Document Purpose Infolets are a relatively recent addition to the HCM Cloud. They are new functionality that allows analytics to be placed adjacent to the homepage then expanded or drilled into when more information is required. An Infolet is a small, interactive widget on the home page that provides data and actions for a specific area of the system. Each Infolet can have multiple views. I’ve seen an Oracle video saying that Infolets have been around since release 9, but I only became aware of them with release 10. It’s possible that they weren’t part of the initial version of R9 but were added in a subsequent patch. It’s also possible that I wasn’t paying close enough attention. Either way, everyone is on R10 now (with R11 coming, more on that later) so Infolet functionality is available to all HCM Cloud users. The purpose of this post is to introduce Infolets and explain how to enable them, and build your first Infolet tile. Enabling Infolets Infolets aren’t enabled by default in R10. Happily it’s easy to check if they’re turned on or not, and they’re easy to enable if they’re switched off. Checking whether Infolets are Enabled To see whether Infolets are enabled or not, simply go to the Welcome Springboard (the SUI homepage shown on logon). Look for two white navigation dots below the header area but above the springboard icons. They can be seen here: If the dots are present then Infolets are enabled and you can click the second of the two dots to move to the Infolets screen. If the dots aren’t present then you need to turn Infolets on before you can go any further. Turning Infolets on Follow these steps: Create and activate a Sandbox In the Navigator menu, underneath Tools, click Structure Click Set System Options Select the checkbox next to ‘HCM Infolets’ Click Save and Close Click the Home icon, and the two navigation dots should appear straight away Using Infolets If you click the second of the navigation dots you’ll move to the Infolets page. This is a dashboard to hold however many Infolets you choose to create. Possible ADF_FACES Error It may be that you receive an ADF Faces error when you click on the 2 nd navigation dot. This is caused by the user account not being mapped to a worker, so it’s pretty straightforward to fix. Infolet Navigation Here is a dashboard from the Fusion Apps Developer Relations YouTube channel ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCERuKMj7V0KTxM9jVZR2C8w ): This is a great showcase for the different types of Infolet that can be created. The top row comprises Infolets of the smaller ‘1x1’ size and the second row with the larger ‘2x2’ size. There are a number of size and shape options available, as not every analytic fits in a square tile. Each Infolet can have up to three views, a front, a back and an expanded view. Each of these views can be a different size, with the only constraint being that the expanded view has to be bigger than the others. The small glyph in the lower right of each Infolet allows you to switch between the views. Creating an Infolet Creating the Infolet itself To create a new Infolet you need to select ‘Customize Work Area Pages’. Then, the Infolet drop-down on the right contains a new item – Create Infolet: You then get the opportunity to decide the views and dimensions of your Infolet. Initially you can set the front: Typically this is for the end users to quickly glance over to ensure that nothing is amiss, so the 1 x 1 size should fit most use-cases. It’s better to save the greater detail (and the larger sizes) for the other views – when the user is interested in exploring further. You also get to specify a ‘Back View’ (for when the Infolet is flipped) and an ‘Expanded View’ (for when the Infolet is expanded). Adding Content to the Infolet Now we have the Infolet ‘container’ for the content, we need to create some content to display. Typically you’d have a really simple piece of information as the ‘front’, and then more detail and complexity if the user decides to flip or expand the Infolet. When creating your BI Analysis, start with the following sizes and tweak as necessary: For a 1 x 1 Infolet, size your graph to be approximately 150 wide by 140 high For a 2 x 2 Infolet, this obviously translates to approximately 300 wide by 280 high For a 3 x 2 Infolet, aim for dimensions of approximately 450 wide by 280 high Once you’ve created and saved your Analysis, return to your Infolet, click the Add Content button and browse to your Analysis. eg. mine are under Reports and Analytics, BIPresentationServer, Shared Folders, Infolets. Linking Detail Reports In addition to displaying attractive analytics in the Infolets, you can also display raw data. For example, the ‘front view’ of the Infolet might list the headline turnover figure for the last quarter, the ‘expanded view’ might offer the turnover broken down by country, and the detail report might provide the raw data. Adding a detail report is straightforward. Simply go back into Customize Workarea Pages and from the Infolet’s dropdown menu choose Link Detailed Report. End users will access the report by clicking on the main content in the Infolet tile. Sample Infolet To give an idea of how quick an Infolet is to put together, here’s one that I created while writing this post: Front View: Expanded View (accessed by flipping from the front view): Detailed Report (accessed by clicking on the front view): These views probably took no more than a couple of hours, and someone more skilled could do it much faster. Infolets in Release 11 R11 is bringing some improvements to Infolets. This is from the Common Technologies RCD: “You can now re-order infolets by a simple drag and drop. Additionally, you can also add new facets to existing infolets, if not already defined. User can still delete an existing facet. Also, we have enhanced the infolet navigation such that when you close the drill down from an infolet, you stay on the infolets dashboard.” Summary Infolets are a great addition to the HCM Cloud. They allow us to surface attractive and useful analytics to end-users and they’re pretty quick and easy to build. They do currently have some quirks that make them harder than they could be to work with, but it looks like some of those are being fixed in the upcoming R11 version.
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