Set Up External Links

Update Notice:

The content below has been updated to reflect functionality from the latest maintenance release. There may be differences in the functionality available to you, in the version of TMS you are using.

 

You may now use any URL syntax inside the External Links setup form, and the resulting URL will be created regardless of the URL protocol, allowing custom URLs such as: oneqa://application/execute?procedureId=procedureid

You have the ability to associate links to external websites with TMS modules, and even pass information from TMS objects to the external site. To create an external link for a module, follow these steps.

1. In TMS, go to Setup > General > External Link Setup.

2. The External Link Setup screen lists any existing links that have been set up already. To add a new link, verify that the correct segment is shown in the Segment drop-down menu. Select the correct one, if not.

3. In the Module drop-down menu, select the module you want this link to display in.

4. Click the New button in the List section.

5. The External Link window. In the Name field, enter a name for the link. This might be the name of the website or the organization.

6. If necessary, enter a Description for the link. This can be a more in-depth explanation of what the link is used for (for example, "Manufacturer Support Site").

7. In the URL field, enter the full URL for the external website.

8. Below the URL field, you will see a Default check box. If you want this link to be the default external link for the selected module (meaning that this link will automatically open when the External Links button is clicked, rather than requiring the user to expand the links list), check this check box.

9. Next, there are an Available Fields list and Selected Fields list. If there is information you want to pass from TMS to the external website, such as an asset's model number to allow you to search for online manuals based on the model, you can do so by selecting a field from the list of available fields. The information in the Available Field List is based on the module that you selected in step 3.

10. If you need to re-order the chosen fields in the Selected Fields list, you can do so with the green, Up/Down arrows next to each field in the Selected Fields list.

11. Also notice that there is an Edit Field Properties button to the left of the field name for each field in the Selected Fields list. Click this button to edit how the field's name appears in the external link.

12. Once you are done entering information for this external link, click Save. The new link is added to the List area.

How Query Results and Edit Screens are Handled by the External Links Feature

When in a query results screen, only the first field designated for the external link will be passed to the third party site. The link will be built using a comma separated list of the field values. All other fields specified for the external link will be ignored.

When an external link passes multiple ID field values to the external site, you will see "%2C" separating the values. The "%2C" is the URL encoding for a comma.

When a record is opened Edit mode, the external link will use that record only. Even if you retrieved that record via a query and are on the query results screen with other records listed, the external link with use the open record, if one of the returned records was opened in Edit mode.

Also, in the case of records in Edit mode, all selected fields for the external link are passed to the third party site.