Step by step guide to creating an Account filter on RegionalManagerID in the 7.5.4 SalesLogix Web client

The SalesLogix web client there is a standard account filter for Account Manager that allows you to filter groups on specific Account Managers.  You would think that adding a filter for Regional Manager would be as simple as mimicking the Account Manager filter- well, you would be wrong.

Due to some bugginess of the filter area you have to do some rigmarole to get this to work.  here are the exact steps to follow. (note these steps are for 7.5.4 with HF 1-4).

Properly Building the Filter

Log into the Application Architect as Admin

In the Project Explorer (Press Cntrl+Alt+E to open) browse to VFS…Entity Model…SalesLogix Application Entities…Account…Filters.

Right click on the Filters folder and choose New Filter.

Press F4 to ensure the Properties window is open (more on that later).

You should now see a screen like this:

You will notice a red asterisk.  This is Sage’s way of telling you something is important!  You need to define the Property in order to save your filter.  The Property is the Entity Property you want to filter on.  If you look at the AccountManager filter that is there OOTB the Property to filter is AccountManager which is actually the entity collection object referencing the User object.  So guess what you want to put in our filter for the Regional Manager?

If you said the RegionalManager collection object- good try but wrong.  What we actually need to select here is RegionalManager.UserInfo.UserName.

Well that is obvious?

OK, next we need to name our filter in the Filter Name.  I am just going to call it RegMgr.  In the Display Name I will enter Reg Mgr.  Now your screen should look like this:

Now take a look at the property window you opened earlier.  Notice the Datapath value?

That is a bad thing.  Having this value in here causes all kinds of troubles, including the filters not rendering properly in the web client as well as the wire client script that runs when the filter is applied being malformed and non-functional.  Did I mention it was bad?  Thing is, any custom filters added to the system get this DataPath property set.  Worse you can not remove the property from here.  But there is a way!

Here is how you go about clearing out the bad Datapath:

Properly formatting groups

OK, so now we have a filter properly built from within the Application Architect and have deployed.  In order to make the filter show in the web client it the property of the filter needs to exist as a column in the current group.  You will notice that as you switch groups in the web client the list of filters available changes.

Again if we think that we can look at an Account group that has the Account Manager filter available and working and just copy its behavior you’d be wrong.  here is what you have to do:

In the Web client, add or edit a group.

Click the layout tab.

Now you might be inclined to add the Account.RegionalManagerID field to the layout and set the format type to “User Name”.  While this would certainly show you the data in the group it will not allow the filter to display.  Why?  Because the filter is based really on UserInfo.UserName.  So what we need to do is pull that field.  There should be a global join in the system from RegionalManagerID to the UserInfo table’s UserId.  In the upper left box scroll down until you see the table shown here:

Now in the right box, find the UserName field shown highlighted above and add that to the layout.  You will probably want to change the Column heading to say something like “Regional Mgr”.

Now Click OK to Save your changes to the Group.You should now see your Regional Manager filter listed and be able to use it!!!!