Lawson Portal – Getting Started as a New User

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When first using Lawson portal, it can be a bit overwhelming with all the buttons and unfamiliar UI. The first change I always make is changing the buttons to display text instead of icons.

 

First go to Preferences >> User Options

 

Under “Toolbar Button Display” select Text >> Apply and OK

Once you’ve applied the changes, your icons will change from this:

To this:

This is especially helpful for users with higher tier access as you don’t want to accidentally click delete or change a form when you didn’t mean to!

 

Hope this simple tip was helpful!

Lawson Portal Helpful User Guide

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Over the years I’ve assisted users debug issues in Lawson portal.  Through this time, I’ve noticed a pattern of users not utilizing fundamental functions of portal.  I’ll share to you a few of them today.

 

New Tab Button:

Instead of using up more of your PC’s memory, Lawson has its own tab system that users often miss. This will let you switch between multiple forms faster and easier as shown below:

 

Search box keywords:

 You might be used to typing in form numbers as shown below, but did you know you can type in keywords as well?

Don’t know a form name to General Ledger? Type in the word General Ledger and click search:

This is great for newer and veteran users taking on newer tasks.

 

Form Help:

Finally, if you want to get more information about the form you’re currently using. Go to the form and click Help >> Form Help.

 

Hope these tips helped you in your journey in mastering Lawson Portal.

How to resolve the problem: LSF submitted processes aren’t triggering on IPA Server

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Example: Submitted requisitions aren’t triggering on IPA server via reqapproval process and are not showing in Rich Client.

 

  1. Go to LSF application server, start LID and type: pfserv ping all

    Make sure Event Manager is running.
  2. When Event Manager is NOT running:
    Let’s restart it but make sure we can see the java process with –classpath in their command line close.

Now in LID on LSF server, run these stop commands IN THIS ORDER:

Verify the java.exe –classpath processes closed, else manually end them.

 

Now start them up IN THIS ORDER:

Now run a pfserv ping all to see if Event Manager is running.

 

Go to Rich Client and check Live Workunits to verify that hung processes are being picked up:

 

And you’re done!  Monitor and make sure users aren’t having any issues.

 

How to set ESS access from an external domain and for custom forms

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Step 1: Login to Infor Security Services (ISS)

Step 2: Goto SSO >> Manage Domains and click edit button as shown:

We are simply verifying the names of the displayed XML files:

Step 3: On the LSF server, go to the %LAWDIR%\security\domainauth\EXTERNAL directory to edit that XML

 

Step 4: Add an entry to an existing tree or create a new one:

 

 

That’s all that’s to it.

How to check historical instances of outgoing LBI smart notifications

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Step 1: Login to your LBI server and go to the Tools dashboard

 

Step 2: Select the Smart Notification link

Step 3: In Smart Notification interface, click the Admin button at the top right:

Step 4: Under Content section, select the Delivered Alert History link:

Final Step:

Select the between dates and click the “Get Delivered Alert History” button to see sent notifications. Below you’ll see all sent notifications on June 26th 2019. You can also filter down on the notifications by Alert ID and or Recipient. You can also redeliver these messages if needed.

Compiling an entire product line in Lawson Interface Desktop and speeding up the process

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Often when you install a patch into Lawson, you want to ensure all forms run the next day without issues. This is especially important with larger patches that affect dozens of Lawson forms and or when a new db dictionary is created.

 

This is easily done through the cobcmp command.

 

When you run the cobcmp command, it will run through a list of all Lawson forms.

 

Once this is done, you can check its process by using this command: qstatus | head -5

This command will show you the amount of forms left to compile.

 

If you want to speed up this process, you can increase the amount of compile jobs running.

In LID this is done with this command: qcontrol -jlocal,4

 

This increases your job count to 4 (default is 2)

If your server only has 2 cores, it is recommended to keep it at the default 2.

 

I’d only increase the compile job count to one less than the maximum amount of cores your server has so you don’t overload other processes.

 

Once done compiling, it is recommended to change the job count back to 2, or: qcontrol -jlocal,2

 

Hope this was of help!

BS531 – Web Pending Benefit Extract Process

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Running BS531 creates two separate CSV files, one for employee benefits (BNBATCH) and one for dependent benefits (BNDEPBATCH).

Copy these files over to the D:\lsfprod\law\prod10\work\BNBATCH directory on your LSF application server (your directory names may differ slightly).

After creating your BN531 job, go in LID and use the jobdef command to locate it under the user you created it under.

Once located, press F6 and select “C. CSV File Attributes and verify”

Verify the File Name is BNBATCH and type is CSV:

Now run the BN531 job in report mode to verify there are no errors.

Run BN531 in update mode.

 

Once done, go back to the D:\lsfprod\law\prod10\work\BNBATCH directory and rename the BNBATCH to bnbatch_emp. Now rename bndepbatch file to BNBATCH.  Run the BN531 again in report. Once verified there are no errors, run the BN531 again and confirm the data carried over.

Hope this was helpful.

 

Getting the version of important Lawson interfaces

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Interface versions are important when debugging an issue. This way you can check whether or not a patch exists that addresses the issue or if Infor is assisting you with the problem and needs a starting point.

 

Some of the most common ones needed are:

  • Lawson System Foundation (ILSF)
  • Security Jar files (secLS)
  • Infor Landmark (ILMRK)
  • Distributed Security Package (DSP)

 

Its quite simple as long as you have access to LID, Infor Security Services (cloud) and Landmark Command Line (cloud) access.

 

Starting with LID:

  • For Lawson System Foundation (ILSF) version run command: univver lawsec.jar
  • For Security Jar files (secLS), change directory to %GENDIR%/java/thirdparty and run this command: univver secLS.jar
  • For Distributed Security Package (DSP), change directory to %LAWDIR%/lss/system
    • Type command: lashow install.log
    • This will display the inside of the file, you can copy the version or export as needed.

Infor Security Services (ISS):

  • Click the lower case “i” on the upper right-hand corner of the page

Landmark Command Line (ILMRK):

  • Simply type univver -V

 

That’s all there is to it!

 

Using jobdef to distribute job files in Lawson

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In LID, type in jobdef, select a user and job name, then F6 >> B. Report Distribution

As you can see, this job isn’t being distributed beyond the prt file that is produced in the users print manager:

You have three options to None, direct to a printer, or to a distribution group:

If we use a distribution group, a distribution group consists of a list of users which can all have different printers setup under them within this group:

The printer itself has to be defined in printer definitions (prtdef) as well as setting up in the distribution list group definitions (dstlistgrpdef)

 

In this example, if the job definition (jobdef) was set to BENEFIT distribution group and ran, it would auto print to PRINTER123 under the lawson user.  All other users are not set so it wouldn’t print to them. That’s all there is to it!