that can be used in a variety of ways. I often use them to move documents through an Approval Cycle by having the Approver click on a button to either Approve or Deny the document. This works well in Lotus Notes, but how do you get the same functionality over the Web?
There are a number of ways to accomplish this task. We could simply have the Approver set the document to edit mode and select Approve or Deny from a listbox, but that's not intuitive. It would be nice to be able to get the same functionality over the Web as you do in Lotus Notes without changing the user interface or the flow of the document.
Fortunately, there is a way, with LotusScript Agents.
A little background
My example will be simple. I have an Expense Report document that I'd like Approved. I create and submit the Expense Report, and my manager is prompted to Approve or Deny this document. In Lotus Notes, he'd select the Approve button to Approve the Expense Report, and Deny to Deny it. We want the same functionality over the Web. We'll do this by calling a LotusScript Agent over the Web and passing it a few parameters. Figure A is what my manager will see when he opens the document.
FIGURE A
 
This Expense Report is what my manager will see when he opens my document. Roll over picture for a larger image.
When my manager clicks on the Approve button, the Expense Report will be marked Approved, and my manager's name and the date will be saved into the appropriate fields.
But how do we get my manager's name and a handle to the document? The LotusScript Agent will need to know the document's unique ID in order to find the correct document to mark, and we should mark the document with the Approver's name. To get these two arguments, we'll pass them to our LotusScript agent as parameters. The LotusScript agent will parse the URL that's passed to it for the two parameters that it needs to find the correct Expense Report and mark this document Approved.
How it works
First, let's code the Approve button's URL. In R5, this would look nice as an Action button if you use the Java Applet for the Action bar. However, this button will look cleaner in R4.6x as a graphic. It can, however, be done either way. What I've done is create a graphic in PaintShopPro, as shown in Figure B.
FIGURE B
This is the Approve button graphic I created in PaintShopPro.
[We are not fans of Java applets. We have found that many browsers don't react well to different forms of Java. So if you're able to create a standard .GIF or JPEG graphic, we recommend avoiding the Java applets and application bar. --DG]
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