Interact with AppBus via Smart Automations

What Are Smart Automations?

Smart Automations is a component capable of displaying applications from your AppBus system into your SmartHub interface.

  • Within SmartHub, these executable applications can be called Smart Actions.
  • Users can interact with Smart Actions directly from the SmartHub search center.
  • In the image below SmartHub shows Smart Actions as:
    • <AppBus Project>: <action to trigger>

User Interaction

Users can interact with Smart Automations from your search center in 3 different ways:

  • By navigating to the out-of-the-box index or landing page of your SmartHub search center.
    • If you customized those pages then you must add code to the applicable page:
      • A DIV tag with the class "smartAutomations" must be inserted into the page: the component is displayed in that container
  • By navigating to the SmartAutomations SmartHub page located at: https://<web-app-url>/SmartAutomations.html
  • By using the "Smart Automations" button found in the Ribbon or Banner at the top of the page, when selecting your user picture

Make sure you have first configured your AppBus integration.

Example Smart Actions

Smart Actions are created in BA Insight AppBus, configured, and displayed within SmartHub. Smart Actions can include such things as:

  • Uploading file attachments (to an application such as SharePoint, Egnyte, NetDocs)
  • Auto-generating new e-mails
  • Retrieving user or customer account details
  • Synchronize third-party apps with BA Insight applications
  • more...

Smart Action APIs from AppBus are shown below.

Smart Actions Search and Upload

In the example below, an action called "SearchAndUpload" is selected. This action runs a query and uploads the documents returned to the NetDocuments directory "Documents" in the "legal" site.

  1. The "SearchAndUpload" action "run" button is selected.
  2. A window opens that enables you to select the parameters for the action.
  3. In this example the parameters include:
    1. Query - Term to query in Egnyte
    2. Sp Site - Site in which to store the uploaded file
    3. Sp Folder - Folder in which to store the uploaded file


AppBus API for Smart Actions

A Smart Action similar to the one in the example above that uploads files to SharePoint is shown below in AppBus.

  • The API POST and Request body are shown for example purposes.

Features

This component enables you to:

  • Navigate through the list of automations that you have access to in AppBus and see what application they rely on behind the scenes, such as Salesforce, SharePoint, NetDocuments, etc.
  • Create categories for automations based on different tags.
  • Trigger (run) an automation by asking users for the necessary information and running the AppBus flow automatically.

How to Edit the SmartAutomations Configuration

You can edit the configuration of your SmartAutomations component by editing the Custom Settings file that you are using for your SmartHub pages. For more information about using Custom Settings, see How to Use the UI Builder.

  • You can change the SmartAutomations options by editing the SmartAutomations code in your custom settings file.
  • You can override any setting by adding it to the SH.SmartAutomations.CustomSettings namespace.

See the screenshot below.

The available options are:

Option Value Comment
Enabled

Boolean

Default: true

 If this is set to "false" the component doesn't make any changes to SmartHub and doesn't load any dependency
AddRibbonButton

Boolean

Default: true

 If this is set to "false" then the button in the ribbon is not added and the only way to navigate to the SmartAutomations page will be via a direct link.
ShowAsFlyover

Boolean

Default: false

 Example below.
RibbonButtonText

Text

Default: Smart Automations

The label for the button when it's shown in the ribbon
RibbonButtonLink

Text

Default: SH.RootLevelURL + "/SmartAutomations.html"

  • The URL that will be opened by the button in the ribbon.

  • Should represent the SmartAutomations page that you want to open.
RibbonTemplatePath

Text

Default: SH.RootLevelURL + "/modules/SmartAutomations/templates/ribbonButtonTemplate.html"

 The path to the underscore template to be used to render the button in the ribbon

ModuleTemplatePath

Text

Default: SH.RootLevelURL + "/modules/SmartAutomations/templates/moduleTemplate.html"

 The path to the underscore template to be used to render the component

CategoryTemplatePath

Text

Default: SH.RootLevelURL + "/modules/SmartAutomations/templates/categoryTemplate.html"

 The path to the underscore template to be used to render the configured categories

ActionTemplatePath

Text

Default: SH.RootLevelURL + "/modules/SmartAutomations/templates/actionTemplate.html"

 The path to the underscore template to be used to render the smart actions
ActionModalTemplatePath

Text

Default: SHRootLevelURL + "/modules/SmartAutomations/templates/actionModalTemplate.html"

 The path to the underscore template to be used to render the modal with the input required for that AppBus action

ActionModalMetadataTemplatePath

Text

Default: SHRootLevelURL + "/modules/SmartAutomations/templates/actionModalMetadataTemplate.html"

 The path to the underscore template to be used to render the modal metadata
ShowMoreTemplatePath

Text

Default: SHRootLevelURL + "/modules/SmartAutomations/templates/showMoreMetadataTemplate.html"

 The path to the underscore template to be used to render the "Show more" button
ActionModalSelector

Text

Default: ".smartAutomationsModal"

The class that will be added to the modal that is displayed when running an action.

Usually this would be used for styling purposes

ActionListSelector

Text

Default: ".smartAutomationsList"

 The class that will be added to the parent container for all the actions

CategoryListSelector

Text

Default: ".smartAutomationsCategoryList"

 The class that will be added to the parent container for all the categories
ParentSelector

Text

Default: .smartAutomations

 The CSS selector that represents the container where the SmartAutomations grid should be displayed
CategoryTemplateClass

Text

Default: category-template

 The CSS rule that decides the grid layout

NumberOfActions

Text

Default: 5

 The number of actions that are requested from AppBus at a time

ShowMore

Boolean

Default: true

 Enables the Show More button when there are more available actions

Categories

Array

Default: unset

It contains the category definitions

Example:

Copy 
Categories: [
    { 
        Name:'Category 1',
        Tags:'tag1;tag2'
    },
    {
        Name:'Category 2',
        Tags:'tag3;tag4'
    }
]
Applications

JSON

Default: unset

  • This is a JSON object that can be used to configure additional (tag, icon URL) pairs to be used in the component's Application column to showcase what applications a specific SmartAutomation uses behind the scenes.

  • Example:
    (If an AppBus flow refers to the NetDocstag then the corresponding Icon URL is used)
DocumentPickerSettings → EnableCondition

Text

Default: "actionMetadata.indexOf('FileName') !== -1"

  • This string represents a JavaScript code which is evaluated with the "eval" JavaScript command.

  • This string must evaluate to a boolean value such as "true" or "false".

    • If "true" then the action will have the document picker search box at the top.

  • "actionMetadata" object is an array which contains all the Smart Action fields, as they are configured in AppBus
DocumentPickerSettings → PlaceHolder

Text

Default: "Search for a document"

 The placeholder used by the document picker searchbox.
DocumentPickerSettings → MaxDocumentToReturn

Integer

Default: 50

 The max number of documents to be returned when the user does a search.
DocumentPickerSettings → QueryTemplate

Text

Default: "{searchboxquery}"

  • The query template that will be used when sending the query to the search engine.

  • If you want to do query modifications do it by changing this parameter.

  • The following example will search for the user keyword but boost document that contain the keyword in the title: {searchboxquery} XRANK(cb=1000) title:"{searchboxquery}".
DocumentPickerSettings → SourceId

Text

Default: "b29924a9-ec32-4c10-8892-a544b69ee121"

  • The query source id that will be used when sending the query to the search engine.

  • By default this targets the default "Local SharePoint Results" source.
DocumentPickerSettings → MetadataMappings 
JSON
Default: {
        "FileName": "title",
        "YourSmartActionFieldName": "SmartHubMedataName"
      }

  • This object defines the mappings between the Smart Action fields (as they are defined in AppBus) and the document metadata (SmartHub UI properties).

  • If the SmartAction contains a field that is not mapped to a search index metadata then it will be shown as "Empty" when a document is selected.

  • It is advised that you add mappings for all the fields that you use across the SmartActions.

    Example: Assuming your custom action has a field named

    MetadataCustomerName which corresponds to the document metadata

    RefinableString11 in the search index, then you would add the following mapping: "MetadataCustomerName": "RefinableString11".

Example: Set Smart Actions Categories

The following snippet, when added to the SmartAutomations setting, creates three categories:

  • "NetDocs"
  • "SalesForce"
  • "FileNet"

Each category contains only actions that are tagged with the specified tags:

  • NetDocs, SF, and FileNetCrawlerToAC.

Copy 
Categories: [
            {
                Name:"NetDocs",
                Tags:"NetDocs"            },
            {
                Name:"SalesForce",
                Tags:"SF"            },
            {
                Name:"FileNet",
                Tags:"FileNetCrawlerToAC"            }
        ]

How to use smart actions in carousel style

If there is no category defined, a carousel with all the available actions is shown:

How to Add Smart Actions to a Search Results Page

The Smart Automation module can also be displayed as a flyover by changing the ShowAsFlyover setting to true.

  • BA Insight recommends you set Smart Automations as a flyover if you want to add the module on a search results page.