Method Community

We have several vendors/manufacturers, each with their own price list in Excel format.  I have downloaded one of them spreadsheets into Method as a document.  I would now like to be able to:

1.  Press the button

2.  Have the button read the Manufacturer field on the screen

3.  Get and display the appropriate document/price list.

I have done the conditional statements,; it's the action(s) in the middle that I can't seem to get a handle on.  I have gotten a web page to pop up using a similar process, but can't seem to find the right action to make a document pop up.  Perhaps it's not possible?

Mario

Mario,

Its definitely possible to make a document popup.  The actions you would need are the 'Retrieve value from table' and the 'Load web page'.  You would need to locate the document in your DocumentLibrary table and get the value from the Document field.  You can then place that in an action result, then use the Load web page action, and put the action result in as the webpage. My testing was done using a PDF, but an excel sheet will work too.

- Adam

Adam,

 Not sure if there is a step missing, but I keep getting an error –

 403 - Forbidden: Access is denied.

You do not have permission to view this directory or page using the credentials that you supplied.

I am the administrator on the account.

Here is what I have done:

Start Conditional Statement – This looks at the “Manufacturer”  field on my screen in order to retrieve a document unique to the manufacturer shown.

          Retrieve Value From Table –

1. 1.      Where will the value be retrieved from?
   1. From Table: DocumentLibrary
   2. From Field: Document
2. 2.      Criteria: How will this record be located?
   1. Where Field: Document
   2. value is:     (In here I put the download link for the document)

If multiple results: Retrieve First

1. 3.      Result: How do you want to use the resulting value?
2. Place value in: Action Result = FindDoc

Load Web Page

          Target          New Browser Window

          Enter URL   Action Result = FindDoc

End Conditional Statement

I believe the problem is in the Retrieve Value action.  Other than what is above, I have tried everything else I can think of : Document, DocumenFileName (with name of doc), Document ExternalURL (with download link), etc.

What’s missing?

Mario

OK,  I reread your instructions and tried one more thing and it worked.  Here is what I ended up with:

Start Conditional Statement – This looks at the “Manufacturer”  field on my screen in order to retrieve a document unique to the manufacturer shown.

          Retrieve Value From Table –

1. 1.      Where will the value be retrieved from?
   1. From Table: DocumentLibrary
   2. From Field: Document
2. 2.      Criteria: How will this record be located?
   1. Where Field: Document
   2. value is:    Action Result (next line is blank)

If multiple results: Retrieve First

1. 3.      Result: How do you want to use the resulting value?
2. Place value in: Action Result = blank

Load Web Page

          Target          New Browser Window

          Enter URL   Type in (Next line has download link for document)

End Conditional Statement

Not sure if anything is extraneous, but it works.

Mario

Mario,

I'm glad you got it working.  A couple of things to note.  Right now you are hard coding the link to the document.  When Method releases a new version, that link may change and therefore won't pop up the document.  If you can, try to have your actions get the link (that's what is stored in the document field), store that in an action result, then place the action result in the URL line.  That way any change in the link will be reflected in the actions.

As far as the error you got, I got that too when I went back to my test screen.  I'll have to look into why that happened.

- Adam

Adam,

I see the wisdom in your suggestion; however, I tried various configurations and everything I tried resulted in that same error, so I went back to my original setup for the time being.

If you get more info on that error and why we're getting it, perhaps that will help.

Mario

I only saw it the one time.  If it ever comes back, I'll try to get more info on it.

- Adam

Adam,

Can you show me (screen shots), what you have in the Retrieve and Web Page actions?  I have tried every combination I can think of with no luck.

Mario

New wrinkle.  Now the same function that worked yesterday is producing a new result.  A web screen opens and says:

I logged off and back on, but I get the same result.

Mario

I'm not sure exactly how you're finding your document.  Can you confirm the right document is being grabbed?  One way would be to put the action result that called the document link into a show message action to see what is being called.  For my solution I skipped the conditional statement and concentrated on the actions to load the webpage.  Here are my actions to call the page.  Keep in mind I hardcoded the document I'm calling.  If I change the recordID, it will call a different document.  You'll want to make your's so that your conditional statement contains the value you need to find.

- Adam