I am now coming back to actual Infor programs in this series, this post covering the LAN Architect program for Infor CRM SLX . (In previous posts, I have covered Connection Manager, Administrator, Application Architect, twice, and IIS settings) Architect is the program that covers customizations for the Infor CRM SLX LAN client, as well as a few settings that affect the entire program. This is not to be confused with Application Architect, which is used for the web client. Unlike with the Infor CRM SLX web client, changes to the LAN client are available as soon as the are added and marked as active or released. This, and the fact that fewer folks are using the LAN client these days means I don’t use the Architect program very often. That being said, there a few functions affecting both LAN and web clients for Infor CRM SLX that and administrator might find useful, and I wanted to highlight those here.
The Architect LAN program is mainly used for LAN customizations. As I am not a developer, I rarely have occasion to log in to Architect. There are some functions, however, that non-developers might find useful. When logging in to Architect, it will first ask you which Project you wish to open. Click on Cancel, and that will bring you the main Architect screen. While many of the tools available in Architect are primarily for LAN client developers, up in the menus there are a few items that are more generally useful. Do note that some of these tools have the ability to change a varible’s data format in ways that can prevent the web client from displaying it properly. (That is not the case for the functions I am covering in this post.)
There are quite a few items on the Manage menu that can potentially be useful. Most of them are only rarely useful unless you are a developer. This one that I most often use is Picklists. If you go to Mange > Picklists, you will see all the Picklists, divided into Saleslogix (for out-of-the-box lists), Custom (for custom lists), and Plugin Families (which get their own tab). By selecting a Picklist from one of these tabs, and choosing Edit, you can add or remove items from the Picklist. There are other places to edit Picklists, but I find Architect to be the most straightforward when editing items on the list, so it is the one I prefer to use.
The other function I will use on occasion as non-developer is Manage > Plugins. Most things created by developers will be Plugins, but so are some of the basic features of Info CRM SLX. For example, the Forms and Reports a user can access in either version of the client are Plugins. The list of plugins is quite extensive, and it can be a chore to find the exact plugin you are looking for. It is very helpful to use the filtering feature to find a specific one. If you look at the list of Plugins, you will notice that all of the version of a given Plugin that were ever released are included, generally with only the last version showing as currently released. If for any reason you need to change the version of a plugin that users will see, or remove access entirely, you can do that by checking or unchecking the Released box. This will take effect right away. Keep in mind that while many Plugins only exist in the LAN client, some (such as reports) exist in both the LAN and web clients, and unreleasing a Plugin will remove from both clients.
