The Mobile Informer platform is a mobility environment built specifically to support mobile applications that integrate directly with Maximo. The platform enables rapid development of lightweight, extensible applications that allow for direct communication with Maximo via web services and comply with open standards.

Deployed within Maximo, the Mobile Informer server platform requires no middleware software. Mobile Informer manages the heavy-lifting and complexity of mobilizing Maximo, letting you design custom user interfaces specifically to support each business process, while taking advantage of the wide range of native features available in each mobile environment.

The Informer platform management is separated into two Maximo applications: Informer Developer, and Informer Administration. Informer Developer is provided for developers of Informer applications and advanced system administrators. It provides access to all aspects of both configuration and administration of Informer. The Informer Administration application is a limited version of Informer Developer and only contains the functions relevant to the administration of deployed applications.

This document covers the use of the "Informer Developer" Maximo Application.

The List tab is used to search for available Informer profiles and provides access to both the Advanced Search and Where Clause search features.

The Sessions, Import Profile, Import Commands, and License Select Action menu items are available from this tab and can be used to view the current global active Informer user sessions as well as import a new Informer Profile and Command archives. The specifics of these actions will be covered later in this guide under their respective Select Action menu items.

The Profile tab provides access the primary Informer profile configuration information.

From this tab, the user can configure the profile name, application to be exposed, where clause or workflow process used to filter data, and data structure to be provided to the mobile device in the form of Notifications.

The Active checkbox indicates if the profile is currently active and listening for events within Maximo. Profile activation will be covered later in this guide.

The GenerateSQLite checkbox indicates whether Preloads should produce SQLite data to download. Preloads will be covered later in this guide.

The Public and Anonymous checkboxes indicate whether the Profile’s defined Commands and Resources should be available to users without Maximo user accounts. Commands and Resources are covered later in this guide.

The Objects table will default to contain the primary object of the selected application to expose. This object is required and cannot be removed from the profile. Child objects may be selected and related to the parent based on the relationships defined in the Database Configuration application for the selected parent and child objects.

The Attributes table allows specific attributes from the selected object to be included in the profile. Related attributes (such as LOCATION.DESCRIPTION or LABOR.DISPLAYNAME) can be used and updates will be listened for based on the related records selected.

The Catalogs tab allows the user to define, modify, and manage catalogs. Catalogs are the reference data that is made available to the device and that is managed separately from the notifications that the profile may trigger.

The Users tab allows specific users to be granted access to the selected profile. It also allows the user’s active notifications to be viewed and removed if desired.

The Devices tab allows an administrator to manage the devices that are being used on the selected profile. While Informer is not designed to be a full device management platform, basic management functionality is provided to block and wipe application data, in addition to viewing application logs and screenshots.

On the Android platform it is possible to implement full device management capabilities such as the ability to remotely lock and factory reset the device. This capability must be implemented and enforced by the application through the Informer client library.

The Error Management tab allows the user to view and perform remedial action on any errors associated with the profile. This typically will occur when a command is sent from a device either in an improper format or if the command is unable to resolve a data or system conflict. While application error handling is dependent on the specific application, the Informer platform does return complete error details to the client and the application should properly handle notifying the end user of such errors.

Know Issues:

Issue 6150: Update message parameters not used

The Push Notifications action displays a dialog allowing the user to configure push notifications for the iOS Apple Push Notification Service(APNS) and Android Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) push notification frameworks.

The Name field contains the name of the application, as registered with the respective service. The Type indicates whether it is Android (GCM)or iOS (APNS). The message field contains a generic message that will be delivered when one or more updates occur to existing user notifications. The Update Message field is the message to push, which can contain numerical parameters such as {0}, {1}, {2}, that will be replaced by the parameters provided in index order. The Update Message Parameters field contains a comma separated list of attributes that will be substituted into the message. The Description is an arbitrary description for the push notification. The Sender ID is required by the GCM server, whereas the Attach Certificate is used by iOS. The password is the password required only for iOS for decrypting the Attached Certificate. The Sound is the name of the sound file to be played on the device when the message arrives. Finally, the Content Where Clause is an arbitrary where clause that can be evaluated against the newly-changed data to check for a match, which will be indicated to the device via the push message to trigger content-conditional behavior.

As devices subscribe to the profile, if they opt to receive push notifications the device will be listed in the Devices table. Once a device has registered, specific features such as sound, message, and application icon badging can be turned on or off on a per device basis.

The Send Test Message allows a test push message to be sent to a selected device. This is useful when trying to troubleshoot connectivity or device refresh issues.

Commands are discrete actions that the application profile may perform within the Maximo system. Each command is a custom Java class that implements the Command interface and is typically developed by an application developer.Commands are then associated with a profile, which then allows an application to perform the actions available within the command. Commands can either be included in the Maximo class path at start up, in which case they will be automatically discovered and made available, or they may be uploaded (covered later in this guide)and registered manually. This dialog provides access to see which commands are associated with the profile. Basic information about the command such as its name, implementing class, and version number are provided.Commands can be invoked by any Informer user, and specific Commands can be made available to anonymous users as well, by checking both the Public and Anonymous checkboxes. Clicking the detail button for a command provides a generated sample XML representation of the command.

To add a new command to the profile, click the Select Commands button.The list of available commands will be displayed.Check the commands to associated with the profile and then click the OK button to accept the selection.

Resources are arbitrary files made available to Informer devices for download. Unlike Maximo DocLinks, resources are not directly linked to any business objects, and are associated only with the Profile which exposes them. These could serve theoretically any purpose as part of an application solution, but are typically used to provide configuration files and the like to Informer applications.

Resources have a declared name, description, and type. The names are used by the mobile applications to request these resources, and as such should not change after application development is complete.

Resources are available to all Informer users, and can also be made available to anonymous users by checking the "public" and"anonymous" checkboxes.

Resources can be imported using the "Add Resource" button.

The Applications action allows a system administrator to view the available Informer application packages for the selected profile.

The Name field is the name of the application and often matches the profile. The Title is a short description of the application. The Type is either ANDROID or IOS depending on the application package. The Version name is the semantic version number provided by the developer. Finally the Application Link is the URL where the application can be downloaded from, which will be included in the communication template if an application link is sent to a user from the Users tab.

The application deployment page is configurable and is based on a Velocity template, but a sample deployment page for the Android application shown above would look similar to the following:

The Sessions action allows the user to view all active session information including the session key, which can be matched to log event entries, the user name, the last time an action was performed on the session, and when the session will expire. The session can also be forced to expire by deleting the record.

The Monitor action allows an administrator to view current state of the Informer processing queues and their processors, as well as performance information if available. When an action occurs within Maximo that may impact a record on a device the action information is put into a queue to be processed in the background. This ensures that the Maximo UI is never impacted by the evaluation of records destined for mobile devices. To ensure that Informer remains scalable, the queue is designed for high volume parallel processing across multiple threads and multiple nodes within a cluster. Being able to view the state of the various threads across the nodes in the cluster is key to understanding the system health and performance.

Note that when the Maximo system is in Admin Mode, queue processing is suspended.

There are three categories of Queue Processor: Notification, Catalog, and Push.

Profile Groups allow an administrator to alter the application behavior based on one or more assigned Profile Options that were configured by the application developer. The Group name is an arbitrary name assigned by the administrator that is used to group one or more options into a logical grouping that can be assigned to one or more users. Profile Options are cumulative for a user, aggregated across all groups that the user belongs to.

The assigned users must be valid users on the currently selected Informer profile. Clicking the Import Users from Group allows the administrator to select a Maximo security group and import all the users of that group, first to the profile and then to the Profile Group.

To assign multiple users to a Profile Group click the Select Users button and select one or more profile users to assign to the Profile Group.

Options tab provides access to assign Profile Options to the selected Profile Group. Clicking the Select Options button allows the user to select one or more Profile Options defined by the application developer and associated with the Informer profile.

Profile options are named options that an application developer can use to conditionally alter application behavior based on a user’s assigned named options. Typically these options are on / off switches where if a user has the option assigned through a Profile Groups assignment then the application behavior will be altered accordingly.

It should be noted that option names are arbitrary; devoid of intrinsic meaning and require application logic to be developed to drive specific behavior.

Selecting the Reconcile All User Notifications action will cause all notifications for all users to be reevluated for accuracy. Please note that this could take several minutes depending on the number of users and the complexity of the notifications.

Selecting the Generate All Catalog Preloads action will cause all preloaded catalogs to be marked as invalid and queued to be regenerated. Please note that depending on the number of catalogs and the complexity of the catalog structures, this operation can take a minutes or hours before the preloads finish generating. When each Catalog finishes, its corresponding preload timestamp field will be updated in the Catalogs table on the Catalogs tab.

Informer profiles can be exported from one system and imported to another. This allows a profile to be developed on one system and then migrated to test and production once verified. To export a profile select Export Profile from the Common Actions toolbar. This will open a new window with an XML file that can be saved and then reimported to another system. Depending on the browser the user may just be prompted to save the file directly.

To import an exported profile select Import Profile from the Common Actions toolbar. A dialog will be displayed to allow the user to select a previously exported XML file. Select the file and then click the OK button.

If no version of the profile exists then a new profile is created.Users must then be added, manually. If a different version of the profile exists, it is deactivated, deleted, and then the new profile is created in its place. As a convenience, any existing users are retained, but user notifications may need to be regenerated.

Note that the imported profile will be inactive and must be reactivated before use.

Selecting the Activate Profile select action menu item causes the profile to become active and registers the listeners within the Maximo system required to capture events that are relevant to the profile and send notifications to the users as defined by the profile.

Before the Profile can be activated, all Catalogs have been initialized. Profile activation will trigger a temporary increase in the Catalog Queue Processors as the Profile checks for any changes it missed while it was deactivated.

Deactivating a profile stops all listeners from capturing system events relevant to the profile and prevents application users from accessing the profile and if connected, the application itself.

Currently Informer profiles do not support duplication. This menu item is provided to be consistent with other Maximo applications that do not support duplication, but still display the Duplicate menu item.

The current profile will be deactivated if necessary, then deleted from the system along with all associated records.

Importing a command allows the user to upload a new command or a new version of an existing command to the system without restarting. The command is a Java JAR file that contains one or more class files that implement the command.

To import the command, select the Import Command action, then using the dialog provided locate the JAR file to upload, then click the OK button to complete the upload. The class files will be imported into the system and will be made available in the Commands action.

The Import Application action allows an administrator to upload a new application bundle, as provided by a developer, to the server for deployment. The application can then be managed from the Applications dialog.

The License menu item allows the provided Informer license XML to be applied to the system. The read-only Version text box displays the current version and release information for the installed Informer server. The text area below is where the license XML should be inserted.

Clicking the OK button will immediately apply the license restrictions.