OA Framework VO Extension in Oracle Learning Management

How to change Oracle Learning Management Workflow Notifications using a VO Extension using jDeveloper and OA Personalization Framework.

Introduction

Oracle Learning Management sends workflow notifications to attendees and trainers about changes in enrolment status for courses and events. The business found that students were turning up at the college without having any indication of where their class was to be held and causing considerable confusion and delays on registration. Meanwhile the admins were confused as they had entered the Venue, set it as Primary and visible to learner, however, it was not displayed in Workflow messages.

We investigated the workflow designs involved, HRSSA and OTWF. Traditionally to change a notification, we would use workflow builder to edit the message node in the workflows concerned. However, when we examined the workflow designs we found that the Message Body used in the notification contained only a "token" reference. We were a little stumped as to what was going on. We knew that we could have had the training admins to added new HR Locations for each venue or classroom, however the Learning Administrators were already populating the OLM Resource as a primary venue which was displayed to learner, hence this was more appropriate for OTA.

We discovered that the token reference in the body of the message workflow nodes simply referred to an OA Framework Page or Region, which could not be personalised in workflow builder. This resulted in the requirement becoming a jDeveloper change rather than anything to do with workflow.

I read that it is possible to add items to a query in any framework based page by creating what's known as a "VO substitution". In theory, then we should be able to do extend the seeded EventDetailsVO view object. This is based on the methods outlined in Metalink Document 283158.1 and from following similar examples published by Anil Passi's website (with Thanks).

Note that in later releases of Oracle Apps such as R12 you can apply a VO substitution from within the Application itself, without the need for a j-Developer extension. In the article below, I will describe how I extended the EventDetailsVO using jDeveloper and added Personalizations to display the Primary Venue resource description on OLM Enrolment Notifications on Oracle e-Business Suite 11.5.10.2 RUP 7.

Consideration: If any Oracle Applications tables change in future versions of Oracle Applications, components of this customisation may also require changes to work correctly. You need to re-evaluate or re-implement such changes following upgrades and patches applied to OLM, Workflow and the OA Framework.